Informed Webmaster

This is an interesting article on the impression you give your visitors when using stock photography and if you (or your client) insist on going the cheaper route of stock photos how to overcome the "seen around the web already" issue.

When it comes to online imagery, it’s not so much about having images as making sure those images give the visitor a sense of texture, size, scale, detail, context, brand.

According to MDG Advertising, 67% of online shoppers rated high-quality images as being “very important” to their purchase decision, which was slightly more than “product specific information,” “long descriptions,” and “reviews and ratings”:

Stock Photos vs. Real Photos: Does It Matter?

Which are you more impressed by? Manipulation of stock photography or unique photography?

Images can be very important. Unless you are a better than average photographer and told so by someone other than spouse/partner, one would be better off with stock photography.

I'm trying to think of the source I used...right - big stock photo. Reasonable cost for usage. At least at the time I used them, you could buy credits, or go with a monthly plan. Sure, there were some that have been used around the web - no one is fooling anyone with use of those images. However, the ones I used were pretty much top-shelf. The absolute best around? Probably not. But, more than good for most websites. IMO.

Someone should write an article about the crappy use of of frames and send it to that guy who wrote the article.

I suspect that we, mostly you guys, pay more attention to this than the average page reader. Now the Dell and Gateway thing was a major screw up and they both could afford to do better.

I do use my own images when I have them or can take them. I also do not hesitate to grab a free image from https://pixabay.com/ or one licensed for commercial use from Flickr.