In our book, The Art of Inbound Marketing, we touch on how important it is for financial advisors to use visuals on their websites. This includes the homepage and homepage design. Not only are they more appealing to the eye, but research shows that pages with videos keep people on your website longer. In fact, the average user spends 88% more time on a website with video. Additionally, video attracts two to three times as many monthly website visitors and has a 157% increase in organic traffic from search engines.
Must-Have Homepage Design Elements
But how do you use videos and images to generate new traffic and capture leads? Homepage design is a big part of it. While there are many ways to use visuals on your website, here we look at some common practices and why they are effective. Below you’ll see everything you need to know about homepage design and how to implement it.
Where To Put Visuals
One place you should put images or videos is your home page. This is the first time visitors are going to be introduced to you and your firm, and visuals help ease that introduction. In addition to personalized copy, you can add photos of your office building, your headshot, or images that represent what you do at your firm.
You can also consider putting images on your interior pages to add a different look or break up the text. Research shows that more than 50% of social media users say that videos and images are more engaging as compared to simple text posts. The same is true for websites. Images and videos serve as ways to break up text-heavy pages and add a personal touch to your website.
Visuals You Should Use
Ideally, you should have a headshot for each of your team members, a picture of your office, and a picture of the location you serve. If you don’t have these images though, you can also use stock images that convey similar ideas. Websites such as iStock and Shutterstock have thousands of high-quality images available for users to purchase, along with Unsplash, which provides both free and premium paid image content. If you want more cartoonish or animated images, try out Canva, which also includes free and premium images, videos, and more.
What to Consider When Choosing Images
There are a few basic rules that web designers and marketers swear by when recommending images. First, make sure that your images are high-quality. Although smartphone photos might work, the better option is to use images shot with a professional camera or large stock photos.
Although stock photos can populate your website and, when chosen tastefully, do a great job, don’t rely too much on stock images. Stock photographs that are obviously stock photographs, such as a random group of people or a common office shot, cause visitors to skim over pages and lose interest. Just because a stock photo is attractive doesn’t mean it will be effective.
One of the most important things to consider when choosing images is the colors and ideas you want to convey. We suggest starting with a strong logo and drawing the colors out from there. Strong logos are:
For more information about logos, check out our blog on web design tips.
Once you have the main colors for your logo, you can use those colors in images, as well. For example, if your logo has dark, burgundy text, a picture of red rocks at sunset might match well. There are countless options when choosing images and colors, and when they go together in a cohesive way, it will pay off on your site.
