3 Tips for Using Images on Your Veterinary Website

When you’re creating or updating a business page, every aspect of the process matters. Website design can easily send you down a rabbit hole of search engine optimization (SEO), server choices, features and more. And while there’s plenty of research into optimizing your features, people sometimes forget the basics of using images on their veterinary websites. We’ve rounded up a list of our top 3 tips to effectively use pictures to enhance your site and attract potential future clients.

 

Be Careful with Image Sizing

The main sizing issues you’ll run into when adding images to your veterinary website are the dimensions and quality. A picture that appears at the top of your site probably shouldn’t take up the whole screen on viewing (barring some more creative design choices). A very high quality image -- or several of them -- can also seriously slow down your load time. Two ways to fix these problems are with simple cropping to cut the image to the right width and height and image compression to improve load times. Be careful with changing the dimensions outright to match what you think you’ll need, you might end up with a stretch or compressed picture that looks unprofessional. On the flip side, if your image dimensions are quite small, the picture will look pixelated on your site.

 

Use Faces Where Appropriate

If your site has an ‘About Us’ section, then it’s a great idea to add pictures of staff and veterinarians to the page. Pictures with faces immediately inspire trust. Thankfully, smartphone cameras have been increasing in quality over time and can take a pretty decent picture of people. You don’t need to go out of your way, necessarily, to add face images to your veterinary website, but you should be able to fairly easily update your main employee pictures.

 

Use Images You Have the Rights To

Don’t make the rookie mistake of pulling images straight off a Google search to use on your website. There are entire businesses out there dedicated to making your life awful for image copyright infringement. Always check to make sure the images that you’re using are either for free-use in commercial purposes, or that you have written permission from the owner of the picture. While adding images to your veterinary website is a great way to get customers interested in your clinic, misusing those images is a great way to land yourself in a legal battle.

 

If you have any questions about how to bet use images on your veterinary website, the team here at Vet Marketing Pro is always here to help.