Also, see our page on Making Text Readable

Composition

Compose your pictures carefully. The beam of light is the focal point of this picture.

The people add to the picture’s composition, not distract from it.

The important concept here is that you want to draw people’s attention to an object in the picture. Because the people are looking at the light, your attention is drawn to it. The picture would be very different if the people were facing the camera.

Perspective

If you are taking pictures of people, lower your camera (bend down) so that your camera is at chest height, not at the height you would be at if you were standing up.

This is the trick that wedding photographers use to take attractive people pictures.

Resolution

Take low resolution pictures. That’s right, low resolution. Taking pictures for websites is different from taking pictures used to make prints. Website pictures are generally limited to 72dpi (dots per inch). This means that even a 640 x 480 picture is fairly large.

The object is to take pictures at the size they will be used on your website. If you take larger pictures, the image will be scaled after it is delivered to the browser. This means that you are slowing down your website by sending larger pictures than are necessary.

In most cases, you can probably set your camera for as low as 1280 x 960 pixels or equivalent. As a guide, the pictures on this page are only 300 x 225.

You can also edit your pictures so they are the exact size needed on your web page, and then upload them. Consider compressing them as well if they are JPEG (.jpg) images. If you need a free and very capable photo editor, try https://www.getpaint.net/

Lighting

Make sure the pictures are well-lit. Generally, avoid the use of flash unless it is used as fill-in flash. The main source of lighting should not be behind the subject (e.g. a bright window behind the subject). You do not want dark pictures with low contrast.

For product pictures, You should use fairly intense lighting on your subject. This forces the camera to use a small aperture so that all portions of the product are in focus. For a simple setup, you can buy two identical halogen or LED desk lamps with 50 watt bulbs or equivalent. Place the light sources on the left and right sides of your product at about 60 degrees from the front.

A diffuse light source gives better results, as it eliminates harsh shadows. If you would like a professional setup, consider purchasing a light tent. You may find these at B&H Photo and other suppliers.

Focus and Composition

All digital cameras take pictures that are in focus, but is the focus on what you want? If you are taking a photo of a person, you may want the background to be out of focus so that it is not distracting. Avoid taking long-distance shots of groups of people. Nobody is going to look at their feet. Take close-ups.

For example, let’s say you have a store. A picture of the storefront or an interior isle might be nice, but also take close-ups of individual counters, wall displays, and racks so that visitors can clearly see the kinds of merchandise you offer.

Camera Color Temperature Setting

Regardless of what kind of pictures you take, the camera should be set to match the color temperature of the light source.

Do not depend on your camera to select this automatically.

You should manually set your camera to the color temperature of the light source you are using so that colors are accurate. i.e. Sunlight, Cloudy, Incandescent, Fluorescent, etc. All good cameras have such settings. If you are using LED bulbs, the color temperature is stated on the box. You may find more information on color temperature at this website.

Background Mats

If you are building your own setup, go to an office supply store and buy two 20 x 30 inch foam display boards, commonly used in sales booths and office presentations. Choose a medium grey (works for all) or perhaps dark blue (unless your product is blue). White may not be a good choice because then the brightest part of your picture will likely be the background.

Prop up one board vertically against the other which should be horizontal. Now you have a grey bottom surface to place your product on, and you also have a grey background.

Product Positioning – Use a Tripod

You should use a tripod. The lens should be at the same height as middle of the object. If you hold the camera in your hand, one picture may be focused on the top, one far away, one too close, one to the side, etc. You want product pictures to be consistent.

Mark the exact spot on the bottom mat where each product should be placed, then take your pictures. This way, pictures of three products that may come in different colors come out exactly the same except for just the color.

Watch Your Shutter Speed

Even if you are using a tripod, do not let your shutter speed get too low. If the shutter speed drops below 1/60th of a second, there is a possibility the image will come out blurry. A low shutter speed indicates that your lights are not bright enough, or, that you are shooting with a camera that does not have a big enough aperture.

Cropping

Do NOT tightly crop the picture. The product should be in the center of the frame with some background color visible on all sides.

The image above is an example of using invisible text on your website. Some website owners think this is stylish, but it is actually very bad practice. You want people to read the text on your site, so why make it hard to read? Indoors, on a large screen, it is possible to read text like this. But outdoors in bright sunlight on a mobile phone, it is impossible!

The World Wide Web Consortium publishes guidelines on Minimum Website Contrast to enable people to read your content. It considers things like:

• elderly users with bad vision (quite common)
• low quality monitors
• bad lighting and glare
• reading on tiny screens, especially outdoors

Do not center or justify text

Studies have shown that centered text is hard to read. The eye has to search for a new starting point to read each new line and after a few lines most people give up reading this sort of text.

Justified text works fine for newspapers because the columns are very narrow. Each line typically consists of only a few words. However, on a web page, lines are often quite long and studies show the eye has difficulty jumping from word to word. For best readability, the text should be left aligned.

More information may be found in this study from Harvard University

Also, see our page on Writing Effective Website Text

It’s 2:00 AM in the morning and you are lying in bed with your significant other browsing the Internet. You discover a website, and it immediately begins playing music. In panic, you try to find the almost invisible volume icon or button on your device to turn the volume off. You leave the website as soon as possible (this is called a bounce), and never come back.

Is this what you want?

Autoplay is blocked by default by most browsers.

Most browsers block autoplay unless you meet specific requirements. For example, one requirement is that you must have interacted with the website first. This means a click or a tap on something. The Chrome browser has published their policies in this link. The Firefox browser and others have similar policies.

Autoplay may be allowed if:

• The audio is muted or its volume is set to 0
• The user has interacted with the site (by clicking, tapping, pressing keys, etc.)
• If the site has been allowlisted; this may happen either automatically if the browser determines that the user engages with media frequently, or manually through preferences or other user interface features
• If the autoplay feature policy is used to grant autoplay support to an iFrame.

Play audio using a player, not behind people’s back.

The best approach, if you want to play audio on your website, is to give your visitors a player they can interact with. Allow them to start and stop the audio, and give them an interface they can use to control the sound.

The #1 mistake people make is to send people away from their business website to social media. It’s the wrong direction. You want visitors to stay on your website so you can make the desired conversion.

Once visitors have arrived at your website through your hard won SEO efforts, do not send them away by prominently displaying social media buttons and encouraging visitors to leave by clicking on them. They may never come back, and in that case you may have lost a sale.

The right direction

If you have a Facebook page, put prominent links on Facebook to your business website. On other social media sites, make sure your website URL is included in your profile. If you are active, people will look up your profile and click to visit your business website.

The first thing visitors should see is an attractive, interesting home page that draws them in and makes them want to know more about your products and services. The first thing they should NOT see is a prominent invitation to go away to read something like meaningless tweets or see pictures of you at a family BBQ. This will NOT convince people to do business with you.

Where should social media icons go?

If you display social media icons, do not display them at the top of your business home page. The page footer is a good place for social media icons. Or, you could just put them on your “About Us” page or your “Contact Us” page. If people want to see your social activity, they can easily find the icons there and click on them.