Create High Quality eCommerce Product Photography
Product photography is often considered the most important aspect in any eCommerce site. Traditionally, when shopping at a brick and mortar retail location, customers could engage with a product physically however this is no longer the case when shopping online. It is the responsibility of the eCommerce business to successfully communicate the product and its attributes in an effort to break down any hesitation the buyer might have from moving forward with a purchase. It is a fact that poor quality product images have a direct negative effect on conversion rates. I am here today to help communicate important aspects of product photography and product display in eCommerce that will help diminish buyer’s hesitation from proceeding with a purchase in your eCommerce store.
Consider the following five aspects of product photography critical to your eCommerce efforts
Product Photography Quality
First and foremost, quality of product images will go a long way in ensuring confidence in your customers. Poor quality images can cause the most attractive, well designed sites to fail. Be sure to put your best foot forward to ensure image quality is up to par with your competitors. Image quality takes into account well lit, color accurate photos that displays the product at a good angle. High quality photography is not as hard as you think. There is great information online that can propel an amateur into a professional in no time. For increased efficiencies and ease of use in eCommerce product photography, consider an automated Product Photography Software such as Shutter Stream.
By effectively replicating the exact product being sold into an image, customers will be more prone to proceed to checkout.
Product Photography Consistency
Consistent product photography will give an eCommerce website a professional look and feel. More specifically consider product category pages. Let’s take a shoe eCommerce site for example. Imagine viewing 20 tennis shoes in which some are left shoes, others are right, some are displayed at a straight on while others are displayed at a 45-degree angle. Simply put, it looks messy. It is hard to compare one product to another and this will often lead to shopper anxiety and your customer deciding to pursue a purchase elsewhere.
Consistent product photography will allow customers to easily compare results and find the product that is right for them faster and easier.
Backgrounds
This can tie into consistency however, I feel it is important enough to stress on its own. Consistent backgrounds in product images give eCommerce sites a professional look. I stress for you to spend the extra effort and time required making product image backgrounds the same for all products (correct product photography lighting is key here!).
If editing onto a pure white background is too painstaking and resource consuming, a suggestion would be to change the background of your website to any color other than white. By changing the background color, product images with off-white backgrounds will not be recognized.
Multiple Product Images
One image? Is that all you are providing your customers?! This is enough to bounce a customer from your site in exploration of a complete representation of the product they wish to buy. Bottom line, the more images you can provide your customers the better. Look at the product display on Internet Retailers list of the Top 500 eCommerce players. This should give you a good idea of how product display can lead to success. Granted the type of products being sold has a large part to do with the number of images however, the golden rule is the more the better. People are visual – we want to look, not read.
Unique Product Photography
It is common to rely on Vendor product photography however, not always are these good. And surprisingly some vendors won’t even supply reseller’s images. It is best to take control of product imaging in-house. This will ensure for consistency amongst product groups (left shoe example from above) and allow you to communicate exactly what you want your customers to see. The last benefit is a significant one – the SEO benefits from unique product images are significant especially in search engine image search results.
Creating high quality product images in-house is not as difficult as one would think. There is excellent tutorials online that discuss lighting techniques and typically with a small investment ($200 – $500) businesses can setup an internal studio that will allow for professional quality results.
For increased efficiencies and ease of use in product photography, consider image capture software. IconaSys developed an image capture photography software specifically designed for eCommerce product photography. Additional information can be viewed here This is something that is sure to save your business time and money by enabling low wage, low skilled employees to create professional results in seconds.
About the Author: Michael Atman is the Founder and CEO of Iconasys. Michael has worked in the product photography space for over 13 years – primarily working with eCommerce and high volume product photography studios to help streamline workflows and automate processes. Since starting Iconasys in 2013, we have gained the trust of over 7,000 customers globally including some of the worlds largest retailers, brands and professional 360 product photography studios. Iconasys specializes in still and 360 product photography software, lighting and turntables.
