Snowballs and Rockets: Why Visual Marketing Matters for Ecommerce Websites

Let’s assume they use the voice option to search by tapping the microphone icon next to the search bar on their phone screen.

In which case, they might ask, “How do you measure women’s workwear?”

I know Google’s algorithm seems to like the simple, easy-to-follow list format presented as a solution to a particular query.

So in that case, Google is likely to deliver a top organic result that provides a simple step-by-step guide to getting the right measurements.

Like this type of text-based content:

But what if the answer is actually not specific to the female body-type, which presumably means Google couldn’t easily find a more relevant answer.

Frustrated, the person searching may then resort to typing in a variation of the search query spoken earlier.

But this time by adding a qualifier such as “size chart”.

Because the user is thinking visually. It’s what we do.

For example, “womens workwear size chart” – which IMO is more likely what you’d type as opposed to speak out loud.

I think in that scenario the SERP is likely to include image-based results in addition to the text-based results (because size charts are highly visual, like all charts or graphs or Venn diagrams, etc.).

Like this:

Notice the little figures in the bottom left next to the charts?

You can’t discern the chart from the thumbnail but you can instantly recognise the human figure and your eye is naturally drawn towards it.

Images that appear in these blocks are all nice, free organic links.

We recently produced this image for our client for this precise reason, combining an image of a human figure, colour, and short chunks of formatted text as a numbered list.

And it does pretty well appearing in SERPs for a bunch of related long tail keywords.

It helps that the rest of the page it appears in is nicely optimised for the topic.

Our thinking is, a visual guide is always going to be more effective than words only.

How much more effective? A 1982 study says 323% more effective.

I reckon those researchers ended up working for IKEA.

Our theory is the above graphic works particularly well because the combination of image and text is almost irresistible.

Think about it – the human brain processes images much faster than it processes text – maybe not 60,000 times faster as is often cited – but still a LOT faster. Probably around 43% faster.

So when we see a nice clean, colourful image highly relevant to our search, our brains almost immediately recognise the connection and make our eyes hover over that visual stimulus for a fraction longer than other less-compelling options.

And then the brain registers the accompanying text – in this example broken up into easily digestible chunks.

The expectation is that this text is going to be highly contextual – and relevant to the image, which the brain has already established as a good match with our user intent – namely, how do you measure workwear for women?

Most of the image-based results are generally tables – a pretty typical format for a “size chart” – but as thumbnails they are not immediately big enough for our eyes to ascertain their detail (well, my eyes anyway).

So it’s easy for a splash of colour and an organic shape like a human figure to catch the eye for just one fraction of an instant – but that’s enough if that image then offers just enough visual information to hold the brain’s attention.

And at this point it is still very much visual processing that is occurring – even when it “sees” the text – the brain simply registers it as words which are presumably highly relevent to the topic at hand.

And then you get the click, which quickly confirms that the text is indeed information that supports the image’s promise of a solution.

Which increases dwell time and improves your page’s ranking over time.

The snowball effect.

So, in my mind it’s a symbiotic relationship between what we see and what we eventually read that contributes to our decision to invest time and effort in investigating a particular search result.

And it’s earning that decision that drives me to keep searching for new ways of using visual content.