Small businesses cannot afford to hire personal photographers and image editors. So, here we are providing some tips for small businesses to choose the best stock photos for their websites or marketing campaigns.

Choose the color palette – The first thing that you require to decide upon is whether you want colorful images, grayscale or monochrome. The first thing you need to pay attention to before making this choice is your websites’ color scheme. Photographs complimenting your websites’ color scheme are always the best choice. Moreover, if you want your viewers to focus on a particular subject, then the best choice is black and white images because colored images distract the attention from the main subject.

Know the right place to get the photos – An image is worth a thousand words. So, you need to choose an image very carefully or you’ll waste those precious thousand words. While choosing an image for your website or blog, don’t go for a simple Google search. Whether you are ready to pay for a licensed image or you want a royalty-free image, there are some reputed websites for each of them. If you have decided that you need a black and white photo, don’t filter and search from a website providing all type of images. You should consider websites like monoimages if you need a black and white photo because there you can find a huge number of options only in black and white format.

Don’t forget your target audience – While selecting a photo for your website, don’t forget who your target audience is. There are abstract images that can be used globally but many photographs need a localized touch to be effective to the viewers. Suppose your target audience includes the girls and women of middle-eastern countries, then using a portrait of a western woman will do no good in creating an authentic image of your brand. So, be very specific while entering keywords for searching a photograph for your website.

Be wary about the licensing agreements – Using stock photos saves you lots of money, but, only when you abide by the licensing agreements. Every website gives you a certain amount of rights to use their photos. If you don’t read those instructions and use the images without the legal rights you may end up being sued by the original owner. Reputed websites provide you with all the required information about the license and your rights to use those images. If you are required to give credit you must give the credit while using those photographs. If you find the licensing agreement to binding it is better to leave that image and search for some other.

Selecting the best image for your website from stock photos seems a daunting task. But, when done tactically, the process is not very complicated. If you know how to choose the best photo for your website you can improve its performance multi-folds because people involuntarily react to images.