It’s said that a picture is worth a thousand words. This could not be more true when it comes to using images or videos on your website. Any form of media, whether it be images, videos, or a combination of both can convey emotion and a welcoming environment better than any sentence. Great images interest a user to user to click on your website, read your blog post, or follow your social media accounts.
Here at Worship Times we can help you organize your photos and videos, strategically place photos, videos, and sermons across your website, and help you create social media and blog posts using a variety of forms of media.
Getting started with images or videos is an important first step! Here are some quick reasons why you might want to start incorporating different forms of media on your website (if you haven’t already) and some tools to help you along the way.
Why Should I Use Images and/or Videos?
There is a common misconception that images and videos should just be used to compliment your website’s existing content. While this is true, content other than just words can serve a variety of roles, including:
Standing Out from the Crowd – Chances are your ministry’s website shares similar types of information that another ministry’s website displays (history, worship times, staff, newsletters, etc.). On the other hand it would be very surprising to see the same images and videos on both websites. This provides a window for you to make your ministry stand out and feel inviting to anyone visiting you website. Sites that incorporate images will always generate more traffic and interaction with the end user because those alternate forms of media add an additional personal connection for the visitor. Nothing can beat a stunning hero image on the homepage of your site. You get one chance to impress a visitor. Take it!
Variety – Images, videos, and audio/video recordings of sermons give you flexibility to be creative with your website. Sure, you could just paste in a wall of text onto a page, but who is going to take the time to read that? Honestly, not very many people. What if you were to take that same information and break it up with photos, maybe a large image slider or video at the beginning and a gallery of images at the end? This will make your ministry feel much more welcoming, personable, and will give the visitor time to picture themself in your ministry.
Social Media – Who says you can only use your images and videos on your website? Social media has become a great way to share information from your ministry with or through various forms of media. Using images from your website for social media and vice versa will help build your ministry’s brand, create a community, and help make your members feel welcomed. Even better, almost everyone has a smartphone in their pocket. Your members can share their images with you on social media to use on your website or to help build a lasting bond between your ministry and its members.
Boost Your SEO – We have talked a number of times about how important good SEO is your for ministry’s website. Images and videos can work to further increase your site’s SEO score with as little as a couple word caption for your image and making sure your image sizes are consistent.
At this point, adding images and videos to your website should be a no brainer. Feeling a little stressed about where to start? No worries! Our team at Worship Times has tens of years of experience and we can work with you to get up and running.
Feeling brave? Awesome! Here are a few addition tips and best practices to keep in mind before and while you adding media to your site!
Things to Keep In Mind
Be Consistent! – Being consistent is incredibly important. Make sure all of your images are the same exact size. This will help to make sure parts of images are not being cut off and to make sure your site looks uniform. We recommend common image sizes like 640px x 400px for small to medium sized images and 1280px x 1020px or 1920px x 1280px for larger images. When setting these sizes it is incredibly help full to make note of the different sizes and where they are used on your site in a Google Document or Word Document. This can then easily be shared with your entire team so everyone knows what size to upload images at.
Stay on Topic – Make sure the images that you place with content are related to the information that you are sharing. It sounds simple, but more often than not people put images on pages just to have pictures. Make sure the images that you are adding to a page match the page’s content. Even better, the photos should be a visual aide to what you are sharing or describing to your visitor. Don’t be afraid to not add a picture here or there either! It’s okay!
Insert a Caption – WordPress makes it incredibly easy to add a caption to your image. After uploading the image it will display a screen with an area to enter a caption. Enter one! A simple sentence can give a user clarity to what the picture is showing and it helps boost your SEO score!
Tools to Help You Along the Way
Adding images can be a grueling process. Here are a couple great tools to help you get the ball rolling!
Unsplash – Unsplash is great for finding free to use stock images. Sometimes you just need that one particular image you don’t have whether it be for a blog post or event. Unsplash is a great resource to find that perfect image that you don’t have in your arsenal. Just go easy on how many stock photos you use. You want your website to display pictures of your ministry! A great goal (in a perfect world) is to not have any stock photos on your website. That’s not always the case, so no more than a handful of stock images is close second.
Adobe Express – Adobe Express is a great free resource to help you create perfectly sized social media campaign images on all of the major platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.). You can upload you images and drag and drop text around the image to share the information that you need. This a great tool for creating that featured image for your event and then use it across your social media accounts to get the word out. That way everything looks consistent no matter where your members find information!
Canva – Canva is another free drag-and-drop build aimed at creating infographics and event posters. This is another great resource to create shareable information sheets for your website and social media with your ministry’s logo and color scheme.
Here at Worship Times we realize how overwhelming all of this information can be, especially if you have never worked with images before. Let us take care of the behind-the-scenes details of adding images and videos to your website and social media accounts so you can focus on running your ministry. We can create a custom plan to suit your needs!
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