[RuleOfBirds]

Users do. I spent a whole summer A/B testing an app's landing page to get 10+% more conversions. Over 50 experiments, the biggest win was having a hero image. Its actual content didn't matter as long as it was a photo and featured humans. And the more screen space it took the better. Probably different for different markets and apps, but yeah from my experience users love em.

[oefrha]

I'm talking about content websites, e.g. news sites, not marketing sites like app landing pages.

[johnnyanmac]

I don't see why it would be different. The only difference between anadvertising page and a news site nowadays is how quickly the hero image needs to change.

Reddit's old vs. current design is probably one of the biggest examples of the user philosophy changing overtime. Not really a "hero image", but the focus of presenting text with small thumbnails to huge thumbnails and a small header likely follows a similar philosophy.

[kingcharles]

I would assume the stats are basically the same, regardless of content, from experience with UX design and A/B testing these sorts of things.

I love hero images, but I get that on many sites it pushes the actual content below the fold, which isn't ideal.