How to Select Stock Images for Your Website

The web is saturated with free and commercial stock image providers that can supply images for your website’s marketing, advertising, or branding needs. Popular free sites include www.sxc.hu, www.flickr.com, www.stockfresh.com, and www.dreamstime.com. Top commercial stock image sites are www.istockphoto.com, www.crestock.com, and www.dreamstime.com. As you can see, some sites feature both free and paid image licenses.

Narrow down your search

How can you identify the best photos in this massive range of stock image sites? If you’re looking for free license image, you can use www.everystockphoto.com, which, as its name implies, is a search engine for free images that includes the sites mentioned above, as well as many others.

Quality

You should use only high-quality images on your site. The free stock image sites feature a fair share of medium-to-low quality photos that are not recommended for use on a professional website.

Popularity

Another thing to consider is the popularity of the photos. Great free stock images tend to be used across the web by many sites and blogs. Do you really want your next corporate blog post to feature an image that one of your competitors have used already on their own blog a week ago? Probably not.

Marketability

When you use your photos for business purposes you need to evaluate the images’ marketability. Can they be used to convey the right message? Are they suitable for your demographics?

It’s often best if images promoting products have a white background, to draw all the attention to the product. Often images promoting services are best if they capture action.

Find the images more quickly by using specific keywords. For example search for ‘young women’ instead of ‘people’ depending on your demographics.

Also, ask yourself if the style of photos you choose fit well with your web design.

Advantages of commercial stock images

Finally, you should know that using commercial stock image sites has some advantages. First, the images are of a high quality, being almost always shot by professional photographers. Second, a great commercial image is usually used by fewer people than a great free image. Third, they are usually intended for businesses, and thus better able to convey your message and capture attention.