Images on the Website: Own Photos, Image Rights and What Builds Trust

Why do so many business websites look the same?

Place the homepages of five businesses from one sector side by side. On three of them you will find the same motifs: people in bright offices pointing at a screen, a handshake in front of a glass facade, a globe of network lines. Some images even come from the same database. They are cleanly photographed and say nothing. A visitor who wants to check whether this business really exists and who works there finds no clue in them.

On many websites, images are treated as decoration added at the end. Yet they are among the first things a visitor perceives. This piece asks: Which images build trust on a business’s website, why do stock photos often work less well than expected, and what has to be considered regarding rights, employee photos and technology? To answer it, we first clarify a model that explains why own images say more and what studies show about stock photos. Then follow a check for every image, the legal basics and the technology. This is not legal advice.

A stock photo shows what a business could look like. An own photo shows what it looks like. Only the second proves anything.

The thinking model: images as signals

Signaling theory comes from economics. It describes how a party that knows more can credibly communicate something to the other party. A signal is credible when it would be hard or costly to send for someone who is not telling the truth. The article Writing case studies uses this idea for references: a detailed reference is a credible signal because the customer invests time and reputation in it.

For images this means: an own photo of the workshop, the team or a finished installation is a signal that is hard to fake. It requires that this workshop, this team and this installation exist. A stock photo, an image from an image database that anyone can license, costs little and can be shown by any business, including one that does not exist in this form. As a signal, it therefore carries hardly anything. Something similar applies to images generated with artificial intelligence. Their credibility, labeling and risks are assessed in the article AI-generated images in marketing.

What studies show about stock photos and authenticity

Salminen, Jung, Santos and colleagues (2020) examined, in an experiment with 2,400 participants from an online panel, how photos affect the perception of descriptions of people, so-called personas, as used in marketing and product development. They used 48 face images and varied whether the person smiled and whether the image was a stock photo. Among other things, they measured credibility, likability and perceived similarity to oneself.

The result: stock photos clearly lowered perceived credibility and also reduced the feeling that the person depicted was similar to oneself. A smile, by contrast, increased perceived similarity but did not change credibility. The authors explain the effect of stock photos with an impression of staging: stock photos usually show professional models, and this reduces the impression of dealing with real people.

A meta-analysis by Hochstein, Harmeling and Perko (2025) points in a related direction. It evaluated 128 effects from 19 online platforms over the years 2004 to 2022 and found that features that reduce suspicion of misrepresented content, such as verified accounts, strengthened the effect of content. Features that embellish content, such as photo filters, could by contrast arouse suspicion. Both studies have limits: the first concerns personas, not business websites; the second, user content on platforms. The common direction is nevertheless clear: what seems staged or embellished costs credibility.

Two views: professional or genuine?

The first view says that a business should look professional on its website. Better a good stock photo than a poor own image with a cluttered workbench and a crooked horizon. The second view says that authenticity beats gloss. An honest photo of the actual team seems more credible than any model. I consider the second the stronger, with the justified demand of the first: own photos must be tidy. A tidy workplace, good light and a calm background cost little. Whoever combines both, genuine and careful, needs no stock photo.

The three-question image check

From the model and the findings, I derive a simple check for every image on the website, the three-question image check. An image stays only if it passes all three.

1. Is it genuine?

   Does the image show this business, its people, its premises or its work? If not, it needs a very good reason to stay.

2. Does it carry information?

   Does the visitor learn something from the image that is not in the text or would be hard to understand there: what an installation looks like, who calls, what a result looks like?

3. Are the rights cleared?

   Are there usage rights to the photo, and have the people depicted consented? If this is not documented, the image is not used.

Where images matter most on the website follows from visitors’ questions. On the about us page, it is the people with names and responsibilities, as the article The about us page describes. On service pages, it is images of the work and the result. On the references page, it is photos from real projects, approved by the customer, as the article The references page notes.

Image rights: what a business has to clarify

Whoever puts a photo on the website needs a right to do so. That sounds obvious and is nevertheless often overlooked, for example when an image is taken from search results, from the manufacturer or from a previous agency. In Germany, almost every photo is protected, even a simple snapshot. The following overview names the most important questions. It does not replace legal advice.

For photos of employees, Germany’s Federal Labor Court decided in 2015 a question that concerns many businesses (BAG, 8 AZR 1011/13). According to reports on the judgment, an employee’s consent to the publication of recordings was not automatically limited to the duration of the employment. Withdrawal was possible but required a plausible reason. The judgment predates the General Data Protection Regulation. Whether and how it applies today should be checked case by case.

Images and technology: alt text, size, format

A good image is of no use if it slows down the page or remains invisible to some visitors. Three technical points belong to every image.

• Alt text. Every image that carries information has a short alt text describing what can be seen. It helps people using screen readers and search engines. The article Accessible website names missing image descriptions as one of the most common errors on the websites studied.
• File size. On many pages, images make up the largest part of the data volume. The article Website loading time recommends delivering them at the displayed size and in a modern format such as WebP or AVIF, and loading images below the first screen only when scrolling.
• File name and context. A descriptive file name such as “compressor-maintenance-hall.webp” and fitting text nearby help search engines understand what the image shows.
• Host locally. Load images from your own server, not from third-party services. This helps loading time and data protection.

Purely decorative images without information get an empty alt text so that screen readers skip them. After the image check, however, only a few of them should be left.

What follows in general

On a website, images are what the first glance is in a conversation. A visitor sees them before reading a word and concludes from them whom they are dealing with. A business that shows its own images commits itself: this is us, this is how we work. This is the same stance that the article Trust signals on the website describes for the legal notice, contact persons and references: what can be checked builds trust. A stock photo commits to nothing, and that is exactly why nobody believes anything it says.

The limits are clear. The study by Salminen and colleagues concerns personas in an online experiment, not business websites, and the meta-analysis by Hochstein and colleagues concerns user content on platforms. How many inquiries better images bring cannot be derived from them. The legal notes are an overview and not advice. What is robust is the conclusion from signaling theory: an image convinces all the more, the harder it would be to fake.

Conclusion and next steps

The opening question was
images build trust on a business’s website, why stock photos often work less well and what to consider regarding rights and technology. The answer: own photos of people, work and results build trust because they are signals that are hard to fake. Stock photos seem interchangeable, and studies find that they cost credibility. Every image should pass the image check: genuine, informative, rights cleared. Consent from the people depicted, an alt text and a small file belong with it.

• List all images on the website and rate them with the three-question image check.
• Gather and file the usage rights and licenses for every photo used.
• Check or obtain written consent for photos of employees.
• Draw up a list for half a photo day: people, work, projects, buildings.
• Delete stock photos without information; do not replace them.
• Write alt texts for all informative images.
• Check image sizes and formats with the agency or developer.

The best images for a business website are not in a database. They are taken one morning in your own business.