Adding moving visuals such as gif images to your Strikingly website can help make it more dynamic and look more interesting to your target audience. When used appropriately, a GIF can become the focal point of your landing page design and make your content engaging and interactive.
Strikingly’s website editor allows you to play around with different types of visual content including gif images. You can use animated gifs as background or to show off your portfolio as in the case of Galu Design which used a grid layout to display its most notable projects to date in GIF format instead of using static images.
The possibilities are endless when it comes to incorporating GIF images into your website design and even into your digital marketing strategy. To get started, however, it’s important to understand what is a GIF, what does GIF stand for and where you can find the best GIFs on the web for your next social media or digital marketing campaign.
What are GIFs?
What is a GIF short for? GIF stands for Graphic Interchange Format - a bitmap format file that was introduced in the 1980s. It is an animated image file that is designed to hold multiple pictures and load them in sequential order.
GIFs have been around for decades and you’ve probably encountered a few of them as you went through the web and in your emails. Remember that dancing baby animation that was so popular several years ago? That was a GIF image. Over the years, these image files have been gaining a lot of popularity because of the effective way they communicate emotions, ideas and jokes. You see them integrated into social media platforms in the form of stickers and emojis. You would think that they are so old that they will become dated after a while but GIF images have managed to stay and become timeless trends.
Aside from .jpeg and .png images, Strikingly also supports .gif files to enable you to use animations on your website. You can turn any gif image into a website background by simply uploading the file to your website editor.
How to make a GIF image
In the past, you need sophisticated video and photo editing software to create your own GIF images but nowadays, it’s not hard to find apps and websites that can convert your video into .gif files. Here are some you may want to try:
- Gifs.com - paste the Youtube or Instagram video URL and the app will convert the media into GIF. You can also edit the file by adding captions and cropping the image.
- Giphy GIF maker - upload a video file from your local computer or paste a URL from Youtube to create your own GIF images. The easy to use editor lets you choose a duration or pick a specific portion of the video to convert. It also lets you add captions and other effects as needed.
Best Sources of GIF Images
If you don’t have the time to produce your own GIF images for your website, you may also want to check out various GIF libraries. Here are some of the must-try websites for finding the perfect gifs for your site or digital marketing campaign.
1. GIPHY
This is probably the most popular source of GIFs. It is specifically designed to be a search engine for .gif images. Over the years, they have partnered with brands, introduced browser extensions and other integrations to enable users to find the best gifs on virtually any topic you can think of. Their database is divided into categories to make the search easier.
2. Reddit
If you want to get your fix of everyday GIFs, Reddit is a good website to check out. The community is a known treasure trove of gifs shared by its diverse community. It has several GIF-related subreddits that you can go through for interesting images.
3. Reaction GIFs
If you need a GIF for every feeling or emotion, this is the site for you. You can find gif images for a specific feeling - i.e. tired, proud, confused, etc. You can also search by tag or according to gallery which might cover a more expansive range of topics.
4. What Should We Call Me
The site gets updated several times daily to keep the content fresh. You’ll find a gif that goes well with virtually every relatable scenario you can think of.
5. Imgur
Imgur is a great image hosting site that is open to everyone who wants to share their own files. It is similar to Reddit although it caters more to media sharing. It’s not a dedicated GIF search engine by any means but you can find great gems in this site and just add “gif” in your search query to filter your search results.
Attract an engaged audience with great visuals. Add the perfect GIF image to your Strikingly website.
