Up until a few years ago, a ‘fact’ was making rounds all over the Internet and news publications, declaring that the human attention span has shrunk so low that even a goldfish can now focus better than us.
While the fact was debunked in due course, new research emerged and refueled the discussion: our attention spans aren’t shrinking; they are evolving. Human attention span has evolved to… well… pay attention more selectively. With content coming at us from all angles, we have adopted ways to discern which deserves our attention more and for how long.
Understandably, this makes a marketer’s job just a tad more difficult.
Since visuals are the most potent form of grabbing a passerby’s attention, web designers and marketers have to become clever’er and craftier with their images/videos 🦸
For small businesses, this is a more troublesome feat. With limited budget and resources, where hiring a graphic designer is not always possible, what other avenues are left for them to show their visual creativity and capture those fleeting and evolved attentions of their customers?
In this article, we list down 5 tools that will help in adding visual appeal to your web pages. Most importantly, all of them are easy on the wallet and do not involve hours of technical learning.
Most of these are online applications that are super-easy to use and even when a learning curve is involved, it isn’t a steep one and you’ll be able to get the hang of it in almost no time.
Let’s start with web graphics first:
Piktochart: Social and Infographics
When customers first land on a website, it is the visual appeal of it, its aesthetic that conveys important pieces of information about the business to the consumer. For example, if the business is legitimate, is it credible, does it know what it’s doing and so on.
These first impressions are important as they make customers not only decide about your business’ credibility but in what words they’ll be talking to their friends about you.
With Piktochart, your website’s aesthetics and designs are well taken care of. These include website header design, individual product images, infographic templates, and not to mention your marketing and advertising visuals.
The only gap in their product offer seems to be site logos, which can be easily tackled by more specialized tools such as LogoDesign.
Piktochart offers a wide range of design templates that fulfill practically any small business design need. The most awesome thing about Piktochart? Many of its design products are free. Even when they’re not, the price tags have been kept low enough to encourage business activity.
Piktochart has been designed not only for companies but for individuals too. So if you are a freelance writer and want to create your online portfolio website (which you absolutely should!), the tool offers easy editing and customization, a wide variety of industry-standard templates, and even helpful tutorials to get you going.
Pexels: Stock Images
There comes a time in your content marketing journey when you are in need of hi-res photos and will require the help of stock images. Quality stock images, captured by the lens of professional photographers is what drives a large part of content marketing. And Pexels is a great resource to find the images you need.
The site offers such a huge range of photography choices that you are bound to find the exact one that fully represents the emotion you want to convey. Almost every image or graphic you’ll find here is royalty-free, meaning, you can use them freely in your content marketing and other needs as long as you duly credit the photographer – something you should always do.
The images you’ll find here are not only creative and imaginative, but they are also pure joy to feast your eyes on. In addition to images and graphics, Pexels also holds an extensive library of free videos.
You can use these videos as your supplementary content, as stand-alone content pieces, or in your digital marketing campaigns. Since the site is free to use, make sure the photos or videos you choose are relatively less-used and therefore less clichéd.
Moqups: Mockup and Imaging Tool
To create detailed mockups that help you see your idea in its visual clarity, Moqups is the tool of choice. This quick design and planning platform is great for sketching, modifying, and refining mockups – in other words,
🙌 helping you and your team collaborate more easily and in real-time.
If your business is about graphic design or web design, this tool is particularly useful as a prototype software. It allows you to add a rough sketch of what you are looking for, enables collaboration with your team on how best to reach the end-goal, and clears up any wrinkles in the evolution of your designs.
Moqups is also great when you want to display some visual information or a behind-the-scene representation of a design or product concept. Moqups help you up the ante in your site’s visual department.
Also, the tool is a bargain at $13/month for freelance/personal use and $20/month for teams. For more pricing details, head to their official website.
JPEGmini: Image Compressor
Page load speed is a real issue when it comes to website performance and user experience. Both these factors directly affect conversions, SEO, and therefore ultimately your revenues.
The number one issue that causes sites to load slower is heavy, image-rich content. High-resolution graphics that take up a lot of space and can reduce your otherwise well-optimized web pages to a crawl.
To prevent unnecessary user bounce due to slow page load, JPEGmini is a god-send. It compresses your hi-res image files (up to 80%) without compromising their quality or resolution. This helps your pics load faster, saves you precious server space, improves user experience, and in general makes your site a treat to use.
The app is available for a one-time payment of $59; the pro suite with additional features will cost you $89. The best thing: you can start a free trial right now before you invest in either and see if it’s something that’s worth it for you.
Filmora: Video Content
For a modern website that wants to stand out, the importance of video can’t be overstated. Videos capture attention, encourage investment, and help convert your visitors into consumers.
Whether its tutorials and How-Tos, a quick tour around the site, a “get to know us” for the company owner and staff, or advertising videos, putting some motion on the screen is a great idea in 2024.
With Filmora, you can get all this done and more!
Filmora comes as a downloadable video editing suite, complete with pro-level features yet with a gentler learning curve than such packages as Adobe Lightroom or DaVinci Resolve.
Because Filmora has a plethora of options, it can be a little overwhelming for a brand new user. But, despair not. If you’re willing to get your feet wet in the video world, it can be a rewarding — and on-budget — tool for making your website (and marketing) as engaging as possible.
There is a free trial, after which you can either opt for the pay-as-you-go plan or a one-time purchase. There are discounts up to 28% for students available on their official pricing page.
The Best (Budget-Friendly) Visuals Money Can Buy
In 2024 you don’t need extremely deep pockets in order to unleash your creativity and captivate your audience. You’ll be rewarded by better business if you put aside a (small) portion of your business budget for making your website and campaigns more visually appealing 🎯
Our list here is an attempt to help you with some almost-free sources that make this task that much easier. Some of these tools – most notably Filmora and Moqups – require a bit of a getting used to, but that isn’t a slow curve to follow. And the results on your bottom line are well worth the effort!
Got any experience with any of the tools listed here? Or maybe you’ve used other similar kits to create stunning visuals for your web business? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!
