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Mar
Stop using stock images to convince prospects your organization hires only attractive people.
Author: Marc Ziner // Category: Better Web SitesIf your Web site has stock photos of good looking young business people “at work”, do yourselves a favor and replace them with photos of the actual people.
Don't use stock photos like this in your Web!
These insipid stock photos are widely used and easily recognized as meaningless placeholders. If you are concerned about credibility, take the time to take a photo that shows real people… or don’t bother at all. Show nice photos of trees or sailboats or puppies — but please, enough already with the stock photos of “business casual” people.
March 18th, 2010 at 6:07 pm
Your thoughts on stock photo images made me chuckle. My web designer wanted me to fill up my site with a bunch of stock photos showing a lot of “good looking” business people and I’m glad that I fought it. Not only is it not realistic, it just isn’t my style. Instead I have photos that although are a little bit on the abstract side, they represent me and my business.
March 19th, 2010 at 11:32 am
Agreed! I recall being so annoyed at a jobsearch website that used a picture of a pretty teenager as a ‘placeholder’ for their posted job requiring 5+ years experience. It was completely gratuitous, and was kind of insulting.
March 19th, 2010 at 11:33 am
I couldn’t agree more, Marc. I see stock photos on a Website and it is a big turnoff. With the high rate of turnover at some companies these days, it might mean more editing or replacing photos on Websites, but, that’s life in the fast lane. Hopefully we’re near bottom and more companies will start doing more business soon.
March 21st, 2010 at 10:28 pm
I’ll resolve to utilize photos of real people whenever possible… I trust you will do the same, Dave!
March 23rd, 2010 at 11:41 am
Agreed! This is great advice; at work we use stock images of people “at work” for our presentations and I always replace with a logo or art instead.
March 24th, 2010 at 10:42 am
When I built my consulting website I viewed hundreds of available templates. Most included politically correct people photos. None fit my business brand. I decided to just use the masthead from my newsletter which included my head shot photo. I now encourage clients to use a spokesperson employee photo. That way the home page can speak one to one from the person in the photo to the person reading the page.
Jeff
March 24th, 2010 at 7:54 pm
And especially don’t decide to swap the head of a black model for a white model’s head as Microsoft did last year … [url]
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/08/26/microsoft.ad.gaffe/index.html?eref=rss_latest [/url]
March 27th, 2010 at 8:33 pm
Hi, Marc — I laughed out loud when I read your post. I couldn’t agree more. My favorite are the self-consciously multicultural shots with males, females, people of all skin shades and ages…but all uniformly attractive and what my husband calls “within five pounds of ideal body weight.” Susan
April 2nd, 2010 at 9:06 pm
I think it was easier to get away with this stock photo fakery ten years ago. Today, we all know what a stock shot looks like and we can spot ‘em a mile away. I just recycled my entire set of Photodisc catalogs… about 25 lbs. of slick photography on glossy stock. It was not log ago that we maintained comprehensive libraries of stock photo books on sagging shelves and stock photo discs in flimsy metal racks… Good riddance!
Marc Ziner
April 9th, 2010 at 11:37 pm
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May 3rd, 2010 at 9:01 am
Merci pour ce post intéressant. si vous continuer ainsi je vais devenir un lecteur fidéle
June 1st, 2010 at 6:20 pm
“My web designer wanted me to fill up my site with a bunch of stock photos showing a lot of “good looking” business people and I’m glad that I fought it.”
You can out more?
June 2nd, 2010 at 3:12 pm
I couldn t agree more! GJ