Content by images websites

[FreelanceSoftwareDeveloper]

Hi,

I get a lot of emails where the content is made up purely of images. It looks like an easy way to get a very smart looking appereance.

Is this same method recommended for a website, it would suit my style which is minimal and stylish.

Would this be a big dis-advantage regarding SEO?

Are there any strong opinions on using this format?

Thanks,

Matt

[DamienRoche]

If I'm right, you're asking whether you should favor graphics over content? If so, my answer is a clear NO. Content is king.

However, it is also very important you come across as 'modern' because I really don't see many people trusting a site that looks 10 years old or doesn't display properly on their chosen browser. For that reason, the aesthetics of a site mean a lot.

The challenge is finding a nice balance between face value and actual value.

Regarding seo, content is obviously everything - more specifically, text-based data. So graphics are absolutely useless for seo. Of course, there's so much more to making a website seo friendly.

Again, it's all about the balance. Your website should have quality content wrapped in a nice looking template.

I don't use images in emails much, it makes them less accessible.

[FreelanceSoftwareDeveloper]

No, what I am referring to content including text but placed on images so the page only displays images. The 'image' may be a white background with normal text on.

The reason would be that it makes it very easy to create smart looking pages and you don't have to worry too much about browser settings.

Downsides would be that none of the text content would be visible as text to search engines.

I have had a look at a few sites that I want to use a similar style to and by viewing the source it maybe isn't so difficult to achieve using tables and fixed widths. And i'm sure a much better coding practice!

Matt

[DamienRoche]

I think the difficulty in achieving this is entirely subjective. For example, it's extremely simple for an experienced web developer but no doubt hard to grasp for a beginner.

To be honest, it's a no brainer. There are no benefits and only drawbacks. It isn't hard to create a template and have content within that template. That's the whole idea of html.

Images take more bandwidth, search engines can't read text within images, people can't even interact with your site if it were entirely in images...and for what? To make it look better? But it doesn't at all. You can fancy up the text, that's it. Everything else can be achieved via a template.

Hope that helps, I really do.

[FreelanceSoftwareDeveloper]

Yeah, you are right. The more I think about it the negatives far outweigh any ease of design.

I am competent enough with HTML to make it work without losing too much on the aesthetics.

Thanks,

Matt

[JElder]

There are a couple of issues:

Emails with only images look like spam, and are blocked by many spam filters
People using other viewers (such as mobile devices) or have images turned off (I think this is default in the newest outlook) will see nothing.

Use HTMS and inline CSS - you can do almost anything with these. Do include some images and graphics, but not for anything vital, and preview the email in a plain text viewer first to see if the loss of graphics breaks layout or comprehension.

My personal preference is a graphic header, the body text in HTML, and a graphic footer. That was if the graphics are gone, the main body is still perfectly readable.

[MartCactus]

Aside from the obvious SEO issues of content on your site being hidden from the search engines, I think there are other disadvantages

1) i'm not so sure it would look modern - I think sites that are all images tend to look a bit cheap in many cases - like the site owner has had a print designer developer his marketing material, and then do a quick export to jpeg for the web.

2) they can be slow to load... I know most of us are on broadband now, but think about users who aren't... either they use a dialup, a mobile connection that might be slow, or they are overseas or somewhere with limited internet connections - I've just been in Brazil where some cities rely almost exclusively on satellite for internet connections, and they are consequently rather slow.

3) having all the content as images makes it tricky for me to copy and paste eg a phone number into my voip phone if I want to call them - sure I can type it manually, but its a bit annoying.

4) disabled users - think about people with poor eyesight who might be using a screen reader to dictate the site content to them. I'm not necessarily a fanatical advocate of going out of your way to make sure site is accessible in all cases, but good to at least bear it in mind and not do anything that will make it more difficult for such users.