An AI-built website can look polished while showing almost nothing specific about the business behind it. We explain where real photos and video matter most on your website and what images to capture first.
Think about the last time you chose a business you found online, whether it was a roofer or a pediatrician. Before you called, you probably spent a few minutes looking through their website. Maybe you opened the About page or scrolled through photos of previous work to get an idea of who you’d be dealing with and whether the business could do what you needed.
Visitors to your website are doing the same thing. But if you built your site with AI and didn’t provide your own photography, the builder may have filled in the gaps with stock or AI-generated images. Those images might look fine, but they don’t show customers anything about your actual business.
Real photos and video close that gap, and you don’t need to replace every image on your site to get started.
Why do real photos and video make a website more trustworthy?
People want to know who they’re hiring, especially when they’re trusting a business with something important. Real photos give them a better idea of what to expect before they ever pick up the phone.
In Getty Images’ 2024 Building Trust in the Age of AI report, based on surveys of more than 30,000 adults in 25 countries, 98% agreed that authentic images and videos are important for establishing trust. Nielsen Norman Group’s eye-tracking research also found that website visitors tend to ignore generic stock photos but pay attention to images of real employees.
It makes sense when you consider what customers are looking for. Someone researching a contractor wants to see examples of completed jobs. A person looking for a financial advisor might feel more comfortable seeing the people at the office they’d be meeting with. Neither gets any useful information from a stock photo of a person smiling at their laptop.
The photography doesn’t have to be elaborate. Often, a straightforward photo of your team at work tells a potential customer more than the most beautifully composed stock image ever could.
Why does a lack of real images make an AI-built site look unfinished?
AI website builders can put together an attractive design without knowing anything about the business it’s supposed to represent. If you don’t give the builder your own images, it has to fill those spaces.
You can often spot the results. The people featured on the homepage don’t appear anywhere else on the site. The office in the background looks nothing like yours (and is somehow suspiciously free of cords and cables). The photos all have a similar look, but none shows anything particularly distinctive about your company.
The problem isn’t necessarily that those images look bad, but rather that they could belong to almost any business in your industry.
For an established company with years of experience, that’s a huge missed opportunity. You’ve already done the work, and you have employees who know what they’re doing and projects worth showing off. Your website should reflect that rather than relying on generic images.
We’ve written about some of the broader concerns in our post on the real cost of using AI-generated photos and copy. But even setting those concerns aside, generic photography doesn’t give potential customers much reason to choose you over someone else.
What should you photograph first?
That depends on what your customers need to see before they feel comfortable reaching out.
For a professional services firm, team photos and headshots might be the priority. If you’re a contractor, photos of completed projects could be far more persuasive. Think about the questions people typically ask when they’re considering your business and what you could show them instead of just telling them.
You’ll also want photos of your actual workplace, particularly if customers visit in person. A good photo of your storefront can help someone recognize it when they arrive, while photos of your facility or employees at work can give visitors a better understanding of how you operate.
Don’t overlook the everyday details. A behind-the-scenes photo of someone working on a project may not seem particularly exciting, but it gives visitors something they can’t get from stock photography: a real look at your process and culture.
You also don’t have to replace every image at once. Start with the pages people are most likely to visit before contacting you. Your homepage and About pages are good places to begin, followed by any service or project pages where photos would help someone understand your work.
For more on what separates useful website photography from filler, read our post on bad, good and custom website photography.
Where does video fit on an AI-built website?
Video is especially useful when you want visitors to hear from someone at your company or see something that doesn’t translate as well through still photos.
An introduction to the owner can help people get a feel for the business before calling. If you have a complicated process or a particularly impressive completed project, video may be a better way to show it. Customer testimonials can also work well on video because people get to hear about the experience directly from someone who has worked with you.
You don’t need to make a documentary. For a quick introduction or testimonial, 60 to 90 seconds is often enough. Longer videos can also work when the subject calls for them, but it’s worth thinking about what your audience actually needs to see.
If you’re adding video to a site built with AI, pay attention to how it’s handled technically. Video files can be large, and uploading one directly to your website without optimizing it can slow down the page. That creates a frustrating experience for visitors and can hurt your search performance.
A developer can help you determine the best way to hose and embed your videos so they look good without slowing down your website.
Can you still use stock photos or AI-generated images on my website?
Of course. Not every image on your website has to come from a professional photoshoot. Stock photos and AI-generated visuals can work well for abstract concepts or background imagery. They can also be useful placeholders while you’re scheduling a shoot, provided you’re planning to replace them before launch where appropriate. What we’d avoid is using stock and AI-generated images to represent something customers would assume is real.
Before you launch, look at each image on the site and ask yourself:
- Does this image show something that’s true about our business?
- Would a customer recognize our team or our work from it?
- Could a competitor use this exact image on their website?
- Would we be comfortable telling a customer where the photo was taken?
You don’t necessarily need to remove every image that fails one of these questions, but it’s worth reconsidering whether it serves a purpose or is just taking up space.
Do you need a professional photographer?
Not for everything. Today’s smartphones can take great photos, and there’s nothing wrong with using them to capture everyday moments around the office or behind-the-scenes work.
For the more prominent areas of your website, though, professional photography is worth the investment. Poor lighting or awkward framing becomes much more noticeable when an image takes up most of the screen. And if you’re getting new team headshots, having them taken together gives your website a more consistent appearance.
The most important thing is to plan the shoot around what your website needs. Before scheduling photography, review your sitemap and make a list of the images you’ll need for each page. Your homepage might require a wide photo with enough space for text, while another page could benefit from closer shots of your products or team. Without planning, it’s possible to finish a shoot with 100 great photos and realize that none of them fit your homepage banner.
If you intend to incorporate video, it’s worth discussing that ahead of time, too. Depending on what you’re filming, you may be able to coordinate photography and video production during the same session.
And remember that you can use those photos in areas beyond your website. A good collection of original images can be useful for social media, email newsletters and other marketing materials for years to come.
Real photography should be part of finishing your website.
When you’re preparing to launch a new website, it’s easy to focus on whether everything works. But images deserve just as much attention. They’re part of how customers figure out whether your business is right for them, and leaving placeholders means the website isn’t doing everything it could to instill customer trust.
At Infomedia, our photographers and videographers work directly with our website team. We can identify what photography a site needs during the planning process, then make sure the finished images work with the design. That saves you from trying to track down the right photos after everything has already been built.
We also help businesses finish and support websites started with AI tools, ensuring they’re properly hosted and ready for visitors.
If your website is full of placeholder images, or you’re preparing to launch and realize you don’t have the photography you need, get in touch. We can help you plan a shoot that gives your website something much more useful than stock photos.
