This may seem obvious to a veteran marketing pro, but I can assure you that not all business owners have grasped the concept. (Regardless of how creative their company’s product or service is!) Featuring blurry, pixelated imagery not only looks really unprofessional, it will also negatively impact the brand’s overall digital identity as well.

If your client is really digitally illiterate, it I recommend asking permission to contact their photographer or videographer directly to get high-resolution files. For the clients who prefer to go the DIY route, typically files that exceed 2000 pixels (px) in either width, height or both are good enough for web use.

For those that don’t work with this type of content often, let me tell you here first: high-resolution photo and video files are absolutely enormous. This typically isn’t too problematic when used sparingly. After accumulating over time however, the negative impact of large media files will be impossible to ignore.

Heavy things are difficult to move in real life, and the same is true as far as web development is concerned. Having a ton of oversized files on a website will crowd the server’s bandwidth and disc space. The result will be painfully slow page load times, guaranteed to annoy both human users and search engines alike. Prevent this from happening by ensuring your host server is powerful enough to withstand the weight of high resolution media files.

We can be all pico, guac and everything extra as far as website design is concerned, but this isn’t the right move for most brands with cool and edgy digital assets. In cases such as these, the best strategy is to opt for a sleek and clean minimalistic design that truly allows the creative content to sell itself. After all, these projects don’t need fancy bells and whistles to stand out because the visual content does the job on its own.

I hate to break it to you, but getting your audience’s attention by using visually stunning content as bait is only part of the puzzle. Having phenomenal photos and videos is huge, but won’t produce a return on investment alone.

Alternatively, keep eyes on your business or brand by giving users something specific to do. Combining stellar creative content with equally as strong calls to action will promote engagement and reinforce brand loyalty, while also significantly improving conversion rates as well.

It may sound small, but proper photo optimization can make a big impact on a website’s positioning within the SERP. Simply adding a relevant alt tag to your uploaded images can go a very long way as far as Google is concerned, and they will reward your site accordingly.