‘4 Critical Reasons Why Photos Need Captions’ – Sean D’Souza’s Article

Imagine you put a photo of a client on your sales page

Just the photo.
No name of the client.
No designation.
No clue as to what industry that client is in, or where they come
from.
Heck, would anyone even know that person was a client?

And yet the moment you put in the details, it’s like a fog has
lifted.

Suddenly there’s no room for confusion, no weird guessing or
conjecture. The caption has done its job. And done it well. And
yet, we don’t use captions as much as we should. Many websites
failed to pick up the subtle, yet critical power of the caption.
And it’s plainly silly to be lazy and not put a caption below your
photo or illustration–and especially on a sales page.

And here are four important reasons.

Reason No 1: Without captions, readers will come to their own
conclusion

Let’s say you have a photo on the page. It makes perfect sense to
you why that photo exists. But the reader may get the wrong idea.
The job of the caption is to yank the reader from whatever they’re
thinking about, and gets them to specifically read what you want
them to read.

Without the caption the reader may take a look at the photo and
come to their own conclusion–which may be erroneous and even
counterproductive to what you want them to read.

The only way you can control the situation is to slide in the
caption. That way there’s zero-misinterpretation. Your reader sees
the picture–then reads the caption. And all is well!

But that’s only one reason. Let’s check out Reason 2.

Reason No.2: Captions give you three ways to educate and create
curiosity

When you’re getting a point across in a caption, you can use three
strategies. You can use just a problem. Or just a solution. Or a
combination of a problem and solution. And every one of these
methods immediately creates curiosity and/or education.

Let’s examine three situations with three types of captions:

1) Solution-only caption: (Product name) gives you clear guidelines
that enable you to see for yourself what’s missing and what’s
working in your sales copy.
2) Problem-only caption: How do you know if your website message is
working as well as it should? How can you know in advance that your
presentation will wake up your audience?
3) Combination of Problem-solution based caption: How do you know
if your website message is working as well as it should? How can
you know in advance that your presentation will wake up your
audience? (Product name) gives you clear guidelines that enable you
to see for yourself what’s missing and what’s working in your sales
copy.

See how all three types of captions work to educate and create
curiosity? Well, let’s go and look at the curiosity bit a little
more with Reason 3.

Reason 3: Captions are a handbrake

We’re used to seeing pictures and quickly scrolling by. But the
moment there’s a caption we’re compelled to read the content under
the caption. This is because we want to be sure we’ve got the
correct idea. This is why having photos and illustrations on a web
page or sales page is very important, because it keeps the reader
from zooming madly from the start to the end.

Instead the photo gets the reader’s attention and the caption makes
sure to keep that attention. And while creating this handbrake
momentum of stop-go-stop, captions are doing one of the most
valuable tasks of all: They’re acting as mini-sales messages.

Reason 4: How captions create mini-sales messages

When you run a problem-solution scenario in your caption, you’re
effectively doing what every good headline does. Every outstanding
headline should be designed to get your attention and the caption
is nothing but a headline under a photo. If properly done, a
caption gets the reader to be more curious and to investigate even
deeper into the product or service.

A solution-only caption may not create the same level of curiosity,
but it will still get the reader to get a much better understanding
of the product or service.

But does every photo or illustration need to have a caption?

Ideally, yes. No matter which newspaper or magazine you pick up,
you’ll find captions abound everywhere. There are exceptions of
course, but those exceptions are kinda are rare. Almost every photo
wants the power of the caption to drive the point home, and yet
website owners miss out on its awesome potential to slow down,
educate, create curiosity and drive home a mini-sales message.

Photo. Caption.
Photo. Caption.
Yet another photo. Yet another caption.
That’s the way your web page should be.

Are you using Photo Captions on your Sales Page? Tell us how using photo captions have helped your sales page.