Last week I took on a quest to look at 1,000 blogs and websites. I was looking for that special something that draws me into a site, and actually read some of their content. Well I found something, and to no surprise to some, it was images.

The Biggest Draw

What I found after looking at all those sites is the power of the image. I’m sure that most of you have heard “An image is worth a 1,000 words”, and that fact is important here. On the web most people scan for content. We read headers only, we skim text at best, and we look for lists. One of the best methods to quickly gain information is to scan images. They provide massive amounts of information in seconds.

While on my quest of 1,000 blogs I also came across many websites, and the fact stayed the same. Images get you to look. The screen shot you see here is from a skin cream manufacturer. They used a basic shopping cart software to host their site. I could have easily skipped over this site without paying much attention, but the image draws attention. They also had images of their products on the home page, something I would also strongly suggest if you run an online store.

What Kind of Images?

Well their were all sorts of images that got me to look a little deeper, and on all sorts of different kind of site layouts. A few keys I found were:

• Make your image fairly large – 300 pixels or so wide
• Center it in your layout – So it is obviously the first thing you should look at
• Keep it above the fold – Obviously you don’t want to hide it if you are using it to draw visitors in

This doesn’t work for everyone’s layout though, like mine for instance. I do plan on adding something though to get that walker by to look though. The image draws you in.

Here are two other things I noticed. Images with animals almost always got me to look. This might be just a personality thing though, so don’t go designing a site with animals all over it just because I like to see pictures of them. I don’t consider myself a big animal fanatic, so I do wonder what the connection is, and if others have noticed this.

The other thing I saw, and it really started to bug me was YouTube videos. I saw a ton of blogs with YouTube videos. Videos are great, but they come at a price. The video screen shot takes longer to load than the rest of the site. When I looked at all those sites the video at first seemed like a good idea. Then I turned, and started thinking, “another stupid video”, then it turned into “done looking at that site” the second I saw it had a video. I do not have a problem with YouTube videos, but I am thinking you might want to be careful where you place it.