Humans are visual creatures and tend to respond well to visuals better than textual content. While this is a well-known fact, it is easy to overlook the role of visuals in determining important milestones for businesses. eCommerce websites are the preferred forms of marketplaces today, and they run on digital fuel. Customers now prefer to discover, research, and purchase products online, giving eCommerce brands the perennial advantage of tapping into a large customer base, unlimited by geographical boundaries.
eCommerce websites can leverage visual content to drive their business and revenue while increasing their brand awareness and visibility in the digital realm. Scientifically, humans respond better to visual content as compared to text, making it even more important for ecommerce brands to invest in high-quality visuals.
If you are still unsure, here are four powerful reasons why incorporating strong visuals should be the next big step for your eCommerce website:
#1 Visuals are easier to digest and preferable
As a rule of thumb, it is recommended that eCommerce brands use impactful visuals to attract their target audience. The right visuals can help you bridge the gap between the products being promoted and the ones that your customers are going to receive. About 59% of customers say that they deem visuals to be more important than textual content in determining their product decisions.
With shrinking attention spans among online shoppers, it is not practical to have them read wordy paragraphs to learn more about the product. Moreover, brick-and-mortar businesses engage multiple senses of customers, including touch, visuals, smell, and sounds, and since eCommerce stores can only leverage visuals, it is important to make them stronger.
#2 Visuals aid your search engine visibility
With the advent of visual search, came the increased importance for brands to incorporate visuals in their marketing and operational strategies. As an ecommerce company, you need to optimize images not just for your customers, but also for the search engine. It is estimated that nearly 39% of the global eCommerce traffic stems from search engines, and 61% of internet users research the product online before making a purchase.
Visuals get indexed better on search engineers, and can hence improve your search engine visibility significantly. Moreover, it can improve engagement levels among potential customers, and bring them to your website for future transactions. Visuals also play an important role in the process of comparing products, which can facilitate the purchase decision-making process of customers.
To benefit from visuals in SEO, you can follow a set of best practices that have been pre-defined by search engines or take a deep dive into online guides that can assist you to navigate the processes naturally.
#3 Visual content is more memorable
Did you know humans can process images or visuals 60000 times faster than textual content?
Moreover, humans are likely to follow directions and instructions better when they are supported with visual aids, as opposed to simple visual aids. Another fact to consider here is that owing to the internet, we consume a lot more data and information than we did a couple of decades ago, making it even more important for marketers to become memorable.
Since 50% of our brain is active while processing images or visual content, it is likely to be more memorable than simple textual content. What this means for eCommerce businesses is that customers would be able to retain more product information, and are more likely to make a purchase. Other visual means of content such as videos can also influence the decision-making processes of customers, and positively affect the conversion rates on ecommerce websites.
#4 Accessibility and User Experience
Even if eCommerce brands use a wide range of visuals such as well-designed product images, impactful infographics, animations, and videos to improve their marketing strategy, there are several considerations that they should implement. One of the important factors to consider here is the user experience.
Since user experience is a definitive part of the customer service that you provide as a brand, it is important to ensure that the visuals are optimized accordingly. For instance, using the right colors, fonts, and animation to go with the overall theme of the website without killing the overall website experience.
Additionally, eCommerce stores have to follow the same considerations as traditional businesses. eCommerce brands are accountable to make their website completely accessible to people with disabilities. Taking small steps, such as defining the alt-text attribute and incorporating closed captions within videos can be impactful in facilitating accessibility for such customers.
Over to you
With the right visuals on your eCommerce website, you can drive superior performance and improve your revenue and sales significantly. The wide range of visuals that can be used by eCommerce brands include photos, consumer-generated pictures, videos, and animations which can be used to attract new customers as well as to engage the existing customers. Supported with the appropriate CTA buttons and directs, eCommerce brands can truly leverage visuals to drive their online presence and performance.
