Relevant Pictures Do Matter

[Educator]

Hi Everyone,

I've been working on a few things that have taken my time away from Bloggerings but wanted to share the following in case it helps.

I was looking at my visitor stats from Google Analytics last week and was astounded at what I saw.

As those of you know who have been so supportive of our home renovation / energy conservation site, we have had lots of pictures in many of our posts to help the visitor better understand what the heck we are talking about. When talking about a home renovation / energy conservation product it can be hard for the visitor to visualize. It's the nature of the subject matter I believe.

From an adult education perspective, there are 4 different ways a human being learns...auditory, visually, reflective and active.

Although an individual may say they only learn in one of those 4 ways, they are wrong. Every person learns to differing degrees amongst those 4 ways, but they do learn in each of them. Every person has their favourite way that they are the most comfortable in learning and retaining knowledge, but they do learn in all for ways.

How can I be so sure? Well, because I finished my graduate work in adult education 2 years ago and remember going through all the various empirical studies

Now, back to blogs. Are bloggers really blogging to learn? Some. Some are blogging for entertainment. And, for entertainment one could debate whether a person is entertained by all 4 types of learning. No idea on that one. However, with the internet, for many auditory is thrown out the window as most sites (like mine) do not have sound to transmit the web page's message. And, many folks on the internet do not have the speakers turned on.

Like the person who suddenly lost their sight, the other senses I am told spring into action and become more acute.

I am a big believer in visual aspect of the internet, including blogs; especially those that do not provide sound. But, I was amaze when I looked at my site's visitor statistics this morning. The following numbers are relative and not the actual numbers (a fella's got to have some secrets, doesn't he? ). The are from the Content Overview area of Google Analytics and represent the number of page views for the top 4 pages on our site:


11,000 Home Page
9,000 Tips With Pictures Category Page
1,500 Ecoenergy Page
1,400 Color / Colour Coordination Article
1,300 Kitchen Remodeling Part 8 Article

Wow! The Tips with Pictures category page is #2 for Page views with a 6 to 1 superior visitation advantage over the third place page which is our static ecoENERGY page. And the Tips With Pictures category page is not that far behind the home page which logic tells me is going to be the #1 page of any web site.

If nothing ever would, this data from my own site convinces me that when one is being entertained, one want's the visuals. This I would think is especially so if the verbiage on a page is not in one's native language.

Thoughts?
Dan

[sukosaki]

I agree. Many bloggers find this out and the first thing they do is a post about it. The hard part is sometimes finding a photo that is similar to your post or remembering to get on embedded before you publish

[Ferox]

I've always tried to have a bit of relevant clip art or a photo that I've taken to liven up the column of text. I know for a fact that there is a subscribed reader on Corollax who has admited to reading the blog posts in a reader, and then visiting the blog to actually look at the picture.

[EverythingEverywhere]

Best thing I did was when I started to post a daily travel photo on my website. I had thousands of photos, so it wasn't hard to find a photo for everyday. It provides daily content for times I can't post and always ensures I have visual content on my site.

[QuirkyJessi]

They're definitely beneficial!

[ramona]

I agree with all my heart. They make the articles look better, bring in some life to the blog and even help us remember some blog posts better. I started using them recently and it's a good thing.