We turn down stock photos on every site we build. Even when the client asks. Even when they offer to pay for the premium Adobe Stock library. The answer is always: take ten photos on your phone this afternoon and send them through.
This isn't an aesthetic preference. It's based on what actually converts on local trade websites - and what doesn't.
The trust uncanny valley
A homeowner in Sunderland looking for a roofer can spot a stock photo in about half a second. They might not know what's wrong with the image of the smiling man in a logoed polo shirt next to an immaculate white van - but they know it isn't him. They know it isn't the company. And the rest of the site - including the testimonials, the reviews, the qualifications - now reads as potentially fake by association.
This is the trust uncanny valley. The closer a piece of content gets to "real" without quite making it, the more uncomfortable it becomes. A grainy iPhone photo of a real van outside a real house is fine. A polished stock image of a "tradesperson" is suspicious. There is no middle ground.
The data we have
On four client sites we ran the same experiment: same page, same copy, same CTAs. The only variable was the hero image. Half the visitors saw a stock photo of a tradesperson; half saw a phone photo of the actual owner standing next to his actual van.
The phone-photo variant outconverted the stock variant on every site. Range was +24% to +71% on the rate of homepage visits that ended in a call or form submission. Sample sizes were small (a few thousand sessions per arm) but the direction was completely consistent.
We stopped running the test after the fourth site. It felt unethical to keep showing the worse version to half the visitors when the answer was already clear.
The 10-photo brief we send every client
Before we launch a site, we send the owner this list:
- Owner standing next to the van, daylight, phone held at chest height, slight upward angle. Smiling but not posed. (Hero image.)
- The whole team in front of the building or van, if there's more than one of you. If you're a one-person business, skip.
- Three "in progress" shots of jobs you've done in the last week. Hands working. Tools in shot. Slightly messy is fine.
- Three "finished job" shots. Wide enough to see the room/property, not just a close-up of the work.
- One before / after pair of the same job, same angle. Even if the "before" is ugly. Especially if it's ugly.
- One photo of the van interior - tools organised, branding visible if you have any. This one signals professionalism more than people expect.
Total time on tools: maybe 20 minutes spread across a normal working week. Total impact on the site: enormous.
What we ban outright
- Smiling stock people in unbranded polos. Every single homeowner on the planet has seen them.
- Generic "tools on wood" hero shots. Lazy and meaningless.
- Stock photos of houses presented as if they were jobs you'd worked on.
- Logo-on-stock-vehicle composites. Worse than the photo without your logo.
- AI-generated "team" photos. Visitors increasingly spot these in under a second.
What we allow
- Stock textures (brick, wood, concrete) used as section backgrounds with heavy overlays.
- Generic UI icons (a phone, a tick, a calendar).
- Abstract gradient or geometric backgrounds.
- Stock maps of the area, where the location matters more than the image.
The rule is consistent: never a person, never a workplace, never a finished job. Stock is fine for things that aren't claiming to be "us". Anywhere a visitor would naturally think "ah, that's the company" - it has to be real.
The "but my photos look bad" objection
Most clients send their first batch of photos and immediately apologise. "These look terrible. Can you make them look more professional?"
The answer is no. We crop and rotate. We adjust exposure. We blur out a number plate or a passer-by. We do not airbrush, sky-replace, retouch, or "make it look more like the website of $big_competitor". The slightly-amateur look is the entire point. It's the proof that the photos came from a real working business.
Once the site is live, almost every client emails within a fortnight saying they've been complimented on the site looking "down to earth", "honest", or "actually like us". Nobody ever says "I wish you'd used stock photos".
The shortcut
This is one of the easiest wins on a local trade website and one of the most-skipped. Built Local sends every client this brief in onboarding and won't launch the site without the photos coming back. £99 setup, £49/month, live in 72 hours - assuming you can get on a roof and snap ten pictures inside that window.