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Images improve a website when each one has a specific job: explaining a step, showing a real product or place, identifying a person, or helping a visitor orient themselves. They work against a site when they are generic, heavy, or unlabelled. More pictures do not make a page better on their own. The useful question for every image is what it contributes, who it serves, whether everyone can perceive or operate it, and what it costs in load time.
Start with the job each image does
Before choosing an image, name the role it plays on the page. The role determines whether the image deserves space at all, how large it should be, and what text must accompany it.
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- Explains: a diagram of a process, a labelled screenshot, or a chart that shows a pattern the text describes. These are often the most valuable images because they carry information that would take paragraphs to convey.
- Demonstrates: a photograph of the actual product, a finished result, or the real inside of a workshop. Visitors use these to judge whether something is what they expect.
- Identifies: a headshot of a team member, a logo, or a photo of a venue. The image tells the visitor who or what they are dealing with.
- Establishes context: a photo of the location behind a travel guide or the setting for a case study. It supports the content without carrying a precise fact.
- Decorates: a background texture, a divider flourish, or a generic photo of people smiling at a laptop. This is the weakest role. If an image only fills space, ask whether the space is needed at all.
Relevance is judged against the actual content and audience. A photo of a city skyline can be useful on a page about a local clinic and meaningless on a page about tax software. Generic stock imagery that does not support the surrounding text tends to add weight without adding understanding.
Why images help people understand and navigate
The W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) states that images and graphics “make content more pleasant and easier to understand for many people, and in particular for those with cognitive and learning disabilities.” Its image tutorial also notes that images serve as cues that people with visual impairments, including people with low vision, use to orient themselves within content. These are WAI statements about purpose and usability, not a measured effect size for any particular site.
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The same guidance points to the cost of getting this wrong. Its tutorial states that removing images from websites, as in so-called “text-only versions,” makes them less accessible and less functional for these users and situations. Images are therefore not optional decoration to strip out for accessibility. They need appropriate text alternatives instead.
Source: W3C WAI, “Images Tutorial”.
Write alternative text for the role, not the picture
Alternative text is what a screen reader announces in place of an image, and what appears if the image cannot load. Writing it well means deciding what the image is for in its context. A literal list of everything visible is usually the wrong target.
Informative images
Describe the essential information the image provides to a reader of this page. A photo of a damaged roof used in an insurance claim guide needs a description of the damage that matters to the claim, not the colour of the sky behind it. Keep it concise and specific.
Decorative images
If the image adds no information, mark it so assistive technology skips it. W3C WAI states that a null text alternative should be provided “when the only purpose of an image is to add visual decoration to the page, rather than to convey information that is important to understanding the page.” In HTML this is alt="", which is different from omitting the attribute.
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Images used as links or buttons
When an image is the only content of a link or button, its alternative text should describe what happens, not what the picture looks like. W3C WAI puts it directly: the text alternative “should describe the functionality of the link or button rather than the visual image.” A shopping-cart icon that links to the basket should read as something like “View basket,” not “Shopping cart icon.”
Complex charts and diagrams
A short alt string may not equal a dense chart. Give the chart a brief label that says what it is, then provide a nearby text explanation of the data and the conclusion a reader should draw. The same information should be available to someone who cannot see the graphic.
Text inside the image
If an image contains essential text, such as a price, a date, or a set of instructions, repeat that text on the page as real text. Alt text alone can be a poor substitute for a longer passage.
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Images and search: what alt text does and does not do
Google Search Central describes alt text as the most important attribute for giving search systems more metadata about an image. It also links that metadata to accessibility, since the same text helps screen-reader users and people on low-bandwidth connections understand what they are looking at. Its image guidance is at Google Search Central, “Image SEO Best Practices”.
The practical reading is that accurate, contextual descriptions serve both goals, while keyword lists serve neither. Google’s guidance does not promise higher rankings from alt text, so treat search benefit as a side effect of describing images honestly. Write the description a sighted visitor would find useful, in the words the surrounding page already uses.
What images cost in load time
Image bytes are part of the user experience. The Core Web Vitals project’s Q2 2026 field-data report, published in 2026, found that the typical page it measured served 21 images weighing 1.1 MB. That is a figure for one dataset in one reporting period, so it describes the sample rather than a rule for your site. Check your own pages with the tools you use for performance monitoring.
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- Memory Support: Works with Class 10 SD, SDHC, or SDXC cards up to 512GB
- Rechargeable Battery: Included LB-012 lithium-ion battery charges in the camera over USB with the supplied adapter in about 2 hours; charge it for at least 4 hours before first use to maximize battery life
Practical steps to keep images efficient
- Size each image to its display. Export at roughly the largest width it will be shown at, not the dimensions of the original camera file.
- Offer responsive versions. Use
srcsetandsizesso the browser can choose an appropriate file for the screen, for example<img src="team-800.jpg" srcset="team-400.jpg 400w, team-800.jpg 800w, team-1600.jpg 1600w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 800px" alt="Maria Chen, head of support" width="800" height="600">. - Defer images below the fold. Add
loading="lazy"to images the visitor will not see immediately. Do not apply it to the main image above the fold, since that delays content the visitor needs first. - Reserve space for each image. Set
widthandheightattributes, or an equivalent aspect ratio in CSS, so the layout does not jump as images load. - Measure, then choose formats and compression. The sources do not establish a single best format, file size, or compression setting for every site. Compare results on your own pages.
Choosing images for a specific page
When comparing two candidate images, assess them on the same six points:
- Relevance: does it serve the page’s purpose and the audience’s question?
- Information or function: what does it convey or make possible that the text does not?
- Text alternative: can you write an accurate alternative for its role, including a plain text version of any essential words?
- Rights: does your site have the licence to use it, and does the licence cover your use?
- Visual fit: how does the crop look on a narrow phone screen as well as a wide desktop layout? Does it represent the people or places involved accurately?
- Delivery cost: what is its file weight at display size, and does it need responsive versions?
No single format or visual style is best for every use. A plain product photograph taken in good light and cropped tightly often does more than a stylised illustration, but that is a judgement for each page rather than a rule.
Licensed stock libraries can help when you lack suitable original imagery, and image-editing software can help you prepare files. Choose on the criteria above rather than on the look of a stock catalogue.
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Start with the pages that have the most traffic or the most images. For each image, record its role, whether it is informative, decorative, or functional, what its alternative text currently says, and its file size at display dimensions. Remove decorative images that add nothing, replace generic images with specific ones where you can, and fix alternative text that is missing, empty where it should not be, or a keyword list. Then address file weight and responsive delivery. Images that do real work are worth the bytes; those that do not are a cost a visitor pays without benefit.
Used this way, images make a site easier to follow, more trustworthy to a first-time visitor, and usable by people who cannot see them. That result comes from purpose, description, and restraint, not from the number of pictures on the page.
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