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Pictures and Your Audience

By Robert Campbell on Friday, November 21st, 2008 Print This Post
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I did a study a while back that some of you may have remembered. I visited a 1,000 blogs to see what got me to read more. At a 200 a day pace your site had better do something special to get my attention, at least you would think. Well, when the study was done, I had found plenty of things I hated, but the one thing that always seemed to grab my attention was images. Images naturally draw your eyes attention, and if you want to see more of the same thing you just saw, the best place to start is where you already are. This lead me to one idea though, who wants to look at zits?

Targeted Traffic

screenshot of siteYou saw it, you can’t un-see it. Here is an example of a site using images, images of politely put, acne. The site is LexLi Acne Kit. The site sells acne treatment and its supplies. Do images still work here? I mean, who really wants to look at zits? People looking for a cure or a product that cures acne, that’s who.

If your traffic is not targeted, or you are not selling acne products, I doubt anyone wants to look at that, at least not the before picture. Images do draw in visitors though, and if your traffic is targeted they can very easily turn that bounce into a few more pages views, even a sale. On this particular site the image links to even more before and after pictures. If you have acne bad, and are in need of a fix, I think you are not far from making a purchase at that point.

Types of Pictures

If you missed my post about my 1,000 blog analysis here it is: Forcing Eyes Into Content. Strangely, and by total coincidence, it was about skin products as well. Acne for me? No, usually just whiskers.

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8 Comments on “Pictures and Your Audience”

  1. Aldhis says:

    Hmm… I know that picture really does attract your visitor, but now I also realized that targeted traffic is also important. If you couldn’t find any benefits from the site/blog, why should you bounce more?
    Thank you for posting, Robert.

  2. aishwarya says:

    i always aim for targeted traffic.its the best converting ones for me .

  3. mike says:

    You have made a very good point about having pics on your site,this is something i must do to my site but im always worried about the copy right thing. do you have any ideas as to where to get pics that can be used without the copy right worries. many thanks.

  4. mike says:

    hey thanks Robert i didnt know that could be done. Will go look right now, thanks for the tip.

  5. mark says:

    Hi, This is a very interesting test you did here.Did you get any data as to the percentage of good blogs that had there pics above the fold? Is this something you would recommend?

    • Hi Mark,

      I did not track if images were below the fold or not, but I can tell you this. When looking at that many blogs you can bet I did not spend a lot of time scrolling down. The only times I did is when I saw something that caught my interest. A pic at the bottom of a blog certainly does not do that.

  6. mark says:

    WOW !! What a quick reply Robert !! i was just about to hit the sack {I’m in the UK so its past midnight}thank you for your time.

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