Photography is one of the driving factors that can influence shoppers and encourage their decision to do business with you. In the world of eCommerce retail, product images tell the story of what you offer. In fact, up to 75% of consumers make their decision to purchase based on product photography. This means that your photos need to be high quality, clear, and professional, to help build credibility and increase the confidence to buy. Strong product photography can improve your brand image, reduce returns, and drive conversions.
Types of eCommerce Photography
There are a variety of different kinds of images you can use to achieve this:
- Individual – Often with a plain white background like you may see on online marketplaces like Amazon, this is a way to give shoppers a no-frills experience of your product with no distractions.
- Close-Up/Detail – These shots help customers get a better idea of some of the aspects of the product that they would normally get when seeing the product in real life. With zoom shots, you can demonstrate specific details like fabric composition, quality, or specific features.
- Group Shots – When working with models, group shots can show a product among a variety of complementary products, to provide insight into how the product will look in an alternative setting. This can be helpful for fashion retailers looking to optimize their upselling and cross-selling strategy.
- Packaging – These types of shots show customers what to expect when they receive the product. They can also help to amplify your brand message and highlight the quality and care put into every detail.
- Lifestyle – This image type provides context and helps customers visualize how the products will look in real life.
How to Set Up Your Studio
If you’re a growing retailer managing your own photography, the good news is that you don’t have to be a professional photographer to take high-quality product photos. You don’t have to have professional equipment either if you get the rest of your set-up right.
- Camera – You can use your smartphone if you don’t have a fancy DSLR camera. Smartphone cameras are highly advanced and can take high-quality images in the right setting.
- Tripod – When taking multiple photos at the same angle, it can be helpful to have a stable foundation to reduce blur and help maintain a consistent visual representation of every product.
- Lighting – Natural light is the best, but it can be inconsistent, so many photographers advise investing in good quality artificial lighting to ensure all product photography is consistent. You can use modifiers to manipulate the light as well. Reflectors can bounce light back into the dark parts of the scene, soften shadows, and make colors pop without making the image overly bright.
- Background – In order to make product photos appear professional, make sure to find a flat surface and a white backdrop to create a clean, minimal space for your products to shine.
Develop Visual Language
Now that you have everything in place for your photo shoot, you’ll have to develop your aesthetic style to align your product photos with your brand vision. Consistency is key when developing your brand image, so keep your brand message in mind across all design elements including product photography. When styling your shot, consider elements like lighting, shadows, and composition when curating the atmosphere that will complement your brand. You can play around with different backdrop textures and colors and experiment with multiple angles, positions, props and effects to bring your products to life.
For example, if you’re styling a shot for cowboy boots, you may want to switch up the clean white background for a textured wood or add some props to increase the western feel of the scene. You can even add effects like smoke to further add to the rustic vibe. Continue to focus in on your chosen style through more than just the staging of the scene, during post-production you can edit images to clean up imperfections and create a consistent representation of your products, which we’ll continue to explore in the next section.
Lighting and Editing
Lighting can be extremely important when it comes to how your brand message is received through your product photography. The best and easiest way to accurately represent your products is with natural light, but natural lighting isn’t always available, and it’s constantly moving and changing. Through high-quality artificial light you can choose the color temperature and brightness of your light source to mimic natural light, so you can take professional quality photos at any time of day.
Whether using natural or artificial light, you may need to use lighting tools or modifiers to get it right, by manipulating where the shadows fall and how harshly they blend into the background. The size of your light and the distance between the subject and the light source are what determines the quality of your shadows, which is why a reflector is important when using natural light. Reflectors can help you disperse the light through the darkest parts of your scene for softer shadows. A diffuser is anything placed between the subject and the light source, which can help disperse the light by spreading it throughout a larger area which also creates a softer shadow.
In the post-production process, you can correct colors that may have been altered with lighting during the shoot. You can clean up shadows in editing as well to make images look cleaner and more professional. Play with the balance of brightness and contrast to make products pop or increase saturation to bring a lively feel to the colors in the image.
Best Practices
Once you’ve finished the shoot and made your edits, you’re almost ready to start displaying your product images on your site. Before you start uploading images to your site, consider the following final tips.
- Technology – Tools like Botika and BetterStudio harness the power of AI to help streamline production throughout the entire product photography process. These tools can help amateur photographers turn their photoshoots into a professional grade set-up at top speed, so tasks that would normally take hours or even multiple days can be executed in minutes. Photoshop has also added AI tools to make editing easier, so you can produce high-quality images efficiently to start growing revenue now.
- SEO – When optimizing product photography, make sure to include descriptive image titles and alt tags for accessibility. Also include meta data with high-visibility keywords to boost your chances of being found by search engines. When a search query matches your image, the photo will be more likely to display on the search results page.
- Performance – Compress images to reduce file sizes to ensure large image files aren’t slowing down your site’s performance. By uploading images as JPG files, you can keep the quality of the image high while keeping the file size low to ensure your site maintains faster load times.
- Authenticity – The new generation of young shoppers are shifting towards a preference for inclusive, approachable, human experiences. Despite professional level images being helpful to encourage customers to make more informed decisions when shopping your products, user-generated content and content that represents a wider demographic are becoming more popular with brands looking to level-up their merchandising strategy. Ratings and reviews tools like Revere can help you make the most of UGC by including photos and videos of your products straight from your customers to provide social proof and help build trust with your potential customers.
Final Thoughts
Now you’re ready to optimize your site for better performance, visibility, and revenue with high-quality, professional grade product photos. If you’re looking for more ways to increase eCommerce revenue and improve the customer experience on your eCommerce site, consider switching to an eCommerce platform that’s built to grow with you. marketAgility is an enterprise-grade eCommerce platform designed for maximum flexibility and control so you can pick and choose vendors that support your unique business needs without the hassle of building custom integrations from scratch. Get started today to learn more about how switching to marketAgility can help you reach your eCommerce goals.
