Royalty-free images: When websites are boring

Those responsible in PR, marketing and advertising are constantly looking for high-quality motifs that they can buy cheaply or download and use free of charge.

Free culture is very much in vogue:

Why not for free, when photo agencies such as Fotolia or Shutterstock or even the big creative multi Adobe often offer very boring photos at inflated prices?

What often falls by the wayside is the quality. The result is royalty-free standard stuff.

Surprising motives? Nothing.
Aesthetics?
No time now, instead: The path of the least resistance and least effort.

Our photos must be royalty-free, free or inexpensive to buy. Then it can happen that one and the same picture has to be endured millions of times by bored website visitors.

Procuring motifs to illustrate a website post or page — this is apparently often delegated, done quickly – or not done at all.

After all, you have a collection of photos for every suitable occasion on your hard drive.

And then you put them back in, the usual motifs, politically correct at best.

Companies do not try to be remembered through unique visual language.

You think I’m here to make fun of everybody? Not at all. And to be honest, I don’t mind light bulbs. If it is supposed to be a light bulb, then you will find variations on many platforms on the web that stand out positively from the clip art look.

But it’s not just a matter of which motif you choose — it’s also important how you apply it. Images need space to make an impact. Adding a visual alone doesn’t make a presentation or website more entertaining or concise.

It’s not just a matter of whether and how many images you use — but more importantly, how you use them.

If you have read up to this point, then you have stayed alert for far more than average and have not jumped off.

What can be the reason for this?

• The fact that you are always optically surprised?
• The fact that even while using Royalty Free visuals, this blog post is breaking the usual patterns?
• The fact that tension is built up between different motifs ?

Boredom is fatal

for the visual language of every website – that much is certain. If you want to know how the users of your website react to the content offered: Take a closer look at the visitor statistics (Google Analytics, Piwik or similar).

Pay attention to the average visit time per page, the average duration of a website visit in total and the bounce rate as well as the exit pages.

Identify pages on which an unusually high number of readers drop out. Think about the possible reasons for this.

A good idea is also to use so-called heat maps: Such statistical tools allow you to look over the shoulders of website visitors to a certain extent. You can see how long they stay on which page, where the mouse pointer goes, where they click – and where they don’t.

And you can also see how far people actually scroll down your pages.

Use the Power
of Nature

… because it offers wonderful visualizations again and again. Hope, growth, optimism, they all can be expressed just by showing photographs of beautiful natural scenery.

Don’t you think that such a rich, green flash on the canvas or on a computer screen can convey much more than abstract and empty symbolic charts pointing upwards? Or shy models showing a not-so-convincing “thumbs up”?

Attention to Detail

Business is often about money. Suppose you’re looking for a motive that stands for exactly that: $$$.

In your search for suitable motifs you will find exactly what most people associate with a lot of money: bank notes. And lots of them. Likely bundled, sometimes also disordered, but again and again: many banknotes.

The alternative would be to show only one banknote.

Even better: a rarely taken perspective, like here in the background.

Your audience will completely forget a mere stack of banknotes after a few seconds. A striking close-up on the most detailed level imaginable, on the other hand, might be a little more memorable.

Lateral Thinking

Alternatively, you can use lateral thinking when choosing your images: it doesn’t always have to be a banknote.

What is money transported in? At least in films?

The subject does not always have to be reflected 1:1 in the motif, and some images can be used again and again (for different target groups and on different occasions).

If you only knew on what different occasions I have already used this suitcase!

Showing Humans Instead of Clipart

To show clip art objects, boring business vector graphics or cats exhausts itself at some point.

People react to people. If you show face(s), you can transport your messages much better on the emotional level.

Word has got around. But unfortunately, far too often photos with people are chosen who are ahead of obedience: Everyone smiles (wrong), all continents are represented (keyword diversity), and best of all, all the people depicted are visibly strained behind the friendly facade. In many stock photos, the actors and actresses do not seem to feel comfortable in their skin at all.

Courage of Abstraction

The more abstract the topic, the more difficult it is for many publishers to illustrate the whole thing. Then, on topics like IT security and hacking, some kind of masks or other dark figures are used; I admit that I have done this before.

I think that is often not even necessary – because code is poetry. Technical things can have their very own aesthetics, and if someone knows how to skilfully photograph a screen like this, then that’s already the ideal motif – without having to search too long.