With the rise of inter­net tech­nol­o­gy, the over­load of infor­ma­tion has real­ly become a prob­lem. We see tons of ads and receive dozens of emails we nev­er open. Even if we do open them, they lead us to web­sites we hard­ly ever vis­it again.

What if you are a great com­pa­ny, with a nice prod­uct or ser­vice range, look­ing for bet­ter ways to engage with your cur­rent visitors?

How can you make your cus­tomers actu­al­ly read and lis­ten to what you say? And how can you dis­tin­guish your­self among the thou­sands of mes­sages, let­ters, and blog arti­cles they read on a dai­ly basis?

One of the most under­es­ti­mat­ed yet most promis­ing ways to engage with your poten­tial vis­i­tors is visu­al content.

Visual content, and how people engage with it

Visu­als come in dif­fer­ent forms. They can be images, illus­tra­tions, ani­ma­tions, and videos. Visu­als cer­tain­ly changed the way we per­ceive con­tent and the expec­ta­tions we have toward it. More­over, visu­als help us explain, under­stand, and remem­ber impor­tant infor­ma­tion more easily.

Accord­ing to an online sur­vey con­duct­ed by Sta­tista in August 2020, 27.2% of online view­ers spend more than 10 hours watch­ing video con­tent online on a week­ly basis. More­over, video con­sump­tion is expect­ed to grow con­tin­u­ous­ly over the next sev­er­al years.

Cis­co’s fore­cast regard­ing inter­net con­sump­tion is that glob­al­ly, con­sumer inter­net video traf­fic will be 82% of total Inter­net traf­fic by 2022, up from 73% in 2017.

Beau­ti­ful­ly-styled visu­als help us imag­ine, admire and become inspired. It’s no won­der such social media plat­forms as YouTube, Tik­Tok and Insta­gram put visu­al con­tent as the main focus — it’s one of the best ways to get the atten­tion of your poten­tial audience.

Are you still won­der­ing whether it’s worth using video con­tent on your website? 

Here are some of the main rea­sons why.

Visual content helps acquire information more effectively

There is a say­ing that “a pic­ture is worth a thou­sand words”, and that applies to web­site usage as well.

In some cas­es, visu­al con­tent may replace hun­dreds of words or sup­port them. Images and videos are used in edu­ca­tion­al estab­lish­ments to help stu­dents digest large amounts of com­pli­cat­ed infor­ma­tion more easily.

For the same rea­son, we use visu­al con­tent in web­site design and online mar­ket­ing to:

• Pro­vide a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the web­site’s purpose
• Nav­i­gate through var­i­ous cat­e­gories and subcategories
• Show­case the prod­ucts on the prod­uct pages in e‑commerce stores
• Pro­vide visu­al breaks through­out blog articles

If you don’t use visu­als you might bore your users. They might leave your web­site and search for anoth­er source of information.

Images and videos are great ways to engage and inter­act with your audi­ence. They bring diver­si­ty. They help to avoid sit­u­a­tions where vis­i­tors get bored while nav­i­gat­ing through the website.

Visual content delivers information more directly

Visu­als not only help in digest­ing con­tent bet­ter, but in some cas­es, mes­sages can­not be con­veyed with­out images. Take reports and sta­tis­tics for example:

With a few glances, you can see the rela­tion­ship between dif­fer­ent video chan­nels, the age of the view­ers, and what peo­ple pre­fer to watch, accord­ing to age.

Now, imag­ine read­ing a dry text, and try­ing to bring the same mes­sage across with­out hav­ing visu­al assistance.

There is no doubt that with­out visu­als peo­ple might not com­plete­ly under­stand what­ev­er you’re try­ing to explain.

Visual content helps capture users’ short attention span

Humans have a short atten­tion span. For instance, the aver­age user can become eas­i­ly bored from star­ing at long para­graphs of text.

In the dig­i­tal world, you don’t have much time to cap­ture the atten­tion of your read­ers. So you need to help them bet­ter under­stand what­ev­er you’re talk­ing about by using qual­i­ty images and videos that ben­e­fit your read­er’s expe­ri­ence on the website.

Here is an exam­ple of a visu­al­ly rich “about us” page, from Sus­pend­ed Cof­fees. The page urges users to go end explore more.

First­ly, the page is well struc­tured. Sec­ond­ly, here is an image of a deli­cious cof­fee, which cap­tures the user’s atten­tion. There is a “watch video” link, which helps to tell the web­site’s sto­ry with ease.

Here is anoth­er exam­ple from our own web­site.

For instance, we use illus­tra­tions to cap­ture our tar­get audi­ence’s atten­tion, and present our ser­vices to them. The illus­tra­tions help con­vey emo­tions that plain text alone won’t be able to achieve.

Visual content helps raise brand awareness and engage your audience

Videos and images are the best way to con­nect with your audi­ence and human­ise your brand. In addi­tion, visu­als sky­rock­et a user’s engage­ment, and allow you to build a rela­tion­ship with your followers.

Peo­ple tend to buy prod­ucts from brands they trust and can res­onate with. So, don’t be afraid to share your brand sto­ry online, show off work in progress, the process behind the scenes, the chal­lenges, and the successes.

The images on the left con­vey pos­i­tive emo­tions. Read­ers are able to see the com­pa­ny val­ues and recog­nise them­selves in these values.

When you watch a video of a brand, your brain sends sub­con­scious trust signals.

There­fore, if they need a ser­vice sim­i­lar to what you offer, they’ll be more like­ly to choose your company.

Bring val­ue to your fol­low­ers and your efforts will pay off.

Visual content is memorable

Recent research shows that peo­ple remem­ber only 10% of what they read, 30% of what they see, and 50% of what they see and hear.

That means that peo­ple are more like­ly to remem­ber your mes­sage if they receive it in a video for­mat. To increase cus­tomer loy­al­ty toward your brand you need to cre­ate a pos­i­tive mem­o­rable expe­ri­ence for your audience.

Visual content helps you stand out from the competition

Most busi­ness­es still don’t take advan­tage of the pow­er visu­als hold. Most of your com­peti­tors are prob­a­bly not using images and videos in their con­tent strat­e­gy. Take the oppor­tu­ni­ty to get ahead of your com­peti­tors in search results and social media.

What do you think? Will peo­ple pay more atten­tion to your com­pa­ny’s video or to the long about us page of your competitor?

Peo­ple will remem­ber the video.

Videos and images are eas­i­er to share, and you have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to have your mes­sage spread, thanks to your audience.

Visual content can help you rank higher in search results

“Con­tent is King”, which includes images and videos as well. For instance, Google is start­ing to favour more visu­al con­tent over plain articles.

If you cre­ate a blog post that includes videos or images, you have the chance to land a “Fea­tured” snip­pet right at the top of the search results page.

So, take a look at this SERP example.

The Moz web­site is a great exam­ple of smart use of pho­tos and videos. A com­plex top­ic, such as on-page SEO, requires visu­al explanation.

Google has the same opin­ion. It ranks videos and images over plain text arti­cles. In addi­tion to that, you even have the oppor­tu­ni­ty of land­ing a fea­tured snip­pet. It’s visu­al­ly appeal­ing in com­par­i­son to oth­er SERP results, and can dri­ve tons of traf­fic to your website.

Here is anoth­er example:

So, don’t be afraid to use images and videos in your con­tent. They do pay off!

Opti­mise your images for SEO: add key­words in the image and video titles, descrip­tions, and alt tags.

Visual content increases website traffic

Bet­ter posi­tion­ing in search results means more rel­e­vant traf­fic to your web­site. There­fore, qual­i­ty visu­al con­tent will keep users on your site and encour­age them to learn more about what you do.

Still won­der­ing whether it’s worth invest­ing in cre­at­ing video con­tent? Think about how much web­site traf­fic you might gain and how many more mar­ket­ing chan­nels you can cover.

Visual content improves conversion rate

Visu­al con­tent is an impor­tant part of the buy­er’s jour­ney. A suc­cess­ful video con­tent mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy can increase over­all sales. Videos have the pow­er to influ­ence peo­ple, con­nect them with your brand, and build their trust. And with high­er trust comes high­er sales.

Last, but not least, you should use videos and images because…

People love it!

We are visu­al crea­tures and we love per­ceiv­ing the sur­round­ing world through visu­als. The dig­i­tal world is no excep­tion. There­fore, we feel dif­fer­ent sorts of con­nec­tions to visu­al information.

The pow­er that visu­als pos­sess is unde­ni­able. As a busi­ness own­er, you need to rethink your dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy in a way that utilis­es that pow­er. That means cre­at­ing engag­ing and visu­al­ly pleas­ing content.

Start adding one or two rel­e­vant images across your blog posts. For instance, think about what video con­tent you could use on your web­site: cus­tomer’s feed­back, quick tips and advice, prod­uct overview, onboard­ing guides.

Inter­est­ing fact: Accord­ing to Google Advice, and the research per­formed by a real giant in online audi­ence growth hack­ing, Dot Lung, the secret recipe of visu­al con­tent lies in the val­ue it brings. If you have great advice to share with your audi­ence, do it. Even if you don’t have a per­son­al stu­dio to make a Hol­ly­wood-qual­i­ty movie. Peo­ple buy into the val­ue you bring to them.

Don’t be afraid of try­ing all the ben­e­fits of visu­al con­tent! You’ll see, the results won’t keep you wait­ing. The bounce rate will decrease and cus­tomers will engage with your con­tent more, and ask for more.