Visuals help retain information and with long-term memory
65 percent of the population are visual learners (Briscoe, W9 - C - Importance of Visuals (W25).pdf, Slide 4), so it only makes sense to include visuals in web content if you want to reach the majority of people you target. Our brains process and retain visual information much more effectively than text content. Research shows that people only remember 10-20% of written or spoken information after three days, while another study showed that illustrated text is nine percent more effective than text by itself, and 83 percent more effective when the test was delayed (Briscoe, W9 - C - Importance of Visuals (W25).pdf, Slide 7). According to Dr. Lynell Burmark, an education consultant who also writes and speaks about visual literacy, visuals bypass short-term memory and are encoded directly into long-term memory (Briscoe, W9 - C - Importance of Visuals (W25).pdf, Slide 6). To ensure that your content is not forgotten, it is crucial that it is "hooked onto an image".
Visuals can make text a lot more impactful, ensuring that the audience retains the key message more successfully. Stats about climate change, for example, will be a lot more impactful along with an image of a polar bear on melting ice. In this case, it triggers an emotional response of sadness and urgency because it connects to our primal instincts and empathy for living things. The visual by itself tells a story, and the text will act as a complement. The audience might not remember the exact stats, but they will most likely remember the key message about climate change.
Visuals improve comprehension and speed of processing
The brain processes visuals 60,000 times faster than text, and people can interpret images in less than 1/10 of a second (Briscoe, W9 - C - Importance of Visuals (W25).pdf, Slide 8). Processing words is a lot harder than processing images. Our brain has to decode letters, form words, and piece together meaning to understand words while images like a no smoking sign get the message across instantly. Studies show that pairing text with relevant visuals improves comprehension by up to 400%, making learning more efficient (Briscoe, W9 - C - Importance of Visuals (W25).pdf, Slide 11).
When a user visits a website, they do not have the time or patience to read long paragraphs of information, so visual elements help them to digest the content faster and more effectively. An infographic summarizing statistics, for example, is easier to understand than a paragraph filled with numerical data. One of the biggest real-life examples is IKEA which uses wordless assembly instructions to make the assembly process more efficient and enjoyable, the simple illustrations work better than paragraphs ever could. They would get a lot more complaints if the instructions were text only, they would have to describe the pieces and where they go, which would confuse the customer more than help them.
Visuals Trigger Emotional Engagement and Increase User Interaction
Visuals cause faster and stronger emotional reactions than words because they are processed in the same brain region as emotions (Briscoe, W9 - C - Importance of Visuals (W25).pdf, Slide 14). Because text by itself is retained as effectively as visuals and is more difficult to process when compared to images, visuals are a lot more impactful than text.
Like the example I gave about climate change, visuals leave a strong emotional impression. Because of that, the user interaction increases. If it is a campaign to raise money to help the communities that are affected by climate change, people are most likely to donate and share if they see an image of the animals affected by it because our brains are wired to care more about one suffering individual than a million faceless statistics.
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