Why Food Pics Increase Your Conversion Rates

Conversion Rate Optimisation Tip # 7

Foodtography is the latest craze sweeping the internet. Millions of people are sharing photographs of their food, often for no other reason than they just feel like it.

According to stock photography site Crestock, there are dedicated blogs and websites springing up daily.

So what has all this got to do with increasing your conversion rate?

Simple, pictures of food are one of the quickest ways to boost your conversion rate or engagement rate, even if your site has nothing to do with food.

And if it’s sexy food, even better.

Pic Credit © StephanieFrey, Karcich, looby

Why Sexy Food Works

Sex and food are the primary motivators of just about everything human beings do. It’s hard wired into us as part of our survival strategy.

“If I get more food I can survive another day, and if I live for another day that’s another chance to breed.”

This is nature’s way of ensuring the continuation of your gene pool and the survival of the human race.

Just think about the contestants’ mindset in Master Chef Australia: “If I can cook a better dish I can avoid elimination and progress to the next round and ultimately win.”

This probably explains the endless popularity of cooking shows.

Also, see also my previous post on What Sexy Food Can Teach You About Website Navigation.

It’s All About Emotion

Getting back to websites and online marketing, if you can work images of food into your projects you can create a positive emotional response, a subconscious engagement between your potential customers and your website.

Now we’re starting to get fairly sophisticated here in terms of marketing and improving conversion rates, but the point is a lot of this is happening at an irrational, emotional and sub conscious level.

This is obviously not something a programmer or most web developers will be getting into. However it is part of what you need to be thinking about if you’re at all serious about improving your online marketing and conversion rates.

In recent years there has been a lot of research done and books written about how irrational we really are when it comes to decision making. People like Dan Ariely, Dan Hill, Sally Hogshead and many others have all written great books on the subject.

What’s really interesting is how people’s buying behaviour can be manipulated by using the right imagery either with words or images.

Sometimes this can be downright spooky stuff.

Thoughts? Does great looking food do it for you?