I Hate Stock Photography

Posted by: Nick

"Hate" is a strong word, and while it's very difficult for me to say that I truly hate something, I like to throw that word around liberally to the point where it becomes devoid of any significant meaning.  With that said, I hate stock photography. I hate it, hate it, hate it. Given that I work in an industry that gives so much lip-service to the importance of presentation, user experience, and customer engagement, it's mildly mind-boggling that stock photography is so commonplace across the Web.  It is uninteresting, cliche-riddled, aesthetic-destroying and an overused, last-minute tool that's become the defacto standard when it comes image selection.

Everyone involved in the creation of a website understands this on some fundamental level because we (as the creators of a site) know where the images come from and know that the images we choose are just a paltry handful of a thousand others that represent or show the same thing. But do our end-users notice this? And, if they do, does it have any kind of effect on their ability to use or engage with a site? Of course it does! I wouldn't have asked those questions if the answer wasn't a solid "yes".

The Problem

People don't engage as much or as well with a site when the imagery doesn't line-up with the content or their expectations. To use a stupid example, it would be inconceivable to think that a site for a pet store would do as well if all of the imagery involved anything but fluffy, cute animals. If I replaced every puppy photo on the site to show a 1970 AMC Gremlin, the site's usefulness would come to a screeching halt and engagement would flat-line.

Of course no web designer worth their salt would ever disassociate the content and imagery to that extreme, but when it comes to real world scenarios it's not the extreme examples that are the problem; it's the subtle and often overlooked commonalities that people pick up on. Is that businessman on the home page a member of the organization? Is that lady with the headset really a customer service representative? Is that building shot tied in any way shape or form with the company itself? In spite of what some people may say, the end-user definitely picks up on these common threads and subtle incongruities when they look at a website, even if they can't fully articulate what the problem is.

One of the biggest issues with stock photography is that people just "know" when something isn't right. This is especially true when it comes to shots of people.  Ever notice how the lighting in a photograph is just a little too clean or how the subjects' teeth are a little too white? Is the the angle of the shot just a bit off-center but not by so much that it would ruin the composition? These are all subtle signifiers that scream "fake" to users.

I won't get too far into the details as Jakob Nielsen over at UseIt.com did a more than suitable job of articulating this point 2-years ago in his study of photo content.

In Nielsen's own test, he found that when people were presented with biographies with both image and text content, users spent 10% more time examining employee portraits than they spent on reading biographical text. This is in spite of the fact that in terms of volume and space used, the biographical text was the predominant element. By comparison, generic stock photography was largely ignored to the point that it's placement and subject matter was largely irrelevant. Suffice it to say that if it isn't "real", it's not meaningful, and if you're a business that takes their web presence seriously, then it should concern you if large sections of your website are being wasted or ignored.

The Solution

Blow it up, start over, and really think about the real estate that's being wasted on your site.  In an age when illustrators, vector artists, and freelance photographers are plentiful, there's no rhyme or reason to saturate otherwise good web content with generic, ineffective stock photography.

Even in instances where budget is a concern and designers have to bite the bullet, there's absolutely no excuse for not putting in the time and effort to find stock imagery that "works". Whether it's because a particular image hasn't already been purchased by a thousand other people, or because it provides a better thematic fit, being able to deliver a final showpiece with imagery that works speaks volumes about the time and care that went into the initial build of a site.

Salience in Decision-Making Design Pt. 1

Posted by: Nick

There is a tacit understanding among experienced web designers, user-experience designers, and even web developers, that the functional, navigatable core of any website should always be focused, direct, and as simple as possible to interperate. And while web designers, in general, have become more proficient at injecting clarity and vision into their aesthetic and visual design, the conversation up until now has always centered more on usability and less on directability.  Understanding this slight but very important distinction can be the difference in having a website that can generate an audience versus having a website that's actually capable of positively affecting the bottom line.

The Problem

When businesses try to divine a return on investment through their website, they often look at a handful of key performance indicators and the behaviors that led up to those specific events.

Did a user fill out a "request a quote" form? Did they sign-up for a newsletter? Did they purchase a product or subscription? Or did they just meander around the website for awhile and then leave?  And, if they did leave, why?

In the case of the last question, I've found that it's not uncommon for otherwise "healthy" websites to under-perform sales-wise, even though the websites in question could very well have thousands of attentive, well-engaged visitors browsing through them on a daily basis.  In the case of those sites, it always came down to a subtle design problem that made the final decision-making process more difficult than it had to be.

The Bigger Picture

Studies have shown that the decision-making process is highly malleable, and that a person's preferences are never as concrete or as stead-fast as we'd like to believe. In fact, more often than not, decision outcomes are greatly affected by the context in which a decision was made. When we look at this in terms of web design, this has major implications on not only the usability of a site, but also on our ability to influence our users in making critical, nascent decisions that can potentially lead to measurable actions like generating a sale or producing a lead.


Salience On Ecommerce Sites

The simpliest way to distill down this new problem is to use the eComm experience as our baseline. A fairly well -understood dynamic of eComm is that online marketplaces are saturated with products. If a price-sensitive consumer can find an item somewhere else for less money, they'll have no reservations in going to a different website to finalize their purchase. This habit of comparison shopping is the most common method used by online consumers because it provides a reference point for gleaning new information that they'll invariably use for coming to a conclusion.

The entire process itself  occurs both within and outside of a site across a number of different touchpoints; from “related product” calls-to-action and upsells to time spent on comparison shopping engines and competitor websites.  Throughout this process, each touchpoint adds a new layer of information that clarifies  a consumer's course-of-action by providing sufficient context for arriving at a decision.

Salience On Lead-Generation Sites
But, if we transition our focus over to the less sophisticated but far more common B2B and B2C lead-generation sites, we find that compared to eComm setups, we typically have less information and little to no feedback that could positively influence someone at the “point-of-purchase”. When I say “less information”, I'm not speaking to the content that exists on any given site as a whole, but rather I'm referencing the lack of well-refined decision-influencing devices that can assist visitors in taking that extra step towards filling out a contact form or signing-up for a service.

It is because of this absence of information that users have little to no visibility as to why the service is valuable anymore. This is the folly of many lead-generation sites across the B2B and B2C industries, as well as across many online media outlets and large online communities; they don't effectively convey the value of their service to their audiences at the most crucial decision-making juncture.

Coming Up Next...

I'll add a second post that drills down into things like contextual data and comparative data (among other things) eventually, and will also examine other issues relating to addressing the basic cognative hang-ups that act as the basis for all of this in the first place.