Your website brand photography has the power to make or break your online presence in a nanosecond.

From the instant your potential customer lands on your website, the stakes are high. Your design and visuals need to capture their interest immediately so they choose to stay rather than move on. If your potential ideal client is met with uninspiring, unprofessional, or mediocre images that don’t convey the essence of your brand, you can be sure they won’t waste a second more of their precious time. And their decision to leave your website or not happens in a fraction of a second.

In 50 milliseconds.

That’s the amount of time you have to let them know who your brand is, what you do, and why you’re the only one they need for what you offer. Under pressure much?! A big ask of your website visuals isn’t it?

As the online home of your brand and often your audience’s first port of call to find out more about what you can offer them, your website brand photography needs to deliver. And instantly.

Brand website photography needs to be especially impactful, inspiring, and true to you and your brand. You can see just how crucial it is that the photos you use on your website captivate your audience and give them an immediate insight into the feel of what it might be like to do business with you. All at first glance. They want to be captivated, inspired and welcomed in to discover everything you offer.

If your photos are poor quality, dated, irrelevant to the people you’re trying to connect with, or non-existent, no amount of design flair is going to keep them on your website.

It won’t matter how fabulous your font is, or the time you spent agonising over your brand colours or how to navigate visitors to your landing pages. Nothing says more about your brand and what you stand for at first sight than the images on your website. First impressions have never counted for more. If your photos are blurry, dated, uninspiring or have nothing to do with all the details that make your brand unique, chances are high that your potential client has moved on to the next website in their search quest quicker than you can say “click here”.

They’ll see the website photography before they even read a word.

Investing in an incredible web design, creating a beautiful brand identity, nailing your written copy, and then using lacklustre photos or stock images on your website just lets the team down. No matter how great the design is, if the photography isn’t on par, the whole visual representation of your brand falls very flat. Actually more than that. It’s misaligned and confusing which is a turn off to your potential customers.

We’re all pretty savvy online these days. Most of us can tell at a glance the difference between a website that looks cheap and nasty without attention to detail or sense of style and one that is aspirational, thoughtful and beautiful. Photography has a lot to do with this first impression.

What’s a website without inspiring and authentic visuals? Afterall, a picture’s worth a thousand words.

A visitor to your website needs to be immediately captivated. In a much shorter time than it takes to read your copy no matter how well written. When your website brand photography instantly brings your brand to life it will inspire your visitors to stick around and look further. Perhaps more than any other kind of brand photography, when you have website photography that is strategically customised to you and your brand and the ideal client you want to connect with, you can turn visitors into dream clients. It says so much about your brand from the first instance.

First Impressions Count

It’s the home you’ve intentionally created to express your brand. Not merely a fleeting guest spot on socials. Your website embodies your brand. And your potential customers can tell so much from just landing on your home page. How do you want to welcome them? What do you want them to feel the moment they arrive? Website photography that hits the mark and makes a great first impression is crucial to your brand.

Planning Your Photoshoot

A brand photoshoot for your website – whether it’s a new launch or a rebrand – has a lot more riding on it than a new profile headshot, campaign, landing page, or shoot to expand your existing brand photography image collection does. Your website photography needs to bring impact, depth, and a cohesive style to your brand that is distinctive to you, conveys what working with you might feel like, and is irresistible to your dream client. And more often than not, all this needs to be delivered to your website designer in a tight timeframe to make launch date!

When I plan a website image branding photoshoot, we get intentional about exactly what photos you need and where they’ll go throughout your site design, as well as getting creative about how we capture them. Bringing together my strategy experience, my photography skills, stylist’s eye and creativity in a branding photography photoshoot especially for a new website is my absolute favourite space to work in.

Take a look at a recent project for Lucy and Belle, a client’s newly launched website and online shop here. The use of custom brand photography throughout the website shows instantly the quality, professionalism and feminine style you can expect from the brand.