Whether you run a personal blog or are in charge of a big online shopping hub, your goal is to attract and retain visitors so they can relate to the content on your page. It seems there has never been more online content than today, but when writing is concerned quantity has never necessarily implied quality. Your marketing strategy determines the kind of visual content that will give you the most coverage with the target audience. While there are many ways you can improve your online presentation visually, only some of them are truly effective.
Keep visitors animated
It’s often said that a picture is worth a thousand words, but a picture that stands still may not cause much awe in web design terms. Nestled comfortably between high-resolution stills and regular videos, there’s the department of animated images, popularly known as GIFs. The main advantage of these “motion images” is that they can bring attention to the text, such as a product description, without encumbering the page loading time with large videos. GIFs are perfect for social media use, as they are likely to get a large number of likes, and are easy to share.
Embrace photo editing tools
Although still pictures are losing battle to GIFs on many fronts, professional, high-quality photography is still an important aspect of web design. To max out the impact that their galleries make, marketing specialists shouldn’t be afraid to use professional photo editors like Lightroom or Photoshop. With an abundance of available templates, overlays, presets, and textures, these tools can significantly improve the visual impact of your photos, while how-to-use guides and resources like Sleeklens can train anyone to use them.
Implement infographics
Infographics improve the traditional appeal of blogs by breaking up text-heavy pieces, but due to their easy-to-read and engaging nature are also easy to share on social media. One of the problems with infographics is that they can be bulky in size, taking more space than the text they replace, so consider hiring infographic experts to optimize them. For example, design team Infostarters specialize in transforming your written content into engaging infographics in a preferred format for publishing or printing, allowing you to take your visual game to the next level.
Combine different elements
It’s now clear that quality pictures, GIFs and editing tools can enrich the textual content of your website and make it more appealing. However, the true potential of textual and visual elements is to find a way for them to work together in shaping your webpage identity. This synesthesia, or combination of words, animations, and pictures should be observed as an individual visual tool. Synesthesia is much used for homepages, where you should put too many words, but those which you do should appear visually appealing. Use a different colour for letters, or have them moving against the backdrop of a captivating photograph.
Consider stop-motion videos
Aside from animated GIFs, there’s another visual trick you can use for saving the bandwidth and increasing the visual engagement. Instead of going for a full-size video chose several stop-motion videos, which are just fast-alternating images. This technology was famously used for the 1950s monster films such as Godzilla, but their engaging potential hasn’t dropped ever since. Their speed allows them to deliver a quick, desired content that visitors can devour in seconds instead of having to read or watch several minutes, which they may choose not to.
Use product videos
Although high-definition videos often take time to upload, some of them are too important not to be uploaded. There’s no question that text, infographics, and pictures are great for personal blogs, but for real product description, a video is hard to beat. The idea is that if a potential buyer is not certain whether they need the product or not, a short video on its use might just tell them what they need to know to make a decision. To make them more accessible through social media, instead of uploading them on your website, you can create a playlist of product videos on your YouTube channel, and provide their links.
When used together, these visual content elements can boost your marketing strategy to the point that you’ll soon see benefits from them, such as increased traffic and, if you’re running a retail business, a resulting increase in revenue.
Jennifer Hahn Masterson is a senior business strategist, holding an MA degree in business communication. She is always doing her best to help her clients find their place in the ever so competitive business arena.