5 Types of Visual Content That Should Be Present On Your Site

Have you ever considered focusing on the visual part of your website? Like inserting more images and videos in blog posts? Using an infographic or two? Experimenting with GIFs to see how people react? No? Well, maybe it’s time you start.

It’s no secret that the majority of sites thrive content, especially visual content. Research reveals that it only takes people 1/10th of a second to make out the meaning behind a visual, while they spend an average of 60 seconds to understand 200-250 words of content that’s conveyed in text. Hence, visualized information can give your site a boost when it comes to attracting eyeballs.

People Want an Experience

In the digital age, just publishing text-based content is unlikely to resonate with your target group pf visitors. They want to buy into an experience. One of the best ways to showcase your offerings is through visuals like images and videos. One of the key reasons why this strategy is effective is that the human brain processes this sort of content 60,000 times quicker than plain text.

Hence, visuals perform well than any other type of content to increase the engagement of visitors, draw them to the checkout page, and help web pages get ranked. Smart marketers understand that visual content marketing resonates with their audience and significantly impacts public awareness of their site. As a result, they bank on something that’s already playing a significant role in the real world (e.g. traffic signs were set up to convey the necessary details in the shortest time possible. If people were to read the text alone, they wouldn’t be fit for instructions).

As long as your audience come across visuals, your site will resonate with them. The best part is that this strategy is free to implement. Additionally, the visuals you use can be repurposed. For instance, you could take a series of informative blog posts and turn them into a SlideShare presentation or an infographic, both of which do a great job at breaking down complex information and making it digestible for people.

What Types of Visual Assets Can Help My Website?

As indicated earlier, specific forms of visual assets can portray different things. Apparently, not all type of visual content applies to every instance, so it’s important to know what to use and when to use it. To make it easier on your part, here’s a list of the best types of visual content along with a breakdown of how they can improve your website.

1. Charts

This is probably what most people visualize when they think of visual content marketing. Charts help to visualize data by using contextual clues, listing numbers and identifying relationships. SEO guru Rand Fishkin once said that charts and graphs get cited and shared all the time by those who want to use them as sources. Some website owners will even embed them and give credit to the original source.

The frequency of sharing increases site traffic. The more charts and graphs are distributed; the more likely audiences are going to search for the original source – that’s you. Fortunately, software and apps like Visme and Microsoft PowerPoint make it easy to create graphic representations of different kinds of data. Once you create this visual left, all that’s left for you to do is discuss what it implies in the accompanying text.  However, you can get an advanced graphing calculator to plotting graph or creating several graphical representations of any kind of data.

Note: When creating charts and graphs, keep things simple by identifying the primary data you want to talk about. Then, find an enticing and logical way to showcase it. Stay away from using all the data available at your disposal as you’d only end up confusing visitors.

2. Self-Taken Screenshots / Screen Captures

Screenshots that you take on your computer or smartphone as a “how-to advice” or an “example” are an excellent way to relay information about movements, positions, or locations to a visitor. Most people coming on your site would rely on this visual content just as how novices want to learn things by seeking “step by step tutorials”.

While videos are one way to do this, screen captures are faster and less costly to create. Also, they’ve even more effective than videos in some instances because visitors can print them out and cite them on different occasions. On top of that, self-taken screenshots or recordings are perhaps the only way of explaining your findings based on self-conducted experiments to your audience.

Hence, it is advisable to create your own screen captures once in a while and insert them in your content, so that people can see how a step or an experiment would come out like if they repeated the same experiment. Besides, the screen captures make articles authentic, original and worth sharing.

3. Videos

Videos are one of the most expensive forms of visual content. They can cost a lot to produce, but they’re also the most effective. Findings from Moz revealed that videos could attract about 300 percent more backlinks. Also, 71 percent of website owners stated that videos’ conversion rates drastically outperform all other types of visual or content assets. What is it about videos that make people stick around?

Fear of missing out (FOMO), suspense, curiosity and instantaneousness is the name of the game when it comes to videos. Also, in a live format, videos evoke a person’s stimuli including connectedness, passion, and self-identification with what goes down on the screen. That’s because it’s emotionally convenient for an individual to relate to something he/she watches rather than consumes as text.

You can experiment with several types of videos to see what works best for your website: how-to videos, explainer videos, testimonials, etc. Most of them go a long way toward enhancing your visibility. But make sure any video you produce or curate is of high quality and makes a relevant statement about your brand.

4. Infographics

When it comes to making your site’s content more digestible, infographics should never let you down. They’re incredible for breaking down complicated statistical information in a more enticing manner that people can easily understand. Also, they’re 3 times more likely to be retweeted, shared and liked on social media sites than any other type of content. In addition, they’re likely to have a more profound impact on people who follow directions that are accompanied by illustrations and text.

Hence, if you are aiming to leverage the true marketing power of this visual asset, ensure its layout and design has a great impact on the visitors. To attain that goal, insert the right combination of shapes, icons, colors and fonts. Whatever you use should bring the information you’re presenting to life. However, stay easy on the visual aspect of the infographic. If you insert too many elements, you might end up coming in the way of the information you are trying to share.

The awesomeness of infographics is that they enable you to translate all the concepts/ideas/details into a single slide image. However, that doesn’t mean you should cut all the details from an article and insert it into the infographic. Use hard data and other elements to make the thing original. Originality if what will get your infographic shared. Besides that, cite any third-party sources at the end of your infographics to keep troubles like content theft lawsuits at bay.

5. Enticing Images

Breaking down the text part of your posts with high quality images that make sense contextually is a great way to make visitors continue reading to the last paragraph. In case you’re not sure about using images, know that blog posts that include images attract 94 percent more eyeballs as compared to articles that don’t have any image. Also, posts that are published with images are going to receive 3 times more engagement on average than posts that don’t include any image.

There are several types of images you can use throughout your website. For example, some sites will post image quotes that often turn out to be a sweet tooth for visitors. You can produce your own quotes as a thought leader or borrow from established sources to deliver practical information to your audiences. Another type of image you can use is the one that evokes emotion. It doesn’t have to be something out of the ordinary. A simple picture that causes curiosity or surprise can produce a sudden urge to open and click through. Besides, you can put questions and puzzles as images to draw the attention of visitors who love intellectual challenges.

Most such images get shared fast because people also have a habit of showing compelling images to their peers. Plus, they can be a great way to attract backlinks.

Final Verdict

To survive in today’s competitive internet landscape, you need to do something out of the ordinary. Luckily for you, experimenting with visual content marketing won’t break your bank. What you require is an innovative approach to consumer-driven content and what better way to change things up than presenting different forms of visuals to your audience? Go out there and impress.