Canva is an incredible tool for non-designers who want attractive and quick designs for anything from instagram and Facebook posts to print materials. I use it all the time. They have packed the free version with tons of value and the pro version has been worth every penny.

But using it design some parts of your website could be costing you.

The Pitfalls of Canva

Let’s first dive into how Google reads your website. Google reviews all necessary text giving preference to some headings and repeated words. Your page headers are top real estate on your website. So if you go into Canva and create an amazing looking website page header and upload it— you are giving up that prime real estate because Google can’t read those amazing headers. Google isn’t impressed by how good your site looks and if it can’t read the header— well then it can’t help direct people to your page. You are better off creating your header graphics and headers directly in your website designer. The good news is many website platforms make it pretty easy to design basic (and even more advanced) websites without knowing how to use code. If your small business doesn’t have the budget to hire a website designer (which can be 6-15k)… good news is that you can do one yourself. You can get pretty far at creating a website that works for you. Being completely transparent though - a designer most likely will do a better job of creating the visuals, but their true value may in the layout to create the best client flow possible. They are worth the price when you are ready.

Secondly, you will quickly see why using Canva for your headers — even if you have no text— has its pitfalls. Maybe back in the day you could get by with designing a website header graphic and use it for your website pages. The only place people looked at your website would have been on their desktop. Now your website is being read on tablets, cell phones, desktops, laptops, and even smart TVs. Your site has to adapt to what ever screen and screen dimensions it is being viewed on. Your website automatically crops in your header image or stacks images laid out horizontally on the desk top view to vertically on a smart phone view. Again, you are better creating headers and full page graphic directly in your website designer.

Here is a great example of an image I created in Canva for the header page for my professional headshots…looks great right? Well when your viewed it on a cell phone it showed the middle lady in green but sliced the next too over in half and didn’t show the women in red or man in green at all. I don’t mind that it crops it down, but having people cut in half isn’t a good look.

Where does Canva shine?

Just like for your social media posts or advertising graphics— you can create similar graphics inside of Canva and upload them your website. You can create gif. files that play on a loop, or a cool graphic with design elements to draw in the attention of viewer. This graphic will stack like any other image you upload. Be mindful that if you want your graphics to coordinate try to use matching or similar fonts if possible to the ones found within your website designer. Don’t add any key words within the graphic because we want those words to be searchable by Google. Instead upload the graphic and add text onto the image.

Canva is also a great tool to remove backgrounds from your images allowing you to layer a headshot over another background. I see this often with realtors and insurance agents. What used to take a professional photographer a ton of time is as simple as a click of a button— and is included in the free version of Canva.

Canva also has a number of graphics that you can use on your website as background “beauty” or other graphics you want to add to your site. Once again you can remove the background and save your image as a transparent .png file.

I do think Canva shines for blog content… just like this. The two graphics on this blog post were created in Canva. Since I can’t add text on to my images in a blog post I am not loosing anything by adding it. Plus the whole graphic is resized down without cropping it. You can still add alt text to your blog posts allowing you to give more information to Google about the image and about your brand.

What you receive from me as your brand or headshot photographer?

I provide you with the raw ingredients to do amazing things for your business. Your gallery comes with both large and website downloadable and shareable files. How you use your images from the sizing, to the website images alt text, to the header and body keywords is all up to you and takes some time to figure it all out. If you are serious about working on your business profile and want to chat about what would be the most valuable way to create and use your image I am happy to schedule a consult with you.

If you have no desire to design anything I can help you with that as well. Your branding and headshot images are perfect for Facebook profiles and billboards. I can even help stretch your image backgrounds for certain layout needs.

Let me help you look more polished.

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