Replace them with photographs of your own work, however imperfect. Stock images are recognised, and recognising them raises the question of why there are no real ones.

The site

A plumbing company with a tidy, modern site and eleven images.

A smiling man in an unbranded polo shirt holding a wrench, photographed in a studio.

A kitchen no local house has, with worktops in a style that does not exist here.

A van that is not their van, in a livery that is not theirs, on a street that is not in this country.

The inference a visitor makes

The third and fourth are the damaging ones. A visitor does not object to stock photography in principle; they notice its absence of evidence, and the absence is what raises the question.

People recognise them now

Which is different from ten years ago.

The same handful of images appear across thousands of sites, and anybody who has looked at four plumbers in an afternoon has seen the same smiling man on two of them.

At that point the images stop being neutral decoration and become a signal, because a competitor two tabs away had photographs of a real bathroom in a real house.

The comparison happens whether you intend it or not.

And the business with real photographs wins that comparison without having said anything.

Which is a low bar and most trades sites do not clear it.

The photographs you need are worse than these

And they work better, which is the counterintuitive part.

A phone photograph of an actual job, in poor light, with a bit of mess in the frame, is more persuasive than a studio image.

It reads as real, and real is the thing being sought.

Nobody hiring a plumber wants a beautifully lit stranger; they want evidence that somebody has done this work before in a house like theirs.

So the bar is not photographic quality, it is authenticity, and every tradesperson already carries the equipment.

Three photographs a week for a month produces more usable material than any stock library.

A worked example

A plumbing business replaced eleven stock images with fourteen photographs from their own jobs over six weeks.

None was well lit and several were slightly crooked.

Enquiries rose by about a third over the following quarter, and several customers mentioned the photographs specifically.

The one they mentioned most was a before-and-after of a corroded pipe under a sink, which was the least attractive image on the site.

It was also the one that looked most like the problem the customer had.

The stock photographs had been in place for four years.

The licensing question nobody checks

Which is the risk underneath the credibility problem.

A good share of images on small business sites were taken from a search result rather than licensed, by whoever built the site.

That produces demand letters, which arrive years later and are unpleasant and expensive.

If you did not buy the images and cannot show a licence, that is worth establishing now rather than when a letter arrives.

Replacing them with your own photographs solves the credibility problem and this one together.

Ask whoever built the site where the images came from, in writing.

Where stock is legitimate

Since a blanket rule is wrong.

A diagram, an illustration, or a background texture is not pretending to be evidence.

A photograph illustrating a general article, clearly not presented as your work, is fine.

And a business genuinely unable to photograph its work, because it is inside walls or behind privacy, has a real constraint.

The line is whether the image is standing in for evidence you do not have.

Where it is, it is doing harm rather than filling space.

Put a face on the site

Which is the specific replacement that changes the most.

A photograph of the person who will actually arrive at somebody's house is worth more than any number of job photographs, because that is the anxiety being addressed.

Somebody letting a stranger into their home wants to know who is coming, and a real face on the site answers that before the enquiry.

It does not need to be a portrait session; standing outside the van in ordinary work clothes is exactly right and reads better than a studio shot would.

Include first names, since a customer who can say the name of the person who is coming is considerably more comfortable than one who cannot.

The images are probably slowing the site too

Which is the second cost of buying photographs rather than taking them.

Stock images arrive at very large dimensions intended for print, and a site built quickly frequently uploads them unchanged.

The result is a home page carrying several megabytes of photographs of people who do not work there, loading slowly on the phones most visitors are using.

Replacing them with your own photographs is an opportunity to size them properly on the way in, which improves the site twice for the same work.

Check the page weight before and after, since the difference on a site like this is frequently the largest speed improvement available.

The counter-case within the site

The rest of the site is competent.

Services are clearly described, the service area is named, the telephone number is tappable, and the form is short.

It reads as a business that took its site seriously and delegated the images, which is exactly what happened.

And a new business genuinely has no photographs of its own work, which is a real problem with no good answer in the first months.

In that case fewer images and considerably more specific text is better than borrowed credibility.

Write about the work in detail instead, and replace the words with photographs as they accumulate.

Six months of a habit produces a portfolio and no shortcut produces one at all.

Start the habit now and the site improves on its own from here.

What to change

  1. Photograph three jobs a week.
  2. Include before shots.
  3. Replace the worst stock image first.
  4. Use the team's actual faces.
  5. Photograph your own van.
  6. Ask where the current images came from.
  7. Accept imperfect photographs.

Step five costs nothing and is skipped everywhere, since a photograph of your actual van outside an actual house is both proof and advertising.

The licensing risk is covered in a photo you do not have the rights to.

Frequently asked questions

What does a visitor conclude?

Not that stock photography is wrong, but that there is no evidence of your work, and the absence is what raises the question of whether you have done any.

Has this changed?

Yes. The same images appear across thousands of sites, and anybody comparing four plumbers in an afternoon has seen the same smiling man on two of them.

Do my photographs need to be good?

No. A phone photograph of an actual job in poor light is more persuasive than a studio image, because the thing being sought is authenticity rather than quality.

What is the hidden risk?

Licensing. A good share of images on small business sites were taken from a search result rather than licensed, which produces demand letters years later.

When is stock legitimate?

For diagrams, illustrations, textures, or images illustrating a general article. The line is whether the image stands in for evidence you do not have.

What if I am new?

Fewer images and more specific text beats borrowed credibility. Photograph your own van and your own team while you accumulate job photographs.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

Eleven images on your site and none of them yours?

Photograph three jobs this week. The worst of them will outperform the best stock image.

Start a Conversation