A lot of people have written to us asking about the role of images in web design. This is what we know about images:
- Images, particularly high-quality, appropriate photos make the website more appealing to visitors and their eyes are likely to go right to the area of the images (thus, a great locations for ads is next to an image).
- Images consume a lot of memory and bandwidth and can slow down loading of pages, turning many visitors off and motivating them to hit the 'back' button (so use smaller size images and optimize them for the web).
- There are many thieves on the Internet who will steal your images in two ways (1) simply copy and paste your image in their website (2) put a hyperlink to your image without even asking for permission or acknowledging the source by giving you a visible link. Thus, you pay for bandwidth while someone else enjoys the benefits. Technically, you can make it 'difficult' for the novice webmaster but there is no way to make it impossible.
- Images are searchable by search engines and if you name them the right way and use alt text, visitors may be able to find your image (and thus, the page and the website). Unfortunately, a lot of visitors that are seeking images are least interested in reading something meaningful or clicking on an ad. So use this strategy carefully. You may end up getting too much unwanted traffic.
- Images can, however, be a great tool to communicate very targeted messages. Here is an example to prove a point through images that information technology does not matter. Here is another example of putting an eye-catching photo next to the target area.