They, whoever they are, say a picture is worth a thousand words. But they almost never add that a word — frequently even a very small short word — is frequently worth a thousand pictures.
Consider the extremely short, easy-to-spell, single-syllable word “free.” Think of a picture of a product, any product from a 60-inch plasma TV to, say, a bar of soap. A certain number of people will respond favorably to the picture — maybe they think the car looks hot or the soap’s color is cool.
Add 999 other pictures to the display of the TV or the soap. How many people will be favorably impressed now? A few more, certainly, but not many. Most folks won’t even bother to look at 1,000 pictures of either a blank-screened television or a bar of soap.
Add the word “free” to the first picture. How many people will respond to this? Oh, probably about a thousand percent more in the case of the soap and a hundred thousand more in the case of the big screen. Thus we see that the word is indeed worth at least 1,000 pictures.
Let’s look at another, more typical, example. A DVD player. Our picture shows a smallish, rectangular black box that looks pretty much the same as a million other black boxes that play DVDs.
Merchant A displays the box’s picture, price, and a “add to cart” button on his website.
Merchant B has the box’s picture, the price and three lines of type saying things like:
– Progressive scan
– Multifunction remote
– Dual-voltage
Merchant C shows the picture, the price and a complete list of features like digital audio out, supports all DVD video and audio standards, MPEG and JPEG compatible, etc.
Merchant D’s page includes everything that’s on Merchant C’s, but adds a short sales pitch: Pioneer’s latest ultra-stable DVD player is equally at home with commercial video DVDs and home-made DVD - R, +R, DVD-RW, music and still-image discs. With the best error-correction circuitry in the business, it offers jitter and skip-free viewing of all your Hollywood favorites.
Given the same DVD player selling at an identical price in all four stores, who do you think is going to make the most sales?
If you said “Merchant D,” you’re right. Followed, in descending order, by merchants C, B and A. In other words, the seller who relies most heavily on the picture being worth more than words will inevitably be the one closing the fewest deals.
Words are potent. Powerful enough to have convinced you to read 427 worth of them to get to this point in this post. Not too shabby, considering there isn’t any picture at all to go along with them.
Unfortunately, for many of us, we have more skill with images than with words. Modern digital cameras don’t exactly make it impossible to take a bad picture, but they do make it cheap and easy for even the rankest amateur photographer to take as many dozen as necessary to get one good enough to use on a website.
Words are different. There aren’t any programs that will produce text coherently describing your product, let alone convincing enough to make someone visiting your site want to buy it. Words, the ones that bridge the gap between thought (”should I”) and action (clicking “buy now”) are too important to leave to amateurs. For professional words that sell, try GetWebContent.com.
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