An outstandingly great website is vital for any successful business today. However, with 1.94 billion sites live on the web so far in 2019, standing out from has never been as hard, nor as crucial. From functionality to style, from aesthetics to content, your website’s design needs to outrival the rest. 

Images are a compelling factor to create a top-class website if you do them right. We, humans, are a highly visual species, and the digital realm has turned us into image-craving creatures that want only the best, catchiest and most fun photos. If you’re creating a new website, or if you’re looking to revamp your current one, it’s time to tune up the visuals! So for all those thinking “, this is going to cost me” and “this will take forever”, be glad: today we bring you not only the best expert tips to rock your site’s visual, but also the ultimate resource to do it at low cost and in almost no time.

4 Expert Tips to Take your Website Visuals to Town

The visual aspect of a website is a lot more than just throwing some photos or graphics in the blank spaces, and maximising its value takes a lot more than just common sense. There are several golden rules to visual impact in web design with images, and you’re about to discover them. 

Let’s get down to business! 

#1 - Tap on Royalty-Free Stock Photography

Few other visual resources are as powerful as photos to draw and retain Internauts’ attention. The psychological response that photography gets from people exceeds that of any other optical elements. 

This doesn’t mean other aspects of graphic design like illustrations or graphics aren’t relevant, but it does mean if you want to ensure a state-of-the-art site, you need to include high-quality photos in it. 

This could take up a considerable chunk of your budget and your time. Quality photos imply professional photographers, who charge for their time and skills accordingly. The turnaround times for photos is usually of at least a few weeks, and that’s without factoring the days gone in researching and hiring a photog, scheduling the photo shoot and carrying it on. In this scenario, royalty-free stock photography is by far the most cost-effective tool for web design and business visuals in general. The core features in this offer make them an obvious choice: 

• Professional - Images shot with artistic skills and commercial eye, superb technical quality and resolution, carefully reviewed for legal validity
• On the fly - Huge online libraries to handpick your favourite photos and download them with a couple of clicks, ready to be imported to your site
• Multi-use - Royalty-free license entitles you to use each photo in as many commercial projects and for as long as you want, with very few restrictions, for a meagre one-time fee 
• Cheap - Royalty-free stock photos are amongst the most competitive in the market. These are commonly volume deals --ideal to ensure a constant flow of freshly new images-- so the cost starts at around $15-$20 per picture, but gets to as little as $0.25 each photo if you hire a volume offering. 

The value in this resource is all around: you save time, you save money, you get photos you can use across multiple platforms and purposes. It is your chance to embrace the power in photography for your business.

#2 - Make it Trendy

The internet is one of the most fast-paced realms in terms of what’s in and what’s out. Any website that looks even if so slightly dated is an immediate turnoff for most visitors. So staying up to date with photography trends and finding the most current photos possible is a must if you want your site to outshine all others. 

Luckily, this is a lot easier done than you would think — no need to hire market experts or spend long hours doing research. You can just explore this convenient Photography Trends 2019 guide with all the hottest trends in stock photography and graphic design for this year, including where to find them. 

Even equally important, you need to know which kind of photos and design styles to avoid. While they may appear somewhat modern, some photos' concept or composition might be a big no-no for today’s visual standard. 

#3 - Find your Uniqueness (Customize Everything)

While off-the-shelf design solutions allow you to have your site up and running in the less possible time, the risk in them is that they can make for an overall generic result, highly unwanted. 

Internauts can spot “canned” designs easily and find the experience less than pleasant. So the key to impress your visitors and make them stay long enough to the value in your website is simple: make it look unique.

However, can you achieve a one-of-a-kind visual design using stock photos? The answer is yes! Here’s why: 

• Royalty-free stock photos are 100% customisable - The license allows you to alter them as much as you want, from colour grading to cropping to overlaying copy and proprietary graphics. The sky’s the limit. 
• Today’s stock photo market is based in uniqueness - Forget about the “typical stock photo” concept. The smiling business people on white backgrounds and picture-perfect families laughing as they eat a picnic are long gone! (Okay, they might still be there, but buried under massive piles of new imagery). The stock photography market today is highly focused on the type of images that populate social media and are the best visual representation of our times: authentic, artistic, natural, less produced, spontaneous. 

It’s indeed very possible to find stock photos that perfectly merge with your brand’s image and to customise them to be as unique to your site as they can be. All this, without spending thousands in photo shoots and waiting weeks for the final files.

#4 - Keep it Cohesive

Your site needs cohesion. This might come off as evident, but it is a significant point, and one easily overlooked as your website’s design progresses. 

 All your elements, including images, need to make sense globally in connection with your brand, service, product or purpose. The trendiest, best quality photos in a super sleek and highly functional site won’t make you any favours if all these elements are disconnected with each other or with your brand and intention. 

So you must keep this notion in front of you at all times, to make sure that every photo (and every other item) you select to be part of your site is beautiful, functional and perfect in its own, but also fits in harmonically into your website. 

Uplift your Site’s Visual Value with Affordable Stock Photography

So there you have it. Thanks to royalty-free stock photography, mastering the visual aspect of your website is a lot easier and cheaper done. 

Once you master this side of web design, you should of course take care of all other factors involved in an earth-rocking website. 

But if you follow these simple expert tips to buy, select and use photos on your website, you can expect the results to blow your audience’s mind!