Where to get the best free images for your website
Nov 07, 2018
10 min read
With over 1.3 billion websites on the web, standing out from the crowd and making a name for yourself in the noise can be hard.
While every website or blog out there can publish content, what really separates the normal from the spectacular is how they make use of visual content.
Content is still king, no doubt about that, but powerful content combined with creative, quirky images can turn it into so much more.
Content creators throw a ton of stuff on the web every day to garner attention, including blogs, web content, social media content and what not. You’d be surprised to know that almost 6.7 million people publish on a blogging platform or website regularly and the number nearly doubles when it comes to people publishing their blogs on social media.
Now, that’s a lot of content! And your audience can only consume so much.
So, grabbing their attention and engaging them before anyone else becomes all the more important.
And apparently, adding high-quality images (and other visual content like videos) to your blog posts and other content (social media or other) is the best way to do it.
According to Forbes’, content with visual appeal gets 94% more views than textual content. And if a reader was to choose a single blog to read out of 6, he would read the blog with the best visual content that appeals to him.
So, yes, visuals are indeed important. That’s why we strive to mix our insightful content with creative imagery in all our digital marketing services. But before we tell you the amazing resources from where you can get your hands on the best free-stock photos out there that don’t require any license, let’s talk a bit more about the obvious benefits of adding images and other visual content to your website -
SEO & Social Media benefits
Social Media is all about visuals. If you want to stand out on social media, work on adding visual elements in every single one of your posts. Simple as that. Doesn’t matter the platform.
According to a Buzzsumo research, posts with attractive images on Facebook received 2.3x more engagement than posts containing just plain text. Buffer, on the other hand, experienced a 150% increase in retweets on their tweets with images compared to plain text tweets.
The story is the same for almost every other social media platform out there as well. Visuals are just great in capturing the attention of users and making an emotional connection with them.
Apart from the obvious benefits of adding visuals on social media, adding high-quality images to your blog posts and website can also help you rank better in search engines.
By adding proper alt-texts, titles, and tags to each and every image you upload on your website, you are letting search engine crawlers know exactly what your image is about and how it’s relevant to the corresponding content, which will obviously help your website and blog posts rank better in Google image search as well.
Lures readers
If you are looking to stand out from the crowd, have a unique identity that gets easily recognized by the masses and make a name for yourself, creating mesmerizing images and other visual elements that are relevant to what you do is your best bet.
While everyone and their grandmother can publish gibberish on the web, it’s the visual elements that can give you an edge in a space that is so crowded.
If your website or blog posts are void of any kind of images, readers will bounce from your website like grasshoppers.
Here’s a stat to prove it.
But if your website and blog posts are studded with aesthetically beautiful images, readers will click on it, emotionally connect with it, like it, comment on it, share it with their friends and keep coming back for more (they won’t do it all at once).
What else could you want from your audience?
If you haven’t already, try putting all your focus on the visual aesthetics of your website and blog posts and keep a close eye on those conversions. You’ll be surprised by the results!
But in order to do that, you’ll have to first find high-quality, beautiful images for your website and other marketing content. If you don’t have a photographer in-house (which most of us don’t), try making use of these free resources for all your visual needs.
The images resources I am about to mention are absolutely free to use and don’t require you to create an account or buy a license. You’ll just have to credit the author of the image you are taking on some of these sites, which I’ll mention.
So, let’s look at some of the best free, high-quality image resources out there-
1.Unsplash
3.Pixabay
4.Pexels
Pexels is our absolute favorite. Their gallery is just stunning. You’ll have to give credit to the authors if you take any picture from this website. The website also shows you an easy way to give credit to their lovely community of photographers when you download a pic from Pexels.
5.Freepik
Hope these resources will help you in finding the best images for your website and blog posts, doesn’t matter the industry niche you are in. If you have any other platform in your arsenal from where you fulfill all your stock photo requirements, do let us know in the comments.
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How to maintain your brand reputation across multiple digital platforms?
Why Online “Buzz” Influences Purchases Decisions? Online Reputation management has become essential for modern-day businesses. As much as customers care about the quality of your product and services, they equally care about your online activities, reviews, and brand presence. What is your brand posting on Instagram? What are you tweeting? Did you reply to their online queries? Actions like these matter a lot! You never know; your existing customers might be posting pictures of your product or sharing their experiences with your brand, and you simply can't afford to lose out on this engagement. As per Statista's survey of 2020, 36% of Instagram users follow brands that they use on the social media platform. Apart from Instagram, 35% of the respondents said that they follow their favorite brands on Twitter. Another study says that almost 90% of the users purchase from online brands they follow on social media networks. Hence, for the years to come, we can say that investing in online brand reputation can help businesses drive ROIs like never before! Myth: Your Online Reputation Is Not In Your Control! There exists a psychological factor behind consumer reviews, comments, or ratings. For a new customer, they act as a testimony. Hence, it is a huge misconception that online presence or reputation is something that doesn't influence purchase decisions. Here, we are talking about the control or "management" of your brand's online reputation. You can always gain a competitive edge as a brand by eliminating fake or negative reviews, establishing your presence over influential platforms, etc. If you want to garner great reviews that speak positively about your work, you must adopt a reputation management strategy. You can learn how we ran a well-structured referral and review campaign on Amazon that lifted the sales of a Coffee Brand by 230%! Check out our case study to know more. A well-designed online reputation management strategy shall portray your brand in a positive light. By investing your efforts in nurturing your online reputation, you can witness skyrocketing growth in sales. If you can maintain a positive brand reputation, you will attract potential customers by gaining their trust! For instance, we generated + 279% Organic Traffic for a doctor booking platform based out of Philadelphia via fifteen Social media campaigns which brought tons of users to their website. It helped them to boost their customer acquisition. Check out our case study to learn more. So How Can You Maintain Your Online Reputation Across Multiple Digital Platforms? You can follow these four steps for your brand’s online reputation management. These are some simple steps through which you can improve the online presence that’ll benefit you in the following ways: ORM can expand your customer base and help you maintain a consistent outreach. Online reviews can help customers to engage with your brand. When you stay in touch with your audiences, you improve internal practices. You have a better chance of boosting your customer retention. Better online reviews and presence can help you in SEO. The elements of ORM include responsiveness to online reviews, reputation monitoring, search protection, constant outreach to encourage customers to share their reviews online, social media branding, damage control, and review audit. These elements are usually implemented via paid, earned, owned, and shared media channels. Let’s begin! #1 Perform Sentiment Analysis! As a business leader, you need to analyze how your customers feel about your brand. Are they happy with your services? Are they satisfied with the results? You must dig deep into the data to understand your brand’s current reputation standard. Check your social media posts, comments, mentions, take a glance at your competitor’s social handles, look at how their customers talk to them, and then define a path for yourself. You must also evaluate your online reviews on platforms like Yelp, Yahoo, and Google. There are various online tools or experts who can quantify this data into comparable metrics so that you can analyze how things are going for your brand. #2. Track Social Media Tags Mentions. Brand reputation management is a continuous process; you have to stay proactive! Once you recognize your online reputation status, you need to set up your social media channels to respond to customer queries or complaints. Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook, etc., are popular platforms where brands reply to their customers. Social media channels make it very convenient for a user to ask a question or appreciate your work. Pro Tip: Ensure you respond to your customers as fast as possible! #3. Make Your Business Appear Positive. As discussed in the previous section, negative reviews can hamper your client acquisition efforts. The best way to deal with them is by resolving them and encouraging positive reviews. Of course, you can’t force your customers to post positive reviews about your brand, but you can always share testimonials of happy clients. You can highlight the kind of positive experience they had on your social media platforms. You should never hold yourself from reposting your clients’ tweets or feedback. In this way, you can leverage user-generated content that can enhance your online marketing. Apart from customer reviews or comments, you must encourage your employees to post positive sentiments about their work culture. #4 Work With Reviews, Comments, And Analytics. Your customers should feel or recognize that your brand is putting additional efforts into fixing certain shortcomings that they comment about. They should feel that they are being listened to. For instance, they might complain about the delivery process or the recent rise in the price. Listen to them and make changes accordingly. Your brand’s reputation matters! Yes! Your online brand reputation is within your control. But first, you must realize the key areas where you can improve upon. You must listen, process, and react to online conversations that are related to your brand. If you are looking for more effective ORM solutions and efficient tactics, we at Saffron Edge can help you develop a robust strategy! ...
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How Does Customer Affinity Mapping Help Brands Analyze User Research?
Affinity mapping is a widely used marketing strategy because it effectively incorporates and enhances user research. When executed correctly, it can do wonders by distilling the findings of user interviews into meaningful, practical knowledge. Let’s start with the basics and learn how customer affinity mapping can help you understand user research. What Is Affinity Mapping? The act of making an affinity diagram , sometimes called affinity mapping, collaborative sorting, or snowballing, goes by a few different names. In its simplest form, it is the process of classifying qualitative data about your users. First, you'll need to learn more about your target audience through usability testing, surveys, in-person interviews, or any other feedback-gathering technique before beginning affinity mapping. After gathering information, it should be recorded on slips of paper, such as post-it notes. The next step is to have a sizable area to post, sort, and rearrange the ideas. What Is An Affinity Diagram? The final product of an affinity mapping session is an affinity diagram, or cluster map, which is used to classify and categorize the data collected. When examining qualitative data or observations, affinity diagrams are very helpful because they organize data into clusters of related elements. Teams working on design, research, and products can get closer to synthesizing qualitative data from various sources using an affinity diagram. Source: Pexels In order to provide an excellent user experience, it is necessary to conduct user research to learn about users' demands, habits, and goals. Even though it's essential to keep an eye on things like conversions, click-paths, and other quantitative statistics, the key to pleasing your customer lies in the details revealed through qualitative research. However, as was noted before, this type of data is more difficult to synthesize than quantitative data. Thematic analysis is a standard method for analyzing user research. By developing themes to organize the material and construct ideas across each notion, the thematic analysis aims to understand the meaning of all the notes, observations, and findings. Affinity diagrams are great for topic analysis if you haven't guessed yet. The themes for your affinity diagram can vary depending on your role and the nature of your study. Some possible affinity groups derived from user experience research are as follows: Analysis of user emotions and expressions while they complete certain tasks on the website Words and phrases used to search for a service or product Suggestions and feedback to enhance the quality of your service or product Here Are Five Scenarios in Which Affinity Mapping Would Help Enhance User Research 1. It's a Great Way to Evaluate the Research Quantitative data and qualitative data are two standard classifications of information. The latter, the qualitative type, is what affinity mapping focuses on. However, when you collect and organize data, you could notice that clusters of information grow around specific keywords or concepts. These high-traffic spots require your immediate attention. They will highlight the most critical issues for your users and help you determine which ones to tackle first. 2. You May Take Your Stakeholders Along For The Ride Communicating with stakeholders is one of the most challenging aspects of any project. As a result, asking them to participate in long user research sessions generally does not make sense when they already have fixed schedules. Affinity mapping is a productive method of including stakeholders in the research process and providing them with a preview of the findings. They can better empathize with users and gain insight into the challenges they face. Remember, they will soon forget you if you provide them with some beneficial information and fascinating quotes. 3. Collaboration Changing the position of post-it notes is not a challenging task. The results are more significant when done as a group, and the experience is more enjoyable for everyone involved. If you want a new perspective on the data, invite people with various areas of expertise and interests, like subject matter experts or stakeholders. Also, ensure that there is enough time to debrief the project once it's finished. Affinity mapping helps in starting discussions. You might learn about previously unseen patterns by looking at them in a group discussion. 4. It Aids in the Discovery of Surprising Connections Surprising incidents might emerge as your affinity map expands. Some post-its may serve as a "bridge" between ideas if they apply to more than insight. Certain realizations might form a cluster you can summarize with other higher categories. Also, you might discover that specific terminology is commonly used while discussing a particular topic, which you can incorporate into your work. An affinity map is ever-changing, so don't be afraid to reorganize it if a new, larger pattern emerges. 5. It Encourages You to Avoid Jumping to a Solutionize Intense ideas often emerge after user research, such as "some users mentioned they wanted a video, so let's develop a video!" However, before fully understanding the issue, it might be ineffective to jump to conclusions and formulate solutions. You may increase the quality of your insights to create your How Might We's, personas, and problem statements by standing back and letting the affinity mapping process do its thing. If you perform affinity mapping correctly, you'll reach a point when the answers practically write themselves. How to Facilitate a Productive Affinity Diagram Session? Establish Transparency Both the client and your team will benefit from setting expectations around how you will conduct user research. Before meeting with clients, send them the interview scripts, research plan, etc., to give them an idea regarding the session. Bring in All the Relevant Parties How often do product teams wish their clients knew as much as they did about their users? In fact, they should. Clients may miss important information when using reporting techniques like user personas. They should not participate in interviews to prevent bias, but it does not imply they cannot contribute to the study in other ways. Research findings can be improved by including clients in the analysis. Participants in an affinity diagram session should include everybody with a stake in the outcome of the product's development. Joining the Crew It would be best to establish value to stakeholders before work begins. Get the word out that everyone's contributions today will result in a more manageable data set for the team as a whole. An affinity diagram is a tool used to bridge the gap between the research and design phases of a project by highlighting commonalities discovered during the former. Reiterating the project's key performance indicators (KPIs) and stated goals can be a smart move. Having individuals enquire and offer comments about the project's trajectory is facilitated by this method. Bring Relevant Recordings or Transcripts Team members take notes during interviews in an affinity diagram session. To create insights, stakeholders review recordings and transcripts of previous meetings. Your group might also have some of them. The rainbow of sticky notes might cover your wall when an interview review is over. Group, Regroup, And Group Again The data should spontaneously yield themes. Rearranging sticky notes into clouds or clusters may require some practice for some people. Once data begins to flow, you can observe the emerging patterns. Wrap It Up After the team has participated in a few rounds of guided grouping, remind them of the diagram's set goals. Everyone must surely know their users better by now, right? Which of your preconceived notions has just been proven correct or debunked? Review the subsequent phases in the project's progression and understand how this step will help the team reach those goals. Conclusion Affinity diagrams are one of the means to organize your findings after extensive research regarding the user experience. Keeping these affinity diagrams on record during the design and development phase can help develop life-like prototypes with real data and interactions. Organizing the information using affinity diagrams won’t only enhance the user experience but will also improve and streamline the other processes involved in the project. Still, have doubts regarding affinity mapping and diagrams? Well, our experts can help you resolve all your queries and hone this marketing strategy to enhance the user experience to a great extent. Contact us today! ...
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How To Build A SaaS Marketing Dashboard For Your Business?
A SaaS marketing dashboard is essential for tracking key metrics, optimizing campaigns, and making data-driven decisions. A survey revealed that 88.2% of professionals working directly at SaaS companies utilize data dashboards to monitor and analyze their marketing performance. Whether you're a startup or a scaling SaaS business, having a well-structured dashboard can provide real-time insights into your marketing performance. What is a SaaS Marketing Dashboard? A SaaS Marketing Dashboard is a centralized visual tool that helps B2B SaaS marketing teams track, analyze, and optimize their marketing performance. It integrates data from multiple sources—such as website analytics, CRM systems, advertising platforms, and email marketing tools—to provide real-time insights into SaaS KPIs like customer acquisition cost (CAC), monthly recurring revenue (MRR), and lead-to-customer conversion rates. By leveraging a SaaS marketing dashboard, businesses can monitor campaign performance, optimize marketing spend, and drive data-driven decisions, ensuring sustainable growth in a competitive B2B SaaS landscape. Beyond data display, these dashboards are catalysts for strategic moves and operational efficiencies, with adjustable layouts to meet various corporate demands. Integration capabilities provide a comprehensive view by effortlessly combining various data sources while strong security measures maintain trust and dependability. In summary, a SaaS marketing dashboard goes beyond its function as a system, emerging as a strategic ally in making data-driven decisions with confidence and clarity and focusing on growth and SaaS branding. Why Use a SaaS Dashboard for Your Business? In the fiercely competitive SaaS market, having a comprehensive SaaS metrics dashboard is essential for gaining a competitive edge. Here are some key reasons why your SaaS business needs one: Data Management: SaaS dashboards centralize data from multiple sources, eliminating the need to access different applications and ensuring data quality, speed, and consistency. Visibility: With interactive visualizations, dashboards provide a holistic view of business operations, customer behavior, and performance metrics, enabling informed strategy development. Cohesion: By providing 24/7 access to information across platforms, dashboards promote cohesion and collaboration within the organization, including sharing insights from SaaS LTV calculation. Growth: By identifying trends and patterns, dashboards empower businesses to capitalize on strengths, minimize weaknesses, and drive continuous growth. This is essential for scaling popular SaaS products. Communication and Collaboration: Dashboards facilitate cross-departmental communication and collaboration by sharing data-driven insights and ideas. Components of a SaaS Dashboard The SaaS KPI dashboard is a strong tool that helps firms gain important insights into their performance indicators. It focuses on critical metrics, including user engagement, churn rate, customer acquisition cost, and lifetime value, providing actionable data for better decision-making. Users can quickly change their plans thanks to real-time data updates. Customization options enable enterprises to modify the dashboard to meet their requirements, assuring relevance and usability. In summary, the SaaS KPI dashboard enables firms to efficiently analyze their performance and SaaS reviews, identify areas for development, and promote ongoing growth. Actionable metrics: The SaaS KPI dashboard prioritizes actionable metrics, including user engagement, churn rate, customer acquisition cost, and lifetime value, offering valuable insights into performance. Real-time data updates: Ensuring access to the most recent data, the dashboard provides real-time updates, enabling informed decision-making based on the latest information, assuring relevance and usability in tracking SaaS lead gen. Customization: Users have the flexibility to customize the dashboard according to their specific needs, emphasizing the most relevant metrics for their business objectives. This feature enhances user experience and ensures that the dashboard remains aligned with evolving priorities. Why building a value-based dashboard Saas is essential? Constructing a value-based dashboard is imperative as it serves as a pivotal tool in user-centric software development. Unlike traditional dashboards that merely present data, a value-based dashboard is meticulously crafted to furnish users with essential insights crucial for attaining their objectives. It transcends the conventional by delivering not just information but meaningful, actionable saas reporting and insights that foster user engagement, retention, and overall satisfaction. The significance of developing a value-based dashboard is underscored in the early stages of software product creation. By prioritizing its implementation, developers ensure that users have access to pertinent information necessary for making informed decisions, which is essential for making informed decisions in SaaS sales strategy, steering their actions toward positive outcomes. This proactive approach aligns with the ethos of user empowerment, elevating the overall user experience and contributing to the long-term success and viability of the software product. In essence, a value-based dashboard becomes a cornerstone in the foundation of user-centric design, driving success and satisfaction in tandem with the users' goals. Benefits of a value-based dashboard Enhanced User Experience (UX): Incorporating a performance-driven dashboard design improves the overall user experience, making it more intuitive and user-friendly for demand generation examples. This, in turn, helps prospects quickly recognize the value of your product, facilitating smoother onboarding processes for critical business perspectives. Increased Customer Retention and Utilization: A value-based dashboard contributes to higher user retention rates by ensuring that users find ongoing value in your software. The design encourages regular and effective utilization of the software, leading to a more engaged user base. Positive Word-of-Mouth Marketing: Happy customers, impressed by the value-centric dashboard, become natural advocates for your product. This positive sentiment translates into word-of-mouth marketing, as satisfied users are more likely to share their positive experiences with others. Building Frequent Users: Satisfying users, particularly those engaged in repetitive tasks, establishes a positive feedback loop. Users find value and convenience in your software, leading to increased frequency of use and a higher likelihood of becoming dedicated, frequent users. Improved Net Promoter Scores (NPS): The positive user experiences derived from a value-driven dashboard contribute to higher Net Promoter Scores. Users are more likely to recommend your software to others, creating a positive impact on your overall marketing strategy and customer acquisition. This blog is your roadmap to developing a successful B2B SaaS referral program and mastering the essential SaaS go-to-market strategy for sustained success in this competitive landscape. SaaS Marketing Dashboard Whether you're a SaaS founder, CMO, growth marketer, or part of a performance marketing team, this template will help you track and monitor your marketing efforts. Download Now Key elements of a Saas dashboard A solid SaaS dashboard has essential components like: User-friendly interface: The SaaS dashboard template should be simple to use and comprehend so that users may quickly gain actionable insights and make decisions based on information. Real-time data updates: To guarantee that you always have the most recent information, the data on your KPI dashboard should refresh in real-time. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): KPIs give you a clear picture of how well you're doing in relation to your strategic goals. For example, if a KPI is churn rate, which tracks the frequency at which customers choosing to discontinue business with you, if the objective is to boost client retention. Customization capabilities: The dashboard should allow for easy connectivity with important business systems for the inclusion of metrics on-demand. It should be created with your specific business requirements and user preferences in mind. Additionally, it should offer a variety of graph designs using powerful charting features to accommodate different visual preferences. What Metrics Should Be Included in a SaaS Dashboard? The key to a successful SaaS analytics dashboard is to include the right mix of metrics that provide a comprehensive view of your business. Here are some essential metrics to consider: Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR): The predictable revenue generated from monthly subscriptions acts as a reliable indicator of a company's financial health and growth trajectory, facilitating strategic planning and resource allocation. Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR): Annual Recurring Revenue quantifies the total revenue generated from subscriptions annually, providing insights into long-term revenue stability and growth potential. Churn Rate: The Churn Rate, representing the percentage of customers who cancel subscriptions, offers crucial insights into customer satisfaction and retention strategies, guiding efforts to minimize attrition and maximize revenue. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): By quantifying the average expense associated with acquiring a new customer, including marketing and sales costs, Customer Acquisition Cost helps optimize budget allocation and assess the efficiency of acquisition strategies, such as backlinking strategies. Lifetime Value (LTV): Saas Lifetime Value estimates the net profit a customer will generate over their relationship with the company, guiding decisions related to customer retention, loyalty programs, and overall revenue optimization strategies. Average Revenue per User (ARPU): Average Revenue per User signifies the average revenue generated per user or customer, aiding in evaluating pricing strategies, product offerings, and revenue forecasting within the SaaS market Strategy. Customer Retention Rate: Customer Retention Rate, representing the percentage of customers retained over a specific period, underscores customer satisfaction and loyalty, influencing retention strategies and revenue stability. Lead Velocity Rate (LVR): Lead Velocity Rate measures the rate at which qualified leads are generated, reflecting the effectiveness of marketing efforts and providing insights into sales pipeline health and future revenue projections. Net Promoter Score (NPS): The Net Promoter Score serves as a key indicator of customer loyalty and satisfaction, gauging the likelihood of customers recommending the product or service to others, and guiding efforts to enhance customer experience and retention. When selecting a SaaS dashboard template, consider the following factors: User-friendliness: The dashboard should be straightforward to use, providing rapid access to pertinent information. Scalability: As your company expands, the dashboard should be able to handle increased data quantities and changing requirements. Security: To secure critical corporate data, ensure that the dashboard uses industry-standard security procedures. Integration: The dashboard should work smoothly with your existing systems and data sources, allowing for a smooth flow of information. Customization: Look for a dashboard with customization options to personalize the UI and KPIs to your company's requirements. Conclusion SaaS dashboards are essential tools for contemporary SaaS companies because they capture the power of data visualization and provide the insights required to drive growth, improve customer experience, and optimize operations. SaaS dashboards including those integrated into SaaS website design and SaaS pricing pages, are the foundation for data-driven decision-making, resulting in corporate success. As you begin your SaaS journey, thoroughly assess your company needs and select a SaaS dashboard design that corresponds with your objectives. With the correct dashboard in place, you'll be able to navigate the competitive landscape, find opportunities, and make educated decisions to move your company ahead. ...
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