You Don’t Give Up Until It’s Right

I’m getting ready to update my website for some new offerings and of course I took the opportunity to look at everything through fresh eyes.

Some pages will stay the same. Others will get a few tweaks but a goodly number will be overhauled.

Which means—since my brand includes strong visuals—I needed a handful of new images.

Unless you’re a designer, I suspect you’d be surprised at how much time sourcing the right stock shots requires.

They can’t be cheesy, have to be on-message for the page and use the right color categories. I spent several hours sorting through thousands of images.

Luckily, I have a terrific collaborative designer who is as invested in the look of the site as I am.

She’s the one who suggested we swap out a less than perfect stock shot for one of the back of my head (sounds weird, but it works for the page).

So I ordered a snazzy new set of headphones for the image (two hours to find them and then two days to get them) and spent an hour with my local photog getting the shot. The designer will use a tiny version of it to create a teaser on the home page.

Obsessive? Maybe—but I wasn’t giving up until it was right.

Part of my brand is those images and it would be out of alignment for me to choose badly.

Website images may not matter so much for your brand—but there will be something else that does.

And I guarantee you won’t stop until it’s just right.