A picture is worth a thousand words, but the wrong picture can cost you a customer. The images you choose for your website are one of the most powerful tools you have to communicate your brand's quality, personality, and professionalism. Get it right, and your site looks polished, trustworthy, and engaging. Get it wrong, and even the most brilliant business can look cheap and generic.
For those of us who aren't trained designers, picking the right images can feel like a shot in the dark. We often fall back on the first cheesy stock photo we can find, and in doing so, we accidentally undermine the credibility we work so hard to build.
But what if you could choose images with confidence? What if you had a simple set of rules to follow that would guarantee a professional look every time?
You can. This is your practical, non-designer's guide to selecting high-quality images that will make your website shine.
1. Think Emotion and Outcome, Not Literal Action
This is the most important rule. Stop looking for images that show what your product is and start looking for images that show what your product does for your customer on an emotional level.
Your customer is the hero of their own story, and your business is the guide that helps them achieve a happy ending. Your imagery should reflect that success.
- If you sell project management software… don’t use photos of people pointing at charts. That’s boring and literal. Instead, search for images that convey calm, clarity, and successful collaboration. Think of a clean, organised desk or a team looking relieved and happy.
- If you offer financial advice… avoid pictures of piggy banks or calculators. Search for images that represent security, freedom, and peace of mind. Think of a couple enjoying their retirement or a family feeling secure about their future.
By focusing on the feeling, you create an instant connection with your visitor’s goals and aspirations.
2. Avoid the "Obvious Stock Photo" at All Costs
You know the one. The impossibly diverse group of colleagues laughing at a laptop. The woman in a headset smiling vacuously into the middle distance. This type of inauthentic imagery is the fastest way to make your brand look generic and untrustworthy.
Here’s how to spot—and avoid—a bad stock photo:
- Does it look overly staged? Real life is a little messy. If everything is perfectly placed and lit, it’s probably fake.
- Are the expressions genuine? Can you see real emotion in their eyes, or is it a forced, plastic smile?
- Have you seen it before? If an image feels familiar, it’s probably because you’ve seen it on ten other websites. Run.
3. Use Better Sources for Your Images
The reason many people end up with cheesy photos is that they’re looking in the wrong places. To find better images, you need to use better libraries.
- Excellent Free Sources:
- Unsplash: Known for its artistic, high-resolution, and authentic-looking photography.
- Pexels: A huge library of free photos and videos that feel much more natural than traditional stock.
- Mixkit: Offers a great collection of free stock photos, videos, and illustrations with a modern feel.
- Affordable Paid Sources:
- If you have a small budget, sites like Adobe Stock or Shutterstock offer millions of premium images. The investment is often worth it to get a unique photo that your competitors aren’t using.
4. Create a Cohesive Visual Style
The difference between an amateur site and a professional one often comes down to consistency. When all your images feel like they belong together, your entire website gets an immediate visual upgrade.
You don’t need Photoshop skills to achieve this:
- Use a Consistent Colour Overlay: Using a simple tool like Canva, place a semi-transparent layer of one of your secondary brand colours over every photo. This instantly ties all your imagery into your brand palette.
- Stick to a Filter: Decide on a single aesthetic. Will all your images be black and white? Will they have a warm, natural filter? Applying the same filter to every image creates a powerful, unified look.
- Choose a Visual Theme: Before you start searching, decide on a theme. For example, you might choose to only use images that feature nature, or architecture, or have a minimalist feel. This constraint makes your choices easier and your results more consistent.
5. A Final, Crucial Step: Optimise Your Images
You’ve found the perfect image. Before you upload it to HubSpot, you must do one last thing: optimise it for the web.
Large image files are the number one cause of slow-loading websites. A slow site frustrates users and hurts your search engine rankings.
- Compress Your Images: Use a free tool like TinyPNG or Squoosh. Simply upload your image, and these tools will shrink the file size dramatically without any visible loss in quality. It takes ten seconds and makes a huge difference.
- Add Alt-Text: When you upload an image in HubSpot, always fill in the "alt-text" field. This is a short, simple description of the image. It’s essential for website accessibility (for visitors using screen readers) and helps search engines understand what your page is about.
Image is Everything
Choosing the right images is one of the highest-impact things you can do to improve your website. By focusing on emotion, demanding authenticity, creating consistency, and optimising for performance, you can build a site that looks stunningly professional and truly represents the quality of your brand.
For a complete walkthrough on branding your site, read our full guide: A Practical Guide to Branding and Customising Your HubSpot Starter Website.