How to find the best photos for your website

With your website often being the first touchpoint when a potential leads looks at your brand, it’s important to make a great first impression. Today’s customers want to connect with companies that resonate with them. Customers want to work with a business that is professional and authentic.

That’s why design, photography, and graphics play such an important role in creating that user experience. On top of the words on your website, humans are visual creatures and these elements help your customers connect with you on an intuitive level.

When we build a website, there are several options that are available for photos:

Your photography

Even though the capabilities of the camera in your phone continue to improve, the finding photos usable for your website is still fairly rare. If a good photo is found, we often have to spend time to touch up the photo to make up for issues with resolution, color balance, and composition. Additional photoshop work can add a significant amount of effort to your project.

Some clients come to us with a large library of photos. In these instances usually the photos are taken with a ‘documentation’ intent versus for use in a marketing piece. Photo selection can also add hours to the project, as our design director sifts through gigabytes of saved pics.

Stock photography

Stock photography is great because the quality of the imagery is professional and composed with a marketing intent. The problem with stock photography is that it is obvious, the photo is not authentic, and people can tell. Sometimes you can get away with it, but people still like to do business with people that they like, and actual photo’s of YOU help.

Custom Photography & Artwork

Custom photography and artwork definitely yield the best results. The photography is directed by our design director, so photos are taken with a clear intent from the start. They feature you and your people, at your locations, so website visitors get an authentic vision of who they will be working with.

But it can be expensive and add weeks to the project schedule. Sometimes the photographer doesn’t get the exact photo that we need too. Ugh.

Sagetree’s ‘Upgrade’ method to website photography

At Sagetree we have developed a hybrid method to getting the most authentic photos of you and your company while still being able to launch in a timely fashion where a photo shoot doesn’t throw a wrench in the schedule.

This is how it works.

We build the initial design using stock photography. With Shauncy’s preparation (Sagetree’s Director of Design), your website will project a professional image without incurring the additional cost that comes with a professional photo shoot. The schedule doesn’t need to be increased and your marketing campaigns can launch in a timely manner.

Then without the campaign launch pushing and pulling at your schedule, we schedule a professional photo shoot at your convenience. With the website already released, it’s much easier for the photographer to capture the shots needed that match the intent of the messaging. In the end, you will have a website with authentic photos of you and your team that convey an authentic image.

Do you need help creating an authentic experience for your website visitors? Get help today and schedule a call!

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Finding the assets you need

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Avada News • June 2, 2016

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Keep It Simple

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Print Design Services

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Content Marketing

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PPC Advertising

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Focus on The User

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