-2.svg){kind=logo}
I wonder how many times you have stumbled across a website and experienced a sense of déjà vu – there seems something very familiar about the site but you know you’ve never visited it before. I had this recently when I was looking through a prospective client’s website and then it dawned upon me that a number of the images featured on the site were stock images that a company I had worked with in the past had used on their website.
I’m sure that anyone working in the life science industry would support me in saying that there is limited relevant stock imagery available. I remember trying to find stock photo for a campaign we ran in the past for a point-of-care analyser. We were looking for a nurse taking blood from a patient that looked natural and didn’t feature any cheesy grinning. The task proved a tough one. The issue is though that sometimes we are working with limited budgets and stock photography can appear to be the only solution.
Using the Right Imagery Can Boost Lead Generation
Images can be a powerful element of any website. Stock images are easily accessible and inexpensive but as a result they are seen everywhere. So, are they actually good to use? Marketing Experiments carried out a test comparing the use of stock photographs versus real imagery on a website and their effect on lead generation. What they found was that photos of real people out-performed the stock photos by 95% because stock images tend to be irrelevant. The key take-out was resist the temptation to use photos of fake smiling business people!
Image: Emin Kuliyev/Shutterstock.com
Information is Better Communicated Visually
At the beginning of the year we wrote about the ‘Top 5 Marketing Trends’ for 2015 which highlighted ‘Visual Marketing’ and how information is better communicated visually. According to 3M Corporation and Zabisco, 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual and visuals are processed 60,000 times faster in the brain than text. With this in mind, if we are using the same cheesy stock images as our competitors, what are we actually saying? We are all the same? We don’t offer anything different?
Before you dismiss the cost of setting up a photoshoot or developing bespoke graphics for your website, perhaps you should think about the number of leads you are missing out on through having irrelevant or unoriginal imagery on your site. Just a few impactful images can make a world of difference. It is important to remember that every image is transmitting a subconscious message to your audience and sometimes the result is different from what you might expect.
You can find out more about life science website design and content by downloading our FREE eBook on turning your website into a marketing and sales machine.
