Images are an excellent communication tool for a website. The integration of the right images for your web design can help you attract the attention of anyone visiting your site, elicit their emotions and create a long lasting impression on them. Therefore, to build a connection between clients and the brand accordingly, using the ideal image helps to a great extent. Hence, it is always essential that you choose an image for web design appropriately. The importance of using the correct image, excellent layout and content when designing websites is known by most web designers these days. Images can enhance the growth of any online business when used in the correct way. Hence it is important that if you do not get it right, they can ruin your work altogether. Most visitors will ignore your website if your use of images is only meant to fill the empty spaces and you will end up not drawing as much traffic as you required. With the advancement of new technologies all your worries have been put to rest. Today, it is much easier to edit and curate different images and use them for web designing. But, how can the ideal communication tools that enhance the appearance and layout of the website be transformed for your web design?

Choose authentic Images

While designing a website, originality is something you should strive to achieve. I You need to use real images of people and products under this aspect, to maintain the authenticity. An excellent connection between visitors and the brand is created using real images. You can convert leads into customers and enhance their experience using this way. Avoiding overused stock pictures is the best way to ensure that you are using authentic images. As much as possible go for custom photos instead. You can get stock images that are more ideal for your web with a suitable brief hence you don’t need to sweat over it. To add personality and originality to a professional website, a photo of employees together would be a great way. You may need different images to illustrate every page, subpage, post, etc. depending on the site that you are designing. The purpose should be connected to the context while choosing the right image. The chances are that you will also be able to ace originality when you select the relevant images. You will be able to use more authentic images and create a positive experience that promotes the website as long as you avoid the clichés.

Use to the point Images

You should ensure that the images that you use in web design should be relevant. To enhance your website you should use images mainly because they will be offering a visual appeal to the page. The image should be relevant to the page for this reason. In simple words, you should not use an image of mango on the page if your website is about making apple juice. In other words, the photos should make sense when you choose to use them in web design. Your audience should well relate with the pictures that you use. The visitors would expect to see images of designer clothes, shoes, and jewellery etc. if you are designing a website for a fashion company The photos generally emphasize what the website is all about. To add value by providing an excellent visual representation of the page through images is the key learning of this point.

Edit the Images

You will need to hone your cropping skills once you have chosen images you want to use in designing your website. It is important that your audience’s attention should be carefully drawn to the main focal point of every image. Also to mention that not leaving dead spaces around the image should be ensured additionally. Accurate balancing requires cropping and resizing. Additionally, you should ensure that the website supported screen formats and correct ratios should be followed by the images. While viewing using different screen formats, such as a tablet, you may end up with images that shift focus when this is not done. Image selections are usually nailed by responsive websites depending on the size and format you choose to use. You can crop the image in smaller screen formats without losing impact as such websites may allow sufficient background space around the main point of focus.

Use the Correct File Format

Every file format has a unique purpose for which Images can be kept in different file formats. Hence, you need to ensure that the website you want to design has selected the correct file type that matches its needs and is compatible with it. Below are three well-known image formats that you generally get to work with: • JPEG: many images with different colors, gradients, and shadings can be worked with using jpeg format. • PNG: Images that come with different solid colors can be worked with using this format but most importantly this is known for working on logos and similar artworks. • GIF: this format is mostly used when the image involves animations and motion graphics. To make your website highly functional and efficient you need to use the correct image format. The website’s aesthetic appeal is enhanced by this aspect additionally.

Images for UI Elements and Icons.

While considering image quality and format, every website will have different requirements. In order to ensure that your images are perfect for whatever website you are designing, you can use general suit-it-all methods. For example, by using softwares like Corel Draw and Adobe Illustrator you can customize stock vector graphics and use them as UI elements and icons. For enhancing the authenticity of the website you want to design, as much as stock photos are great, the icons will also play an entirely unique role. A smoother user experience is created by using icons to your benefit. Clear messages are communicated using UI elements and icons. You may not need additional texts on the UI using this way. An image of a house to represent the homepage, a magnifying glass for the search panel, and a mail sign for the “contact us” page are some of well-known and universal icons which you can consider using. All the images you use should be similarly applied. It may be important to know that depending on where they are used, some icons can have different meanings. For example, to represent the same meaning some people use the heart icon while others use the star icon. In this scenario, to avoid confusion and enhance the user experience, text labels could be used.

Use Captions and Supporting Texts

Captions and accompanying information may be required by some images to avoid confusion. In this manner, complex images can be explained by alternative texts which you may want to include on every web page. For example, to boost your SEO ranking a caption as simple as a file name or tag can be used. Likewise, to explain what the image is all about, alternative texts in the form paragraphs can be used. The correct keywords to enhance search results should be ensured when used in this way.

Maintain a Constant Image Size and Style

Constant size and style of images used in designing a website look more appealing. To stay organized and arrange texts, columns, and for other posts displayed on the page, having constant image styles will be very helpful accordingly. For example, it will provide more beauty and readability with every image and accompanying text. The overall look of the web page is enhanced using style and size constancy. The overall user experience is enhanced using this aspect.

Optimizing the Images

Every website design has specific needs which should be matched before using the images. For example, sometimes an image could not be added to a site without cropping as it may be too big. Likewise, you have to ensure that the loading speed of your site is not affected by the high resolution of the image. Hence, web designing will require optimization of images. The visitors will find it hard to load pages when you use larger image files, since it takes too much time. Alternatively, you may miss out on prospective customers if you have a slow webpage. Hence, optimizing your images is the only way to avoid such a scenario. To sites that load slower you can compress photos using image optimization. If you are working on a site that requires many images, this could be a vital consideration.

The Conclusion

Images are the most used and understood media files in web designing among the many media files that can be used to improve the user experience of a website As the images are easy to interpret and are engaging and do not take most of your time hence they are most liked by visitors to your website. The images can attract attention of the visitor and guide your audiences into navigating the website when they are used correctly. An emotional connection between users and the brand can also be created using the images. To sum up, while considering using images for web design these are some of the reasons which could be handy.