Nothing can undermine an otherwise great website like poor photography. Photography is one area that’s a consistent pain point for many businesses, and even those who emphasized quality website images can still fall short.
Today, we’re going to discuss the importance of professional website images, and provide you with some of the top sites where you can find them.
Why Professional Website Images are Important
There are several reasons to have great images on your site besides the obvious visual effect that they have.
Great images help to create synergy with your brand and can tie your visual content marketing efforts together. Not only will this help create a more cohesive look for your site, but people are simply better at remembering the information they digest in photographs. People remember 80% of what they see, but only 20% of what they read.
Great visuals also have SEO implications, as well. New York SEO firms like Hook Agency use compelling visuals to improve the user experience on their client’s sites.
The idea behind this practice is great visuals make for better user experience, and when people spend more time on your website because they have a positive experience, this signals Google that your website is worth indexing highly in SERPs.
Quality photos and visuals also provide consumer trust signals that can be valuable to your business, especially if your business sells physical products. A whopping 94% of people consider high-quality images to be a factor in their product buying decisions.
Where to Find Professional Website Images
Now that we’ve covered the why, it’s time to discuss the where. Here are the best sites for you to find quality images to use for your website.
Pixabay
Pixabay is one of the most popular sources for quality website photos and images. Best of all, nearly all of the images on the site are available for use on your website for free.
Pixabay has a robust collection of landscape photography, and they also have a healthy catalog of illustrations and videos as well.
Once you’ve found the photo you need, downloading it is as simple as selecting your resolution and solving a captcha. If you register for a free account, you can eliminate the captcha.
Pexels
Another free site with plenty of high-quality images, Pexels is worth taking a closer look at.
While anyone can upload photos to Pexels, the site’s editors select only the best photos for their searchable database. Pexels is especially popular with web designers as they have tons of images that play well with interface mockups.
You can search Pexels for specific topics, emotions, or landscapes or activities, and they even have a great collection of quality photos from outer space.
Adobe Stock
Perhaps the most comprehensive and popular stock photo library, Adobe Stock provides virtually any stock photo you could ever need, all in one convenient location.
Unlike Pexels or Pixabay, the photos on Adobe Stock aren’t free. But, Adobe Stock has tons of flexible plans to help you get the images you need at an affordable price.
If you’re willing to shell out the cash, you won’t be able to find a more comprehensive or high-quality database of images anywhere on the web.
Gratisography
One of the more interesting stock photo destinations on the web is Ryan McGuire’s Gratisography.
McGuire’s work avoids many of the cliches that are typical with stock photography, and the result is a quirky collection of stock photos and visuals that you won’t find anywhere else on the web.
New images are added weekly, and all the content on Gratisography is available for free commercial use.
StockSnap
StockSnap is home to thousands of high-quality images for your site; all licensed under the Creative Commons Zero license.
In other words, anything you find on this site can be used and modified without the need for attribution.
New photos are added on a weekly basis, and there’s also a nifty trending feature which allows you to see what images are most popular on the site at any given time.
Flickr
One of the oldest and most well-loved social sites on the web, Flickr is still going strong today as a home to millions of high-quality and fair use images.
Keep in mind that not every photo on Flickr carries a CC0 license, and you’ll need to check on each photo to see if it’s available for reuse without attribution. Or, you can also just search the “free use photos” section of the site to find yourself professional website images that are free for you to use.
