How important are graphics to a website

[SenseiSteve]

I think there's a lot to be said for first impressions and the right mix of graphics on a website. What guidelines do you recommend?

 

[Artashes]

I am a huge fan of clean, simple, minimal websites. Which means the least amount of graphics there are, the better. Must-haves: great font, layout and UI elements. :twocents:

 

[izumi777]

It depends actually on the type of a website. Personally, I think images are more powerful than words especially for websites that are selling tangible products. For most websites, using impressive images could probably reduce the bounce rate of visitors.

 

[hostkoala]

I think it all depends on two things. The graphics must capture the visitors eye and not chase them away.

Currently, minimalism is the trend, so that actually makes graphic designers jobs a little easier I guess

 

[Artashes]

It depends actually on the type of a website. Personally, I think images are more powerful than words especially for websites that are selling tangible products. For most websites, using impressive images could probably reduce the bounce rate of visitors.

The thing with the hosting industry is that there is not a single image or a picture that can convey that a company is any good.

The only kind of images that count, in my books, are the pictures of an actual office, group shot of all the employees ⏤ that would at least project that the company is real, successful and personal enough to show the faces behind the name.

 

[bigredseo]

Stock photography is overused - and every hosting company uses it. Nothing about the image sets them apart. You need a real image or a real person holding a real machine (or sitting at a keyboard typing etc). This is where you get to be creative in what it is you want to show people.

I'm a fan of minimal images and fast page loads, but a page with NO images is not something I want either, and I'd run fast away from a place that purchased a theme at one of the various places, swapped out the name and then clicked upload. There's NOTHING unique about them at that point.

 

[izumi777]

I agree with bigredseo. Stock photography is overused. I think a number of visitors might get bored of it.

A real image or a vector graphic could make the hosting company website stands out from the crowd.

 

[server]

I am a huge fan of clean, simple, minimal websites.

I also like minimal sites. There should be simple layout, simple navigation, minimum to none distractions and needed content should be easily reachable. Minimal doesn't mean it can't look great - good designers make wonderful minimal sites.

I'm not very proud of my personal attempts (not a web designer), but such impressive things can be achieved even with Elementor Still, as long as it is a part of WordPress, can't count myself as a fan :disagree: As for me - minimal sites require minimal platforms.

 

[bigredseo]

15 years working with WordPress - love everything about it.

We completed a big e-commerce site a few weeks ago, and while yes, you can tell in some parts that it's a Wordpress site, there's a lot of custom functionality that we implemented that you just don't find on other sites. - https://love-thirteen.com (using taxonomies for shop by color, clicking on jewelry to see what stones are in them, then clicking that stone or zodiac sign to see what others go with it, wishlists, video integration, there's so much that was done on this site and speed impact should be minimal.

If done right, and everything is optimized as it should, the fact that WordPress is the underlying CMS shouldn't even be something to be concerned with (aside from plugin updates etc - but that's true on any platform, even custom).

We've built some massive sites in the past (one with over 4 million products) and WordPress can stand up without an issue. The key is the correct web hosting, implementing CDN correctly and optimize files where needed.

I love minimal sites, but from an SEO perspective, those are very hard to rank. We see many people wanting their site to look like Apple with very few words etc - but unless you have your own source for traffic and you're not relying on SEO, going too minimal is a death sentence.

 

[server]

https://love-thirteen.com there's so much that was done on this site and speed impact should be minimal.

Loading time is 5.58s and it uses CDN.. Perhaps I'm too demanding, setting myself 2.00s as red line.

We've built some massive sites in the past (one with over 4 million products) and WordPress can stand up without an issue.

I believe you, but I wouldn't try myself I think specialized software should be used in such cases (e.g. Magento). But if you master WordPress to that level, there are no obstacles of any type for you.

I love minimal sites, but from an SEO perspective, those are very hard to rank. We see many people wanting their site to look like Apple with very few words etc - but unless you have your own source for traffic and you're not relying on SEO, going too minimal is a death sentence.

Sad but true.

 

[server]

Loading time is 5.58s and it uses CDN.. Perhaps I'm too demanding, setting myself 2.00s as red line.

Sorry, while accessing from US it's 3.5s - pretty good.

 

[bigredseo]

Sorry, while accessing from US it's 3.5s - pretty good.

3.5 on a home page is about normal - when SEO is done right, people shouldn't be landing on the home page, they should be landing on an individual product, and depending on the tool used for checking speed, you'll get different results.

gtmetrix, pingdom, google page speed, they all show different results, and they also only scan the one page, not taking cache into account for second or third pages (which is where the speed kicks in).

There's certainly improvements in speed that can still be made such as reducing TTFB and eliminating some render blocking - but those are all things that are, in this case, second on the list. The site originally took between 12-19 seconds to load mainly due to large image sizes.

Magento is no different than WordPress, or BigCommerce, or Shopify or X-Cart or any number of Softwares. It's all about the hosting speed. I've worked with some large enterprise Magento stores, and the store owner uploading large images is nearly always the cause of the biggest part of slowdowns.

 

[server]

3.5 on a home page is about normal - when SEO is done right, people shouldn't be landing on the home page, they should be landing on an individual product, and depending on the tool used for checking speed, you'll get different results.

Yes, results may vary, but they all should load fast.

Magento is no different than WordPress, or BigCommerce, or Shopify or X-Cart or any number of Softwares. It's all about the hosting speed.

Depends on how you look at it. WordPress was built for blogging, Magento was built for e-commerce. Most likely you wouldn't want to use Magento for blogging But since both of them are open source and written in PHP, they have something in common.

 

[Artashes]

I'm not very proud of my personal attempts (not a web designer), but such impressive things can be achieved even with Elementor Still, as long as it is a part of WordPress, can't count myself as a fan :disagree: As for me - minimal sites require minimal platforms.

ReadyMag does a good job with this as well, although its angle is a little more creative than that. WordPress has some outstanding minimalist themes as well.

As for minimal platforms, what did you mean exactly?

 

[server]

ReadyMag does a good job with this as well, although its angle is a little more creative than that. WordPress has some outstanding minimalist themes as well.

Yes, there are plenty. If I need a WordPress theme and if I get one, it's going to be minimal initially or after some time From popular ones - I liked OceanWP, Neve deserves attention as well.

As for minimal platforms, what did you mean exactly?

It was about selecting the right CMS (or not selecting one), not about a specific framework behind it. For good result, good tools are needed. And the beauty of minimal site is then there are no unnecessary things left - both visually and coding wise. I know WordPress can do the job quite well and it does for the majority of site designers and owners, but in every separate scenario all available options should be leveraged, not just complete ease of use or overwhelming popularity because of, again, that ease of use.

 

[Artashes]

It was about selecting the right CMS (or not selecting one), not about a specific framework behind it. For good result, good tools are needed. And the beauty of minimal site is then there are no unnecessary things left - both visually and coding wise. I know WordPress can do the job quite well and it does for the majority of site designers and owners, but in every separate scenario all available options should be leveraged, not just complete ease of use or overwhelming popularity because of, again, that ease of use.

Well said. I agree, things have to start off with an objective. If the job is to keep things as light as possible, even WordPress, with all its bells and whistles, is an overkill.

 

[lavoy.allison]

Labeled Right Graphics Increase SEO

The thing I have to work on is labeling all my pictures and graphics to increase SEO. Also if you think about it photos tell a story and if your story isn't great you lose traffic because people will leave the site quick and that brings your ranking down.

 

[mikedesignn]

I think graphics are quite important as they can elevate a website. Having said that, don't go overboard or use cheap clipart as that's distracting. The same goes for stock photography.

If you nail the graphics, images and color palette you're half way there. Something else that often gets neglected by webmasters is their logo and how it fits into the design. Worth playing around with different concepts to make sure you find the right design: <URL snipped>