If you need to showcase your products and services, highlight calls to action, or add visual interest to your website, you need to know how to use images properly to maximise your website conversion rate.

Make your images work harder for you and your business by following these guidelines. Ensure that all images are:

1.Relevant

Images can be an effective tool in giving site visitors a quick idea of what any page content is about. Users can glance at images and if they're relevant immediately understand the message you're trying to convey. Marketing images used to enhance your brand are perfectly OK, provided of course they convey your brand values.

2.Easy-to-understand

Many images are far too detailed, making it difficult for users to quickly understand their purpose. This is particularly true for small images that link to another page featuring an enlarged version of the image. Simple images make it easy for visitors to cast an eye across the screen and quickly get a sense of what the page or the site is about.

3.Quick to download

Despite broadband penetration increasing and increasing (in the UK just 15% of Internet connections are dial-up) it's still important to reduce image file size as much as possible. Even on broadband connections any page with a number of heavy images can take a good few seconds to fully download, frustrating your users in the process.

There is a tradeoff between good quality images and bloating out your site and making it run very slowly - When pages download slowly, visitors instantly click back to the search engine to find a different website that downloads more quickly - and if that's a competitor website, that's where they are going to be buying from.

4.Able to be changed

When an image is of a product that can be purchased, it's crucial that users can adjust the display of that image. This means providing alternative views, like enlarging, zooming, thumbnails, different colors, finishes, shapes, sizes and so on.

So there are my handy hints for boosting your online sales by making sure your website uses images in a customer friendly way that boosts your business online.

Remember, images are a powerful selling and communication too so the more time you spend making sure your presenting visual information in a way that really appeals to you visitors, you can really improve the effectiveness of your website.