It has long been said that we as human beings are getting less and less patient. We have an urgency to everything we do and our expectation is that things should happen quickly. You only have to think about how you use the internet these days and how much time you give a site before you move on. Loading speed has a lot to do with that. Long gone are the days of watching the blue bar buffer! Just imagine if you saw that today? Previously for the sake of SEO we would look at creating copy to ensure the keywords were in there and the Google spiders could find them.
But now, we realise that we aren’t creating content for machines. We are creating relevant, regular content for PEOPLE, hopefully people that are interested in what we have to offer, service or product. And we realise that those people are visual. They have less time to get the information they want, and they certainly aren’t going to share a 400 word blog post anymore. But they will share a picture that depicts something they are interested in, something they are feeling, or something that motivates them.
The above image conveys a number of messages in a square box 1200×1200 way more than a corresponding text description. It also invokes emotion more so than copy can. Admittedly great copy writers can also elicit an emotional response from readers, but images do so at a glance. If you added some copy in to it – well you deliver a specific message and with some forethought and planning you can start to tap into the thinking of your target market and put out images that they immediately resonate with and then go on to share with their networks.
Going back to our inability as humans to focus anymore – when we think about the kind of content we like and want, imagery that is quick to deliver the message and even quicker (1 click) to share. It makes sense that imagery could help convert your web visitors into fans, ambassadors, subscribers and at the end of the day customers!