One of the key factors that determine the success of an online store is the quality of its product photos. If you are looking to get into the ecommerce business, you better be good at product photography. When your customers cannot touch and feel your products, they make their buying decisions purely on the product images that you upload on the site. Therefore, it only makes sense that if your product shots are not good, your customers will not feel like buying from your store.
As the demand for online shopping grows, businesses need to be more vigilant about making their online stores more appealing. Product photos and other product details on the site need to be comprehensive so that customers can buy from your site comfortably.
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Benefits of Having Good Product Photos
The main goal of any online store is to make as many sales as possible. In order to achieve that, you first need to create a sales funnel that attracts your customers to your site. Next, the customers must find your store appealing when they finally land on it. This is where the quality of your product photos plays a major role.
Besides making your website look professional, good product photos add value to your site in many different ways. Here are some benefits of having good product photos on your online store.
1. Highlight All the Product Features
If your product photos are in high resolution, they will highlight the contours of your product clearly. Your customers will be able to see all the features of your product in the product images. Merely typing out your product features in the description is often not sufficient. Visitors need to be able to see with their eyes what they’re going to get when they buy from you. Good product photos also show the product from different angles. This allows your visitors to have a three-dimensional view of the product, giving them a more realistic experience of their online shopping.
If your original product photos don’t come out nice, it’s highly recommended that you edit them using a photo editing app or software before uploading them on your online store.
2. Display the Product in All the Available Colors
Good product photography means your product is shown in each available color in a different product shot. Each image needs to be uploaded in the best image format. When your visitors are choosing which color to buy, it is hard for them to imagine the product in a color that they cannot see in the product photos. Displaying all colors in product images reduces the burden for customers to imagine what exactly the product will look like in a specific color.
When you add product photos in each available color separately, you can also specify how much stock in each color is left. The same goes for the different product sizes.
3. Stand Out From the Competition
All online stores do not represent good product photography. Some simply take dull or blurry pictures from their smartphones and upload them on the site. Therefore, if your online store is full of good product photography ideas, you’ll have the edge over all other average sites. Make sure you research other ecommerce sites in your niche before building up your own.
4. Make Your Online Store Look Appealing
Good product photography can really change the entire appearance of your site and make it a lot more beautiful. When your site is good to look at, people would like to spend more time on it. The more time they spend browsing through your product images, the more likely they will end up making a purchase.
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5. Reduce the Bounce Rate
Good product photography reduces the bounce rate of your site, which is good for your site’s search rankings. The more engagement your visitors have with your site, the more Google will push up your site in its search results.
6. Charge Higher Prices
Good product photos will make your product look fancy and exquisite. People will be willing to pay a higher price for it. If your product photography is not of good quality, people will have a low perceived value for your product, which means they will either not buy it or be willing to pay a very low price for it.
Things You Need to Create Good Product Photos
Now that you know the benefits of having good product photos, let’s see what it takes for you to do good product photography. The good news is you don’t need to invest a lot of money to build a photography studio. You can use some basic equipment and simply set up a studio at your home. This method will allow you to save budget, make a simple studio design, and be ready to get your product shots faster.
Here’s all the equipment you’ll need:
- Camera
- Tripod
- Plain Background
- Bounce Cards
- Table
- Good Lighting
• Camera
You don’t need to invest in an expensive DSLR camera. You can either use a camcorder or webcam, or use the built-in camera of your smartphone. Nowadays, a simple smartphone also comes with a very good quality camera. You just need to take pictures of your product to display on your site.
As long as you have good lighting, styling, and exposure, you can take good quality product shots with your phone. The best part is even after taking product images, you can edit them on your phone using a photo editing app before uploading them onto your site.
• Tripod
For taking good quality product photos, you’ll need to set the camera at a small aperture, which means it will be hard for you to hold the camera in your hand. Or if you’re using your phone to take pictures, again it won’t be comfortable to hold the phone in your hands. That’s why you’ll need to use a tripod.
• Plain background
It’s important for your product photos to have a plain background so that the shape and contours can be prominent. White is usually the preferred color, but if white is difficult, you can use any other light pastel color. Make sure your product background doesn’t contrast with your website background.
Amazon sells white sweeps that don’t cost much. A benefit of using a sweep is that when part of it gets dirty, you can cut it off and roll down a new piece.
• Bounce cards
When you’re using sunlight coming in from the window as your lighting source, you’ll notice a bright side and a shadow side in the room. On the shadow side, you’ll need to reflect some light back so that it doesn’t get too dark. To do this, you’ll need white bounce cards that will brighten up the shadowed parts of the room.
• Table
A table will be good to place your product to take product shots. If you place the product on the floor instead, you might have difficulty in taking product images from different angles. A standard folding table serves best for this purpose.
• Good Lighting
It is necessary to have a window in your studio so that sunlight can enter the room. Photography lighting is crucial for being able to take good product photos.
How to Upload Product Photos in Strikingly?
Once you’re done taking your product photos, you need to upload them on your online store. If you build your store on Strikingly, then the process to upload your product images is very simple.
Image taken from Strikingly
Strikingly is a website builder that enables you to create an online site for your business in a very easy manner. Its features allow you to build a full-fledged online store without writing even a single line of code.
For adding a product in Strikingly, go to your store section and click on ‘Add New Product’.
Image taken from Strikingly
Write down the product’s name and description, and upload your product photos. Before setting up product prices, you might want to research a bit on how to set the sale prices on your online store. Fill out all product information, such as the product price, available sizes, and colors, and the number of pieces available. You can edit the information you enter about a product at any time.
Image taken from Strikingly
Another feature Strikingly offers is a section where you can showcase your product. This means you can display detailed product images to show it from different angles. It gives your product a premium look and feels. This section is mainly for showcasing products, and not used for selling. It’s called the ‘Product Showcase’ section. To add this, click on ‘Add new section’ in your site editor, and then click on ‘Product Showcase’. Add a product in the section to display it on your site’s landing page.
By beautifully displaying your product photos and building a portfolio in Strikingly, you can get ahead of the competition in the digitized world we are living in today. Success comes to those who not only dream but act. So if you dream about building and selling from an online store, sign up for an account in Strikingly today.
