Are humans judgemental? Or let me make that question a bit personal: Would you consider yourself a judgemental person?
Most people wouldn’t.
Most people consider themselves fair and kind; they believe they give everyone a fair chance and benefit of doubt.
But the truth is we are all judgemental. Every one of us, even though we may claim otherwise.
We judge everything we see and take action based on what we have concluded. We judge based on appearance, sound, taste, and smell.
For instance, you would feel more relaxed when a well-dressed stranger approaches you than when an unkempt individual smoking-weed does.
If you open the door of a taxi and find that it has trash littered on the seat, you’d most likely look for a another taxi. You’d most likely pick a person on a dating site who has a striking profile photo over someone with a blurry photo.
Interviewers favour applicants who dress the part better than those who don’t.
In business/marketing it’s even worse…
Customers make judgement calls about your business in mere milliseconds. Most of the time, they do this without thinking about it. Decisions are made based on the first impression they get of your brand.
Whenever you post photos of your business, customers use it as a measure of the quality of your offering. This is a hard pill for many business people to swallow but it’s the truth.
Our brains are designed to make judgement. It does this to help us stay alive and safe. Knowing that an action taken based on wrong judgement can be costly, customers use the first things they notice about your brand to make a decision to buy or not.
On the internet, one major thing your customers use to make judgement calls is pictures of your business.
Regardless of what type of business you run, you need top-grade photos if you hope to convert visitors to customers. Pictures give potential customers an idea of what to expect from your brand. If your pictures suck, automatically your products or services will suck, too. Or at least that’s how they’ll see it.
It may not sound fair but it’s the truth.
So…
How Do Customers Use Your Photos To Make Judgement About Your Business?
Here are a few things customers look out for when they view your photos:
- Similarity or likeness: When customers look at your photos they try to see if the photos resonate with who they are. If the photos reflect their personality, they’ll bite.
- Social class: Customers check if the photos vibes with their social class. People with high social status will be turned off by photos that reflect an average or low social status. Therefore, you must know your target customers.
- Values and ethos: Whenever humans get together to form a group, they develop distinct culture, values or norms within the group. Your potential customer will evaluate your photos to see if your values or norms match theirs.
- Trust: Your customers want to be safe while doing business with you. Your photos will have to convey security before they will trust your brand.
Looking at the above points, you should begin to care about the photos you post online. This is because a bad photo can cost you a large volume of sales.
And that’s not all…
Research has shown that photos greatly influence your online visibility and conversions.
Want proof?
Here’s what Google says about images and how they affect online listings of local businesses. They found that businesses with 100 photos or more get:
- 520% more phone calls than their competitors.
- 1065% more website visits (clicks) than their competitors on the local level.
- 2717% more requests for direction to their business location than their competitors.
On the converse, they found that businesses with fewer numbers of pictures get 75% less requests than those who have more. You can find evidence of this in the Yelp’s Top Restaurants in 2019. In that report, you will see that the top restaurants had two things in common – thousands of positive reviews and IMAGES!
What Do Customers Want To See In Your Photos?
Earlier in this post, I showed you what your customers use to evaluate your business through your photos. To take pictures that will make potential customers think better of you, here are a few things you should keep in mind:
- Your photos should be top-quality. It doesn’t need to be overly professional. But it should have adequate lighting and highlight important features.
- Potential customers want to see that you get a lot of customers daily or frequently. This means that photos of say, an empty restaurant, would be a turn-off.
- Alternate perspective. Your photos should show your product or business location from different angles. Since potential customers haven’t actually visited, they want to get a feel of your business through the images you post.
- Each set of photos should have a different topic or theme. For instance, photos for this week could be about your staff. Then, the photos for next week could be about a new location you just opened.
- Real life images. These days, people do not like overly staged photos. They love the real and spontaneous. With that in mind, try to share real life events through your photos. Post customer photos of your rooms, bar, food, interior décor, etc.
The central point is that your photos should have good quality and be of different varieties. The more photos you have, the better your customers can see your business. It makes it easy for them to see your consistency.
As the saying goes, “A picture is worth a thousand words”… your photos say a lot about your brand. And potential customers are listening. Don’t forget to keep the above 5 points in mind when next you take a photo for your business. They give potential customers a feel of your business even before they visit.
POSTED ON November 22, 2019Share:
