Create a homepage without professional photos

Key takeaways

You can create a good homepage without professional photos. Use well-lit phone pictures of real work and people, screenshots or documents if your work is digital, or a type-led design with no main image at all. Careful real images and clear words usually beat generic stock that visitors recognise and ignore.

• A modern phone can take usable website photos.
• A type-led homepage is a valid choice.
• Avoid generic stock images in the hero.
• Book a shoot once the page starts earning.

Can a homepage work with no photos at all?

Yes. A strong headline, proof and a clear button on a plain background can work well, and it loads quickly. Nielsen Norman Group's research found users attend to images that carry information and ignore decorative ones. A page with no image is usually better than one with a misleading image.

• How to create a high-converting homepage for an SME
• Choose a homepage hero image that sells
• Stock photos on a business website: when they hurt

How do you take usable photos on a phone?

Use daylight, clean the lens, keep the phone steady and shoot from eye level. Take far more than you need, in both portrait and landscape. Tidy the background first, because clutter reads as carelessness. Ask for a colleague's help, and photograph real work rather than posing people around a laptop.

• Shoot in daylight, near a window or outdoors.
• Clean the lens and hold the phone steady.
• Tidy the background before you start.
• Take landscape shots for desktop and portrait for phones.
• Photograph real work in progress.

• A homepage photo shot list for a half-day shoot
• Website images that help visitors decide

What can replace photos for service firms?

Replace photos with things that carry meaning: a screenshot of a report, a sample document with details removed, a simple diagram of your process or a large number you can back up. Illustrations can explain abstract services, but they say little about trust. Use them to explain, not as decoration.

• Illustrations vs photos: which builds more trust?
• Numbers on your homepage: proof or decoration?

When is stock photography acceptable?

Stock is acceptable for places, materials or objects that show context, and only when it does not imply something untrue. Do not use it for your team, your customers or your finished work. Check the licence too, because using an image without rights can bring a bill from the copyright owner.

• Using images from Google on your website: copyright risks

When is a professional shoot worth paying for?

It is worth paying when your work is visual, such as hospitality, interiors or construction, or when your homepage is doing its job and bad images are the weakest part. Book a shoot with a written shot list, so that a half-day produces images for the whole site and for social media.

• Website photography cost in the UK: what a shoot buys

What does this look like in practice?

A pattern worth noting: a business delays launch for weeks waiting for a photographer, then finds that the plain version it published in the meantime performs perfectly well. Photos tend to improve a page that already has a clear message. They rarely rescue one that does not.

• See client work
• Website Design & Development for UK businesses

Homepage without photos checklist

• Decide whether the page needs an image at all.
• Take 30 phone photos of real work in daylight.
• Remove any image that adds no meaning.
• Check the licence on anything you did not shoot.
• Compress images before you upload them.
• Write useful alt text for each image.

• Launch the homepage first, then the rest of the site
• A B2B homepage that starts sales conversations

Next step

Delete the hero image on a staging copy of your page and read it again. If the message still works, your words are strong enough, and any photo you add later will be a bonus.