If you look through websites that sell mobile phones, you’ll notice that the vast majority of them use the same stock images for the various phones they sell. These stock images are generally supplied by the manufacturer and, while they do look very professional, there is absolutely no way to differentiate the products on offer from one mobile phone website to another – they all display exactly the same pictures of the phone.
If you’re scouring different websites looking for a mobile phone, other than price, what is going to differentiate one website from another? Well, the answer is images.
The Benefit of Using Unique Images
Before we continue, take a quick look at this review of the iPhone 5 from the respected tech website, TechRadar.com –
Click here
What you’ll notice is that while they use a stock image as the main image in their review of the iPhone 5, they have added numerous other images (11 on the first page alone) that they’ve created themselves. These images show every detail of the phone from every conceivable angle and the phone being used in a variety of ‘real life’ situations.
While TechRadar doesn’t sell mobile phones, imagine how engaging and effective their product pages would be if they did. By adding your own images to your website, you will:
- Help the website visitor to appreciate every detail of the product on offer.
- Demonstrate your company’s expert knowledge of the products you stock.
- Enhance the chances of that website visitor buying from you.
When adding images to your website, another benefit is that images do show up in Google’s search results, so you must format your images correctly.
If we do a search on Google.co.uk for ‘White iPhone 5’, the first three results show a YouTube video, the Apple website, and next, some images of a White iPhone 5 that link to the corresponding website when clicked.
Steps to Format Your Images Correctly
In order to ensure that your images are formatted correctly, there are two basic steps you need to take so that Google can understand what your images represent (as clever as Google is, it can’t ‘read’ an image).
Step 1: The File Name – If you take an image on a digital camera, it is typically allocated a generic file name like img123.jpg. What you need to do is give the image a descriptive name by right-clicking on it in your file manager, and then choosing the option ‘Rename’. You can then change the file name to a more search engine-friendly name like white-iphone-5.jpg.
Step 2: The Alt-attribute – This tag is used by Internet browsers as a text substitute when an image can’t be displayed, plus it provides more information about the actual image content to the search engines. So in this case, we’d use the alt tag, alt="White iPhone 5". If you are unsure how to add the img alt tag to your images, speak to your Website Developer and they’ll be able to help.
Best Practices
As with all content you add to your website, don’t be tempted to try and deceive the search engines by abusing these methods. Use 100% unique, descriptive file names and tags for your images and ensure that you use words that truly describe the content of the image, not what you think will attract the most clicks – that won’t help you gain traffic or convert website visitors into customers.
By following these guidelines, you can make your website stand out, enhance user engagement, and improve your search engine rankings.