Everything You Should Know About Hero Image in Web Design

Any web page leaves a positive or negative impression on the user during a visit. This reaction is mostly determined by what the person sees in front of him or her. Since the eyes are the most vital organ, you can most quickly attract visitors with a bold, vivid image. It instantly captures the attention and serves as the main information block for websites or mobile applications.

Although hero-images, despite their name, don’t run on rooftops or squeeze skyscrapers, they do a pretty significant design function: they make websites more superior. Creating an excellent hero-image website design makes the page more beautiful and motivates the user to view the rest of the page content, where, in turn, the information you want to convey is located.

Today, we’d like to shed light on the website hero-images’ topic and how they can boost your conversions.

A hero image on a website is a banner in a large image or photograph form.

A hero image is a large image placed in a web page header. It is usually a start screen. That is the first image the user sees when he opens the site.

Often, the context of a landing page sentence is reinforced by a hero image. So the hero image was near the content to which it belongs. It is usually placed as a background layer below the header text or above the content block it corresponds to.

The hero image is often the first piece of information that is presented to a site visitor. It aims to provide an overview of the most critical content on the site and to describe your business concept in general.

Using a hero image on your website can help build trust among new visitors and convert them into your customers by conveying a message and creating a relevant mood.

The use of hero-images makes the page more beautiful and motivates the user to view the rest of the page content, where, in turn, the information you want to convey is located.

It is worth remembering that it only takes users 50 milliseconds to form an opinion about a website. This is why you need to make sure your site is easy to read, clean, and aesthetically pleasing. Using a hero image is an excellent way to ensure that the user correctly recognizes your site.

Why are hero images significant for businesses?

• They are large, dimensional, and grab the user’s attention on the page;
• They help users identify a branding unique sales pitch and immediately form an opinion about the brand upon page load;
• Many web designers create hero images using photographs of real human faces. It helps designers personalize users.

Some designers opt for animated characters (using videos, sliders, or carousels) to create a more personalized experience for web users. This helps attract users as soon as they land on a page on the site.

Hero image websites have become a popular web design trend with these advantages.

According to recent statistics, users focus more than 80% of their attention at the top of the page and mostly scroll through the rest of the content. This is why it’s essential to attract your target audience during the hero-images stage. A properly selected hero image should be visually attractive and boost conversions. Using the example of successful and well-known companies, we suggest you discover types of hero images.

1) Hero images using photo

In our opinion, one of the most popular hero image types is real photos. Let’s look at one of our Gapsy studio designer’s projects. Just look at how we incorporated photos into the site.

We have chosen a photo of the sea view as the main image. These hero images are appropriate if you have quality photos of your products and show action. The integration of the product with nature in action looks very nice.

The visual component in the interface is everything. Choosing images that match the theme, goals, and concept strategy is important. You will immediately lose all visitors to your site by selecting the wrong photos.

2) Hero images with product picture

That’s also a prevalent type of hero-images.

Such images work better for standard products: furniture, gadgets, phones, etc.

Take Apple as an example. Each landing page showcases the design of the company’s products. Strive to stand out and be different. The graphic design block should motivate the user to stay on the site and view it again at each visit.

Here is a well-known Nike website. They also use their product as a hero-image. Everything is just simple and understandable for a buyer.

You may also like this topic, Everything You Need to Know About Product Design. Hurry up to find every aspect of product design!

3) Hero images that push emotions

The focus of this category is on enhancing the user’s emotions. This option works great for non-physical goods or services. That is, where it is necessary to emphasize the impact of the product/service.

For example, the Kindeo company provides video creation services for various holidays, where relatives and friends can record a video greeting and create one large greeting card in video format. Their hero image demonstrates the feelings of happiness from the holiday and the care of loved ones who want to give a pleasant congratulation to their relatives.

By placing such hero images, the company gives users who first came to their website feel the love and happiness that awaits every person who receives such a video congratulation. The image works to enhance emotions.

4) Behind the Scenes Hero images

Behind the Scenes, videos are prevalent everywhere. They accompany music videos, films, YouTube videos, and other formats, showing material usually not included in the final version.

As hero images, the behind-the-scenes demonstrate a specific process associated with the product. For example, making this type of image works best for the craft business. You can put a photo of the design or production process as the main image.

For example, the company Charbonnel uses a video as a hero image. They aesthetically bring the client the design of the premises that they provide to the smallest detail. Thanks to this video, a customer immediately understands what kind of products he can get right here and sees how it looks in both interior designs.

5) Hero-images with CTA

Do not forget that hero images are created not only for a visually beautiful “wow effect,” but also do not forget about the call to action. The user should like the picture and impress him and make him familiarize himself with the product or service and proceed to purchase.

Let’s take the Jansport home page as an example. Their header serves a clear purpose – to invite visitors to see their products and is nothing more than a photo of that same product. This method is quite popular and effective.

6) Multiple hero-images

Often well-known companies use several hero images in their website UI design. Gladz is an excellent example because they use several different hero images so that you can see the top products right away. The topmost image of the page is a full screen with fixed-width navigation. For sections of the site, other embodiments are used that adapt to the width of the screen.

7) Hero-images that outline company benefits

This type of image shows the benefits of the product as such. It is a bit like the type of pictures that appeal to emotions. With only one difference, you are not shown how you will feel, but the benefits you will receive when using the product.

Here is an example of Jonson’s Baby’s well-known company, which sells care cosmetics for children.

Their hero image is a child and adult hand that forms a heart. The picture is reinforced with text: “Gentle for Babies, and the Planet,” which tells us that the company creates quality products for children and protects the planet, which is very important in the 21st century.

There are many types of hero images. We showed you the main ones and the brightest in our opinion. The hardest part is choosing the right image for your website.

1) Use relevant images

When choosing a hero image, give preference to images that match the site’s content, theme, and idea. Materials from photo stocks on the main page are already a cliché. There is nothing wrong with them, but this approach is best avoided if you want to familiarize users with your site’s main idea quickly or do not want to be like other companies.

2) Create a dazzling masterpiece out of a hero image

Saul Bass said, “Design is visual thinking.” Indeed, this is the same content, only presented as an image. It allows you to highlight the content of a web page. A carefully crafted hero image will delight the eye and grab users’ attention.

3) Try to be emotional

According to Descartes’ Error, Antonio Damasio, professor of neuroscience at the University of Southern California, argues that emotion is a necessary ingredient in almost all decisions; an impressive percentage of consumer loyalty and purchase decisions are formed based on emotions. If your graphic banner is endowed with personality and plot, it will cause visitors responses.

4) Use high-quality graphics

Pictures should not be blurry or retouched. Poor quality photos look unsightly. The use of such options in web design indicates a lack of professionalism. The hero image banner is the face of your brand. When developing a site, use vector graphic editors.

5) Improve conversion rate by adding CTA elements

The most common call-to-action (CTA) is buttons placed over a large image at the top of the screen. Therefore, it is essential to achieve visual harmony between the hero image, content, and CTA button.

6) Optimize the image for different screen sizes

Make sure the photo is sized to fit the display of different devices. Then, adapt the image for other platforms, even if you have to resize it.

Use tools that allow you to adjust the dimensions of your images. For example, Cloudinary is a cloud-based web project that will enable you to track image breakpoints interactively.

7) Unleash your creative imagination

Creative illustrations and hand-drawn web designs quickly become a popular alternative to simple hero image banners. Creative illustrations provide more opportunities for conveying difficult information to capture in one frame.

8) Choose appropriative colors

Also, do not forget about the colors and shades to choose the design of your hero image. According to one study, the most widely used color that all users like is 42% blue, 14% green, and 14% purple.

According to this study, women and men prefer different colors in a design, which also needs to be considered when designing targeted at the target audience. Just take a look at how other colors men and women prefer:

You should also consider your target audience’s age when choosing a color for hero images because color preferences are also different for different age categories.

If you want to dive deeper into the topic of design colors, we suggest you read our article on UI colors and understand how color can boost your conversion.

A hero image is an effective way to improve the design of any web design project. You just need to remember a couple of simple rules: photographs must be high-quality, match the rest of the content, and be catchy. In addition, all elements of a web page’s visual design should be visible and readable so that users quickly understand their central meaning and message.

If you’re new to design, creating website hero images can be a daunting task for you. We offer you our professional design team’s services to handle any of your wishes. They have more than 130 successful projects on their account. Therefore, we know exactly what we are dealing with.

And to make sure of our professionalism, we invite you to familiarize yourself with the services we provide, as well as you can watch our successful projects on Dribbble and Behance.