Why your blog needs a face
Important tips for illustrating your site.
The human eye is attracted by movement and pictures. Catholic churches traditionally reflect this: for centuries, the Church has visualized its message with stained glass windows, statues and frescoes. Catholic liturgy is full of movement: we stand, we kneel, we walk, lift up our eyes, bow. We sometimes have a hard time staying concentrated during a long homily, but as soon as there is a new visual experience, we have no trouble focusing on what happens.
If we as Catholics know this, then we should apply this knowledge to our websites and blogs. Many Catholic websites greet the visitor with paragraphs of text, but not much care has been given to the *visual* aspect of the experience. Yet we assume that our content is so important, that nobody will be able to resist reading it. We might be wrong.
Research shows that you can greatly enhance the amount of attention visitors pay to the content of your website and blog by the use of photos and other visual elements. We will address visual elements like layout, navigation and formatting of your text in another article, and focus on illustrations first.
Every story needs a picture
In cathedrals and in many churches, stories are told with pictures. The life of Jesus, the adventures of saints and the history of the Church are abundantly illustrated. Every story has its picture. In fact, it’s often the picture or statue that attracts your attention and makes you curious to hear the story linked to it.
On our parish website or blog we should use the same communications technique. Every story should have a picture. You enhance the chances of people reading your blog post tremendously by attaching a striking picture to it.
Which pictures are most effective?
Not all pictures are created equal. Psychological research points out that some illustrations capture our attention better than other pictures. There is a hierarchy between pictures and illustrations. Our eyes are attracted most by movement, followed by faces, animals and objects.
Movement
In the early days of the world wide web, many websites used animations to capture attention. ‘Animated GIFs’, like colorful flashing banners and waving smilies, were very popular. It was something you couldn’t do in traditional paper publications, so everybody wanted to experiment with these animations. Today, websites with animated illustrations have the exact opposite effect: instead of attracting visitors, they chase them away. People have become ‘blind’ to animated banners and flashing pictures. We are so bombarded with movement and visual stimuli, that our mind subconsciously shuts them out. So get rid of those animated, dancing bananas on your parish homepage. Seriously.
Faces
Pictures of human faces capture attention in any medium. And not only are we looking at faces first, but our attention stays on the part of the screen where we saw the face, even when the picture itself is no longer there.
Our brain is wired to notice faces. Experiments have shown that already after a couple of months, babies will look at photos of other people more than pictures of objects and animals. And this preference stays with us for the rest of our lives.
If you track the eye movement of people that are confronted with a picture of a face, you will see that the attention immediately goes to the eyes of the person depicted. A photo of someone who looks right into the camera will almost immediately get our attention. It’s something often used in the advertisement world.
Faces convey emotion
Not only does the way our brain is wired direct our attention to faces; faces can also convey a strong emotional reaction. And this communication of emotions happens even outside of the conscious process of interpretation: it happens almost instantly. The more emotion the photo shows, the more emotion it will convey. So if you want to convey that your parish is a place where the community finds happiness, you might consider replacing that picture of a stern looking pastor with photos of happy parishioners!
Follow the eyes
Eye tracking data also shows that we have a tendency to follow the direction of the eyes of a picture of a person. If a photo shows someone seemingly looking at a part of your website or blog, your eyes will tend to look at the same spot. Perhaps something you can use to attract your visitor’s attention to an important message or to the place where they can sign up for your newsletter.
Use relevant images
A study by usability expert Jakob Nielsen shows that users tend to ignore images that are clearly stock photos that have nothing to do with the website or its creators. Images that contain relevant information (e.g. a picture of an event described in the post) or that show people that are actually part of the organization or group the site belongs to (actual parishioners or students) are much more effective than standard photos that are just there to “jazz up” the page.
Do you have any other tips about the use of photos and pictures on blogs or websites? Share them in the comments!
Would love to see a post on good sources for high quality images… Where do you find yours?
I will write an article about that tomorrow morning, thanks for the idea!
One *can* use moving things on a website, if the goal is to draw attention. Make sure it doesn’t ‘loop’ if you decide to put it somewhere. That’s annoying. The human visual field is sensitive to movement in the periphery.
That’s why ads and banners are often moving: they typically are placed at the side of a page, the only way to draw attention is by movement and not by for example bright colours, because one cannot see colours in the periphery: there are only rods there.
How do you weigh the risk of photos/pictures of people of whom you have no explicit permission to use them for the site? (o.a. parishioners)
If you take pictures of groups of people, it usually isn’t a problem; if you take portrait photos, I would always ask the person in the picture if they object to posting their picture on the website. It’s a matter of courtesy