It is a fact that the customer’s experience rest heavily on the customer’s expectations. And expectations are based on perceptions. And perceptions are based on impressions, formed from our own experiences or those of others. The danger is that when customers form an impression, they subsequently are on the lookout for cues to buttress that earlier-formed impression. Is that not what psychologists refer to as confirmation bias?
Generally, customers walk into the experience with their own “marking scheme”—based on a number of parameters, including what they have experience in the past, what they have been told or what they might have seen.
Evidently, the customer’s past experience, especially the one’s last experience, becomes very important in helping the customer prepare for the next experience. The first-hand experience is always the best gauge for what might happen next. It is natural for people to trust their own experiences than those of others. Who feels it knows it, I guess.
However, on occasions where the customer has not had any prior experience to fall on, third party accounts of the experience could come in handy. Stories from family, friends and acquaintances could be resorted to before the potential customer makes up the mind. If your best friend tells you that the hotel’s ambience was not the very best, it would be very difficult to visit such a place with a great expectation.
Beyond first-hand experiences and third party accounts, there is also the case of what the business also says about itself. If you have not had any prior encounter with the business in question and you have no other person to ask, it falls on what the business puts out there for you to make an impression about it and to form your own expectations. And in this day and age, the Internet is where customers will go to form impressions about the business in question. When a customer goes on the Net to find out about a particular business, the customer is going to be faced with two very important factors—the text (or copy) and the images (or photos). Even videos are made up of text and images—moving pictures, we call them.
One of the most powerful ways to capture attention is through photos. Through the use of the right photographs, businesses are able to communicate to customers the quality of services they are to expect. The power of photographs to communicate experiences is a known fact. The human mind is wired in such a way that it processes images faster than it even processes text. Researchers claim that the human brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text. Additionally, 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual. In short, we are more visual than anything else. We see with both our physical eyes and with our mind’s eyes. These facts make the statement “a picture speaks a thousand words” more revealing. This is what makes images such a powerful tool for capturing attention.
Businesses, understanding the power of images, employ images in all shapes, sizes and makes on the Net to advertise their services and to communicate with their customers. The use of these online photos create an impression in the minds of customers. From the angle of the business, the hope is that any images used online will throw a positive light on the business.
One of the industries were the issue of the influence of online photos is very crucial is the hospitality industry. Hotels and restaurants are businesses that must take their usage of online photos very seriously. This is because these businesses would rely on the perceptions customers form beforehand to drive customers into their facilities.
It is therefore no wonder that the number of the studies undertaken on this subject matter have been done in the hospitality industry. The importance of the use of photos in the right way was underscored in a particular study published in the June 2023 edition of the Journal of Service Management. The study was titled “Mediating Service Experiences with Online Photos: The Role of Consumers’ Perceptions of the Mediated Servicescape”.
One of the important findings of this particular study was that there were particular cues in photos that had particular effects on customers. In other words, any entity planning to deploy photographs to attempt to woo customers online must take particular notice of these cues. The five visual cues that were of particular interest to the researchers were colour, lighting, furnishings, layout and style.
For instance, it was revealed that the colour of the photo must create a warm and a pleasant atmosphere. As a matter of fact, using basic image editing software in Microsoft such as Paint and Photos will give you options regarding the filter of the colour of your photos. Some of these options include Warm Contrast, Cool Light, Vivid Cool, Dramatic Cool, Black and White Warm, among others. Particular colouring can make a particular photograph more alluring and thereby more welcoming.
Image editing applications and software give these options because they understand that different circumstances call for photographs with different colour textures. Businesses that intend to use photos online to win customers must understand that something as seemingly insignificant as colour can make or mar the experience of customers. The right colour could mean the difference between breaking even and going broke.
The other factor regarding online photos that influences customer perception of a particular experience is the quality of the lighting of the photo. According to the above study, the lighting can make a photo more inviting and more welcoming, or otherwise. The lighting can also make a particular photo look more comfortable. If the business is a hospitality business, then the issue of comfort becomes much more important. A particular photo can have different connotations based on the different setting of lighting. A low saturation setting can have a different feel than a photo with low naturalness. A photograph with an even illumination gives a different impression and feel than one with uneven illumination.
Another factor that must be considered in an online photograph are the furniture used in the photo. The furniture must be of high quality to attract customers. The furniture must also look comfortable and must be in good order. The right furniture can give a particular ambience such a homey feeling that it will attract potential customers.
The study also found that the layout of the facility in question had a say in the way customers appreciated and assessed a particular photograph on the Net. Customers do not want to visit a facility with a cluttered layout. Just be looking at the photo, a customer must feel very comfortable. The customer must see the layout as being very spacious.
The last factor that was considered in the above study was the style of the facility. According to the study, the place must look current and refined to be attractive. Customers must see artwork and interior decorations that are appealing. The architectural design of the facility must evoke positive emotions in customers.
Aside these factors, it has even been suggested that sometimes, seemingly insignificant things such as the appearance of a window and the presence and quality of the view outside the window and make a particular photograph look more appealing to customers.
For a business that wants to drive traffic via social media to its premises, it is important that it uses just the right photos. To get the photos right, the business might decide to vary the elements of the photos using some of the factors discussed in the previous paragraphs. Using the number of views, likes or clicks, it would be easy to find out which elements customers found more appealing. Thereafter, the business can adopt those settings as the default settings for all the photos it uses online.
It is important to note that as stated earlier, all of the above factors place the customer in a certain mood, a certain state of expectancy. This means that the business cannot fake these factors just to attract customers. If customers come and they find out that the business was not being truthful—furniture not as comfortable as they looked online, lighting at the reception not as bright and welcoming and the entire atmosphere not very appealing, there will be chaos. Customers will feel betrayed and by the sheer power of word of mouth, they can cause untold damage to the brand in question.
This discussion on the use of photos online can even be related to the use of photos offline. Businesses use photos for calendars, diaries, newspaper advertisements, etc. In all of these, it is important that photos are used with utmost care, with the impressions they create in the minds of customers also in the mind of those putting out the images.
I would even go as far as to suggest that for images that would be used on those hard copies, a business takes extra care. I have a good reason for this stance. Images online can be changed within a blink of an eye. If the businesses experiments with a certain colouring and lighting and it feels like those features are not working, the image could be changed immediately. However, this is not the case for photos used in calendars and diaries. Those photos might hang in the office for a whole year. This means if the business gets it wrong, then the failure will be staring the business in the face for a very, very long time.
Businesses must therefore ensure that they are using the right online photos to create the right impression in the minds of customers. The blatant disregard of the photos being placed out there might be causing more damage than the business might be aware of. When resorting to the use of online photos, the rule of thumb for every business should be that if the photo is not going to add to the experience, then it is total waste of space.
