The other day I was recording some live website evaluations and came across a few prospects with cartoon photos. You can use cartoons to convey complicated concepts in a digestible manner and make them more appealing to the viewer. Seeing cartoon images is a great way to animate, expose and bring awareness to a product or service. However.. this is assuming you’ve accounted for your CRO.
What’s CRO?
Conversion Rate Optimization – the goal of CRO is to increase the percentage of visitors to a website to become customers, or more generally the number of visitors who take the desired action.
Everything certainly has its place, but at the same time you must always learn to question everything. When you see something ask, “What’s the purpose?” “What am I not seeing?” In a word run by social media one may be quick to observe trends, as they are eye catching and sometimes even polarizing. However, when trying to convert eyes to financial transactions its more likely that the customer will buy form something they can relate to. We as humans are emotional creatures. We tend to buy off of emotion. We look at ourself in the future, even if for a split-second and in that split-second we see ourselves with the product or service. We see ourselves solving the problem as a result of purchasing the solution.
Relatable photos matter
What’s more compelling will always ideally be to have humans in the subject matter. Why? Your customer’s pain points will rarely have cartoons in them, they won’t see their future animated. When purchasing clothes online, what would have the better conversion rate: A person wearing the exact shirt you’re thinking of purchasing or a cartoon with yellow skin and purple hair? There are dozens of stock footage websites out online and they will significantly help your conversion if your website is littered with no relatable images.
Knowing your audience
Knowing your target audience is key. Business photos, family photos, even people of color. Humans desire to see themselves in the products and solutions so it’s vital to project your solutions with human figures.
