When creating your website, whether it’s for coaching, consultancy, professional services or even e-commerce, the key is to make visitors feel at ease.

How do you do that? With pictures.

And pictures of what? People.

We have all been to shops where we don’t feel at ease - shop attendants follow you around with a look of disdain and make you feel you don’t belong. Within a few minutes you are out of there and they have lost your business.

Conversely, we have been to small family owned shops - the ones where the owner smiles and talks to you and helps you choose the right garment. You probably even throw in something else that you didn’t intend on buying because the shop owner was so nice and helpful, you feel like giving back.

Why is that? It’s the human touch.

People who are friendly and who look you in the eyes are the ones you tend to trust and buy from.

So how does that affect your website?

You can replicate that human touch by choosing the right photos on your webpages. You’ll be amazed to know that adding the right photos will increase your conversion rate.

Photos of people, especially their faces grab our attention in a very profound way. We are hard-wired to focus on faces. From a very young age we learn how to read facial expressions to help us build our social skills.

Research, using eye-tracking software, revealed that if your website has a picture of someone looking at something, you will be following that person’s line of sight.

For humans, faces are one of the most powerful visual stimuli. Not only the facial expression or level of engagement but also the direction of their gaze.

When you see a group of people looking at the sky, don’t you naturally look where they are looking? It is the same on a website. When you see people who have bought the product or service, you feel more compelled to buy.

So make this a priority on your website to boost traffic and conversions!

Have pictures of people throughout your webpages. If you are a coach, consultant or provide professional services, don’t be afraid to include pictures of you.

The biggest mistake people make when choosing pictures for their website is to make it look too corporate, too Goliath-like.

Unless you are going after corporate clients, It decreases conversion.

People either think you are making your site bigger than your business actually is, or they get scared.

Most clients want to buy from people they can relate to and be comfortable with, so show your true colours, be genuine and focus on them.

Here are the main pictures you want on your website to increase conversion:

1. Picture of you (without sunglasses please!) on your home page and about you page;
2. If you do one-to-one coaching or one-to-many sessions, include a picture of you delivering your service on your product page. Even if it is only a Zoom screenshot.
3. Pictures of your satisfied customers - if you don’t yet have customers pick from our library of free pictures.
4. If you have customer testimonials, ask them to provide a picture to add to the testimonial.

Once you have these pictures ready, make sure you insert them at the right spots. This is also very important.

For extra SEO boost, make sure you tag the pictures with content relevant to your specific business and what your customers are likely to search for.

Luckily, in Heroic, we have ready-made templates for coaches that are tried and tested and guarantee conversion.

Try it for yourself for free here.