Images are an essential addition to any website, across all industries and sectors. Images are highly effective for conveying information and ideas, while also adding visual interest to your website, and enhancing the overall user experience. However, not all images are created equal, and not all images will be suitable for your website. So what are the image requirements for website content? And how can you achieve the right results?
What are the important image requirements for website content?
Any image that you use on your website must meet the necessary requirements? But what are these requirements? Well, there are several, including:
Visual quality requirements for website images
Any image that is used on your website must be high quality.This is because low quality images are unattractive, distract from the content, and may leave visitors with a negative impression of the website. High-quality images on the other hand, will appear clear and sharp, no matter which device the user is accessing the website from. This can help to improve the overall user experience, breaking up text content with attractive and useful imagery and giving your website a professional appearance.
In addition, website images need to also be relevant to the content. The images should be used to add value to the text, and emphasise a point or the message you are delivering. Images have the unique ability to display information in a visual way, which is much quicker and easier to process. As a result, using relevant images help to clarify any points, deliver a clear message,and prevent user confusion.
The images should also be consistent with the website’s design and branding, selected to match the overall style and tone of the website. Consistency in the use of images helps to create a cohesive and professional appearance for the website.
Legal requirements for images
As well as how the images are presented on the page, and the impact these can have on the user experience and visual quality of your website, there are also practical requirements. The first of which is that your images are legally obtained. Using images that are copyrighted or owned by someone else without permission can lead to legal issues. As a result, it is important to ensure that your website images are properly licensed or in the public domain.
Image loading requirements for website content
Another important requirement is that the images are able to load correctly on the website.
One of the first actors to consider is that the website images are formatted. This is essential for ensuring that the images are displayed at the correct quality, and that they load correctly on all devices. As such, images should be in a standard format, such as JPEG, GIF, or PNG.
As well as formatting the images correctly, these will also need to be properly sized. This is because large images can slow down the loading time of the website, which can lead to frustration for visitors, while small images will be of lower quality and will not have the right impact. As a result, large images should be chosen and these must be properly resized and compressed to ensure that they load quickly and do not impact the performance of the website. Additionally, images should be appropriately sized for their intended use. For example, a header image will need to be larger than an image in a blog post.
SEO requirements for website imagery
Finally, your website images should be prepared to support your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). This means that the images need to be titled and labelled correctly. Images should be labelled with descriptive filenames and alt text. This alt text is important for accessibility and SEO, as it allows visually impaired visitors to understand what the image is depicting, and it allows Search Engine’s to understand the content of the image.
Here at Pumpkin Web Design we are Preston’s leading web design and web marketing professionals. We provide a wide range of high quality, effective SEO solutions and content marketing services across Preston and the North West, from Southport to Wigan, as well as Manchester. For more information or advice, why not get in touch today?