Stock photos and Oakville web design
I want to kick off this little blog with a bit of a rant, partially because I think people need to hear it, but mostly just because it’s really fun to rant about something. It feels like you’re yelling at the subject, which must be healthy, right? My little rant today has to do with a topic that I’ve been annoyed with for years, stock photography. Not just the photos themselves (I’ll get to them) but how they’re used in Oakville web design in particular. And, quite frankly, web design as a whole. It’s brutal! Anyways, on to the ranting bit.
First of all let me start by saying that about 98% of stock photos should just be binned right now. Delete them from the servers, close down your stock image site and just go dig a hole for yourself and fill it in over your head. Your stock photography site is not making the web a better place, in fact it’s dumbing it down and making it uglier while you make tiny little profits from terrible web designers and people that have no idea what a good photo is, even if it’s staring them in the face. Do you see soft focus? Chuck it. Lens flares? Kill it with fire. Generic ‘diverse’ people fake laughing? Sigh... There are just so many variations on the one horrendous terrible theme that stock photography is all about: being generic. Though I suppose if your business really is generic, then it’ll be great. Your business name is ‘drugstore’ and you sell generic brand medicine, then search for ‘pharmacist’ on a stock photo site and you’ll be good to go! If, however, you’re like me and actually believe that your company is worth more than the $2 you will end up spending on a picture or three, perhaps you should think about it a little harder than you have been. Any web savvy user that has been around for awhile can sniff out generic web sites in an instant. We’ve all seen the templates a dozen times with one thing changed, and we almost instantly devalue those websites as soon as we see them pop up in our browsers. Add stock photos to that, they have the exact same effect as a template website does, your users eyes glaze over and all they see is a big pile of bland sitting in the middle of your site. Of course, that’s if you’re lucky and picked the photos well. Some are downright creepy, I’ve seen a church website with what looked like a convict on the front page, taking up a third of the usable site. It seemed to say: come to our church, we have creepy people who will scare your children. Now, maybe that’s the image that they wanted to portray to their website visitors, but I get the feeling that it was largely unintentional, simply the product of not paying enough attention when visiting a stock photography web site and picking out an image for the front page. Now, what is one thing that churches have an abundance of to photography? People! If you have a couple hundred people coming to your building once or more a week, in a society where everyone and their dog has a digital camera or three, why are you still using stock photography on your website? And if you’re a business, your employees show up every weekday, for hours on end. You’re telling me you couldn’t find 10 minutes to take a picture of them? I don’t care how busy you are, everyone has to take a break and go to the washroom or eat lunch at some time. And with what a lot of professional photographers charge these days, you can buy an entry level DSLR and ‘photography for dummies’ for less than it would cost to have them come in. Still more than buying a stock photo, but that really depends on if your company is worth it or not. Mine is, because if you spend several grand on a website, like you really need to if you want one that isn’t a generic template, when what’s another few hundred to get some decent photos? Consider it part of your web design and marketing cost, because that’s really what it is. Don’t cheap out in this area, especially if you’re willing to spend money in other areas. It doesn’t make any sense to do it that way. Good web design costs money. That’s really the end of it, it does. Some things cost money, and good web design is one of them. Professionals and good results don’t come cheap, and I don’t care if you have a nephew that ‘does web design’, unless he actually runs a successful business that supports several people at the very least, and has a couple dozen happy customers, you’re not talking about somebody who is professional. Personally I like the guys over at Lifeline Design, but it’s really up to what your company needs and who you prefer to work with. I prefer working with professionals, not with ‘professionals’. It makes a huge difference to your bottom line, and to your quality of life, trust me. Chasing terrible contractors around really shouldn’t be your job, and if it is, you need to take a good long hard look at who you’re hiring, and why they’re so terrible. And at why you’re so terrible at picking them out.
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