5 Types of Media to Elevate Your Website

Establishing an online presence is only half the battle in today’s world. To enjoy a good return on the investment you put into your business website, you need to put measures in place to drive traffic to your website. And once you get visitors to your site, you need to keep them engaged long enough to purchase.

One of the best ways to boost engagement is to add variety to your webpages by embedding different types of media. Adding images, audio, or video are great ways to break the monotony of text. They also help your audience get a better understanding of the message you’re trying to communicate. You can use image alt tags to enhance the visibility of your webpages to search engines.

Using media to boost visitor engagement is easier said than done. Media files tend to add to your webpage’s loading time, which can be detrimental to your SEO. Outsourcing such tasks to a creative agency in NY will assure you that all media on your website serves its intended purpose. Here is how such an agency can help you navigate the intricacies involved with different kinds of media. 

1. Photos

Well-placed, high-quality images can add to a web page’s visual appeal and invite visitors to read through to the end. You can get such images in three different ways: hire a professional photographer to take them for you, buy images, or take them yourself. With smartphone cameras becoming more and more capable of doing the same thing the DSLRs pros use, that third option is not such a bad idea. Only bear the following photography principles in mind:

• Apply the rule of thirds to ensure your images are symmetrical.
• Know how to position your camera to maximize the available light. You should also know how to adjust the aperture on your lens to control the amount of light entering the camera.
• Use the different modes—landscape, portrait, macro, panorama, etc.—to achieve your desired effect.
• Use negative space to enhance focus on the subject.

2. Videos

The same thing goes for video; you can make share-worthy videos using the mirrorless camera or DSLR you purchased for fun outings. Most smartphones released by leading brands can shoot 4K video. There are many apps in either the App Store or the Android Playstore you can use to edit your clips to professional standards.

To get the quality of video you’re after using your DSLR, mirrorless or smartphone cam, you will need to invest in a couple of accessories. You could start with a tripod to help you get steady footage. Footage taken with hand-held cameras tends to be shaky, especially when panning. Buying an external microphone will help you get better quality audio to go with your footage.

Before you upload your video, you will need to edit it to eliminate unnecessary footage and add effects and text where necessary. Hiring a professional to do it will likely be faster and guarantee better quality, but you can try using iMovie or similarly user-friendly alternatives if you feel up to the task. 

3. Social Media Feeds

You can embed your Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram feeds onto your webpages to showcase your social media pages’ activity. This will give visitors the impression that you have an engaged audience. It will also cue them onto information from external sources that may be beneficial to them. Either way, visitors will be inclined to spend more time on your site, which is ideal for both direct conversions and SEO.

Social feeds for individual social media platforms are provided on most website builders and CMS platforms. However, customizing them to fit your desired look and to include all the feeds you want may require customization.

4. Infographics

Infographics present information in a visual format that is a welcome change from text. These showcase detailed and complex information in a summarized form that’s easy to digest.

Besides the usual static graphs and charts, you can grab readers’ attention more effectively with animated infographics. Research has shown that readers are much more likely to share animated infographics than any kind of image on a webpage.

5. Audio

When used tastefully, audio can enhance the visitor experience on your website without being perceived as intrusive or annoying. Whether it’s through background music or sound effects, audio has the potential to set the mood for a visitor’s interaction with your site. It can do so without adding to the load time of your website. Creative agencies can help you achieve this.

Media Can Make or Break Your Website

The media you choose to use can either help you achieve the desired level of engagement or do the exact opposite—add to your bounce rate. For this reason, it is beneficial to come up with a strategy that will help you implement appropriate media usage and monitor its effect on your site’s performance. If the media you adopted is not working for you, don’t be afraid to make some changes.

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