The term hero image is used by web designers to describe large images that take up most of the page. You may have noticed a trend towards using hero images more and more in the last few years.

The reason for this trend is simple. Large images increase sales. In fact many companies, including Google, Dell, Walmart, and McDonalds have seen the number of site visitors who buy (their conversion rate) improve by 35-105%!

Why is this the case? A 2015 university study monitored the brain activity of people while they were looking at websites. While viewing websites with small images and a lot of text, the participants had an increase of activity in the frontal lobe, which controls analytical thinking. However, viewing websites with large hero images caused an increase of activity in the limbic system, which is responsible for processing and controlling emotions.

As it turns out, we are emotional creatures. When we see images we have an immediate emotional response that a wall of text simply won’t inspire. Hero images speak to your visitors at a gut level. While you might think it’s more important to give them all the information they need to make an informed choice, you actually end up overwhelming people which shortens their attention span.

Human emotions are such a powerful motivator that empires have been both built and destroyed because of them. If an image can illicit a visitor’s emotional connection to your business or express how you’re going to solve their problem immediately, you’ve got a recipe for website success.

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