You made it easy for them to ignore you.

But all you did was put stock photos in your online ads or customer service pages. Umm, yeah, that’s kind of a problem.

And don’t take our word for it. There have been a ton of studies showing how stock photos run website visitors off…

1. Art website increases conversion rate by 9% by adding the artist’s profile picture.
2. A contact page increased customer contact by 48% by replacing a generic phone icon with the owner’s photo.
3. Freshbooks.com tracked how visitors saw their team page, finding viewers spent 10% more time viewing the team’s photos than reading their bios.

You don’t need a psychology course to understand why real photos matter. People like people. Real people. And it’s not hard to tell a real owner or team member of a company from a generic model.

No matter how attractive the model – it’s the fakery that your audience won’t like.

Examples

We’re going to pretend that you don’t know what we mean by generic stock photos. But after seeing these prime examples, take a second to see how you feel. Do you feel like you know the person behind the photo or that their face is probably on 99 different websites?

• What a fun meeting!
• Socializing isn’t done without faces.
• If there’s ever been a fist-bump over spreadsheets, I’ve not witnessed it.

So after viewing those samples, did they impact you in any way? Of course not! Putting those types of photos on an accounting site, for example, would not build trust. Place that cocktail photo on a restaurant’s homepage and you’ll have plenty of empty tables.

Keep It Real

What your customers want is to see the real you on your website.

They want to connect with what you’re doing. And they can’t do that if you try to pass off some stiff model as your salesperson or customer success rep.

Picture this. You’re opening a salon and when a local reporter comes to do a story on your business, you hire a spokesmodel to talk to them. Ludicrous, right?

Or you’re known as the best personal trainer in North Carolina but hire a California fitness guru to feature in your workout videos. Lunacy!

But no more crazy than posting stock photos on your website that robs your audience of the best part of your business. You and your crew.

Why not go through your website today and see if you can get some great shots taken to replace a photo or two with something more authentic. Let’s see what happens. Let’s talk.

Sources:

https://vwo.com/blog/human-landing-page-increase-conversion-rate/
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/photos-as-web-content/