Signal Sessions #4 - Your Photos Are Telling Customers You're Not Real

You've probably got a stock photo, an AI headshot, or a photo from a few years back sitting on your website right now, and it felt like a fine stopgap at the time. Here's what happens next: when someone notices a photo is AI-generated or generic, they trust the business less, not more. One global study found people are four times more likely to lose trust than gain it once they clock it. On the other side of that: a real photo of the person doing the work is the single biggest trust factor on a local business website, ahead of any other image on the page. Most people trust it over a polished stock photo, not despite it looking less shiny, but because of it. Melody, our resident photographer and videographer, sits down with us this session to talk through what that actually looks like in practice, and what it takes to get one without turning it into a production.