As discussed in class, please provide three reasons why visuals are important to web content. Please ensure you go into detail for each item. (6 marks)
The average attention span is 2.8-8 seconds and as we move forward in a world where attention spans are shorter and the competition for someones attention is fierce, this is where incorporating visuals in web content has become vital in the success of attracting memorable engagement with a brands website. Without enough visual stimulating content it has become more difficult to reach new visitors considering how as humans, we are naturally drawn to images that we only take 13 milliseconds to process compared to a beautifully written paragraph that not everyone could process, nor would they read entirely. Prioritizing visuals on a website could help to increase the performance of overall user engagement and solidify a brand identity.
It is very important to consider how visuals increase retention by 42% when developing content for a website because it takes into consideration how the process of the brain works and how visual information has more efficient power to trigger an immediate emotional response or a deeper understanding that improves comprehension in a long-term memorable way as to plain text. First depending on the type of image being shared will ultimately result the emotion or understanding of the main concept. In a bad case, using an incorrect image could cause customers to shy away or even retaliate. Either way, in this case the users will often become motivated to take an action that underscores the importance of providing the right images to lead the right information specifically for the right audience.
When visuals, whether it’s video or image, are widespread throughout web content, it reinforces 3x the attraction for more inbound links due to a range of efforts that increase overall visibility and authority to your website based on outside results. While this does enhance engagement, it can also enrich your content from a search engines perspective that contribute to a higher organic traffic ranking. Taking into consideration the amount of social sharing of some visuals from websites or other media channels that some include backlinks to. With the benefit of backlinks, users are able to find the main source of whichever image was shared and discover more information about the topic from the reputable source, if there is any interested. It is important to ensure that each visual resonates value both to the content being communicated as well as the reader will comprehensively increase the value of a website.