I've been hearing the claim around here that photos of people convert better than images of products. This article endorses landing pages with few or no images, and specifically suggests pages with only a product image.

Anyone want to comment on how this article stacks up against conventional wisdom?

I think of photos of people on landing pages as being relatively dangerous. When you show a photo of someone, doing something, you're asking the visitor to put themselves in the place of the person they're looking at.

If you have a pretty narrowly-defined audience, you might be able to find a photo that really encompasses everything your audience wants to be. More often, though, you instantly suggest that the product is "for them," not "for me."

There are two ways I've gone about handling this. One is avoiding people altogether, focusing on the product or the output of the product -- this can still tell a story, and hopefully the visitor can relate to that story. The other general method is to use cartoonish or abstract illustrations of people, which can allow the visitor to more easily put themselves in place of the illustrated character.

A well-chosen photo of people might convert better with the right audience, but it's a much riskier shot to take, in my view.