When it comes to using images on your website, the quality of the image is important! Having professional photography creates a great first impression and increases trust from your potential customers,
Stock photos are ideal for marketing and advertising, promotional work, personal or commercial projects, publishing, websites, and more.
There are plenty of free websites that offer high-quality images for you to choose from!
In this article, we'll cover:
What are stock photos?
Why use them?
Where to find free stock photography
What are stock photos?
Stock photos are images that have already been created and are available for licensing by paying a fee to both the artists who composed them and the stock agencies managing them, which gives you the legal right to use them in a variety of ways.
However, stock imagery goes much further than just photos. Vector files that may be in the form of pictures, customised print material templates, social media graphics, or even infographics are also available for licensing.
Why use them?
You should use stock photos on your website for a variety of reasons. Firstly, many images online have a way of making your site feel dated and old. Most of them are owned by somebody else and you could get in trouble for showcasing somebody else's work!
To avoid risking your website looking dated and unprofessional, you need to be mindful of how the quality of the images you are using will age with time. It's important to use professional images when it comes to the design of your website to improve not only the quality but also your conversion rates.
Thankfully, you don't need to spend thousands of pounds on expensive stock photos when there are plenty of websites that offer them for free. You can also use stock images to improve your site's CTR (click-through rate) by using a different image that will catch the visitor's eye.
Just changing the image of a blog post to an attention-grabbing and relevant stock photo could boost the click-through rate immensely.
It doesn't matter whether you're a blogger, marketer, or website owner, free stock images sites are the perfect solution for all of your online projects that require quality photos. All you have to do is pick a photo and download it straight to your computer. If you have a website with us, we've integrated a "Stock Photo" search within our admin area to allow customers to choose photos for their pages without having to first download the images and re-upload them!
If you don't want to waste time searching on Google for free stock photos, we've got it covered in the next section!
Where to find free stock photography
Unsplash - This site offers 10 new photos every 10 days. The high-resolution images can be used for both commercial and personal use. All you have to do is search the photo you need or use their random feature that will select a free image for you. Unsplash is the service that we've integrated into our admin area, allowing our customers to conveniently search for stock photos whilst editing their website!
Pixabay - This website has a large collection of high-quality images that you can download and use for free. The images here can be used for commercial purposes as well.
Stockvault - This website not only includes photos, but also provides textures, backgrounds, and graphics for your next project. No attribution is required.
Pexels - The photos on this website are all taken by talented photographers and can be downloaded and used without having to pay a penny.
Vecteezy - Another great stock photo website - but has limits to downloads. They have a pricing page that gives you more options.
We hope you enjoyed reading this article and look forward to seeing your site flourish with professional stock photos!