Why Should You Use Images Of Humans On Your Website

Clement Foo
Clement Foo

Senior Digital Content Manager

Images Of Humans

Human faces are extremely powerful tools. People are constantly looking around and finding things familiar to them, as familiarity gives people a feeling of reassurance and comfort. When people see faces, they automatically become more empathetic, which helps them connect and understand the content on a website more.

Faces help add a human touch to your website, helping you trigger a range of emotions in your website visitors, making them an extremely useful element of web design. Read on to find out the different effects of human faces on your site visitors!

Helps to Catch the Attention of Your Visitors

One of the most powerful effects of using human faces in your website is that they can help to catch the attention of your visitors. People tend to look out for familiar cues or things that they can recognize. Human faces not only allow people to do that, they also help to add an edge to the website, giving it more personality. It also helps your visitors feel like they are not looking at some hardcoded website, but instead, are in a social setting that they can relate to.

Placing a big human face on your website can help to draw more attention. One trick websites use is to have the face of the human staring straight at the visitors. As compared to surfing a site with mere words and images, a big human face helps to make surfing a site a more personal experience, allowing your visitors to feel as if they are understood and welcome.

Increases Engagement of Your Visitors

One way to keep your site visitors engaged is to use human faces. They provide a personal touch to your website, which allows your visitors to feel at ease and comfortable. Interactions involving human faces can be very captivating. Many people are drawn to faces because they can recognize themselves through these faces. As such, using human faces can help to increase engagement of your site visitors.

Faces Help Guide Visitor’s Line of Sight

Human faces are a great way to guide the line of sight of your visitors. In real life, you may realize that people tend to get curious when they see others looking at something, which prompts people to turn their heads to look as well. In the online world, the same thing happens.

Faces should be used purposefully and strategically n your website. If you do not think carefully over where to place the images on your site and fail to test the efficacy of your images, you will not only waste an opportunity to guide your visitors where you want them to go, you may even distract them from focusing on the most important things on your website, which is the products or services you are offering.

Visitors Will be Able to Relate to Your Product or Service Better

Human faces help to make your product or service more relatable. People generally feel more understood when they recognize themselves through the human faces they see online. There are several ways to help visitors relate more to the content on your site. For instance, you can use images which shows different groups of people, or images depicting different facial expressions that may resemble the group you are targeting. This makes the site a lot more relevant as they are able to relate to the website.

Creates a Sense of Trust

By putting human faces on your website, you can create a feeling of trust between your business and the consumer, especially if the images you use are trustworthy looking and likeable. For instance, team pages and customer support pages often use images of faces to build trust. In the online world, it is easy to come across as impersonal as people do not need to know each other before they share information, discuss or do business together. However, people prefer knowing the person they interact with as it makes the interaction more genuine and personal. Revealing who you are can allow your visitors to have a better idea of who you are, which makes it easier for them to trust you.

Helps Visualize Emotions

Emotional expressions are a universal language. Around the world, people understand what you are trying to portray if you laugh or cry. As a native form of expression people are born with, expressions can help people visualize emotions. For instance, if you use an image of someone expressing their joy using your product, it can be a lot more persuasive and convincing as compared to using a whole wall of descriptive text.

Enhances the Visual Appeal of Your Website

Human faces can also be used to enhance the aesthetic aspect of your website. People tend to feel that faces which have the Golden Ratio are more attractive. The Golden Ratio refers to the amount of space between the mouth, nose and chin. An ideal face adheres closely to the Golden Ratio. By using attractive faces in your website, it will definitely attract more attention and enhances the overall aesthetics of your website.

Helps Create a Sense of Authority

Human faces, such as those belonging to famous people or celebrities can help in creating a sense of authority. However, if you intend to create authority with the images of a person on your website, you must ensure that they have some sort of expertise in relevant areas to your product or your site. For instance, a politician may be famous but may not necessarily know much about fashion or makeup. On the other hand, using an image of an actress will fare much better as they are considered an authority when it comes to the realm of makeup and fashion.

Faces Can Affect User Behavior

If a single person is doing something in the image you use on your website, it may have certain effects on some viewers. However, if you choose an image of many people doing the same thing, the effect will be a lot more powerful. For example, if you use a picture of many people smiling at a restaurant as compared to a picture of a single person smiling at the restaurant, the former will have a more powerful effect. This is also known as “sphere”, and helps to draw the visitor of your website in, enticing them to be a part of the group experience. A group with many people portraying similar emotions can help create an infectious sphere which other people want to be a part of.

Leaves Your Visitors in a Good Mood

Human faces can make your visitors smile, leaving them in a good mood. They can also help add some personality and humor to your site. A good smile is always infectious, so you can look out for that when you choose images on your site. If you do not wish to use images of humans, a good substitute to turn to are illustrations or caricatures. If you are trying to optimize your web design to increase traffic and leave good impressions on your visitors, adding in images of humans are a good way to start. Still confused? You can always leave it to the professionals to help design your website. Feel free to contact us today if you are on the lookout for the best website designers around!