Stripes target group is developers. Developers, designers etc are special groups, predispositioned in certain way that may make them assess the trustworthyness of an offering differently, i.e. more analytically than most other users.<p>&quot;Normal&quot; users buy more in the spirit of &quot;no one was ever fired for buying Microsoft&quot;: since they lack other means of assessment, or have no time to carefully read the actual content, they fall back on things like nice photos.
And they are a good proxy, as they compare it to advertisements of their local shops or yard sales.
They dont know about stock photos. They just see a professional photo.<p>And to be clear: Even me as developer would take such things into account. I have incomplete information, so I use proxies. Especially if I am in a hurry.