The hero image – the representative first image that customers see when looking through sets – is vital to promoting sales. Here’s how to make hero images into superheroes:
- Make picking hero images a deliberate choice, don’t just go with the first image, or a random choice because that’s quick and easy. For now, that means using people to make that choice, not software.
- The image needs to be the best in the set – something with impact – not necessarily the one which comes from the largest group of the most similar images. This is particularly important for editorial/celebrity sets.
- That said, if the image is completely different to what’s in the set, that might not go down well with stock customers who are expecting to see something along similar lines when they get to the full group of images. The trick is to find the best image that also represents the set.
- All other things being equal, go for hero images which are both colourful, and bold in the frame. That generally means avoiding full-length images.
- Include an image with a face, preferably a woman’s face if appropriate. There’s an old saying in women’s magazines that you should always run an image of a woman, because men like looking at women, and women like looking at women. That might be past its use-by date in terms of gender politics, but the principle is still applied in publishing.
- If you’re having trouble getting this sort of editing right, consider outsourcing the organisation of your images.
To find out more about how we can help improve your editing and sales, click here.