Just because you are not an artist or your business does not include a portfolio of photographs or illustrations, doesn’t mean you can’t make good use of images in your web site. In fact, carefully selected images will make a website sing. The images you need can be found at any of the reputable stock companies on the internet, such as Big Stock, iStock or Shutterstock to name a few. Using stock images is affordable and easy. Take this site I recently put together for Ann McCarten.
Here’s a little background. Ann is a database marketing specialist. She already had a dated site, but what was worse, it was a template package on Yahoo. In order to keep up with the blogging world, Ann made another site in WordPress and linked the two. Her Yahoo site was unwieldy. The links weren’t working among other things. So, we combined the information and gave her a brand new site built on a theme from Theme Forest.
Deb exported the old blog and then imported it into the new site. All Ann’s twenty or so posts were intact. Then, Deb went to Big Stock and found Ann about $60 worth of images to brighten her site at $3 per image. Not charts with arrows, but some nice illustrations and photographs that subtly illustrate her topics.
Marketing Integration, email metrics, marketing metrics, customer segmentation, etc. are tough to illustrate. But by using the search field in stock sites, you have a hundred images to choose from. Or, you can make the leap yourself and use key words that make sense. The title reads, “Every Gain is a Win”. So, why not look for a race? Don’t settle for a corny chart or posed models in business attire sitting around a computer screen. Be creative. Mix it up. Photos, illustrations, art, or photo-illustrations. Look for images that can be cropped easily and in the format you need. If the area designated on the page is horizontal, then add that to the search criteria. Here are a few of the images Ann and I liked for her site. You can see the web site at http://www.dbmcatalyst.com.