Describe cotton to a man born blind.
Difficult eh? Without the sense of sight, it would be pretty difficult to describe something with just your words. Because sometimes, words just aren’t enough. For ecommerce sites, words are never enough(although they can be powerful). You can’t sell something and not have your customers complaining because don’t see any photos. It’s like a man groping in the dark.
Having photos on your site is a good way to increase the attraction factor of your products. What a person can’t see (or even imagine) can’t be bought. Now don’t start getting your camera phones and get trigger happy – read these tips to better photos and see how much orders you’ll be getting!
Composition
Composition is basically, what the picture is composed of: a bag, a shoe or a nice set of china plates you’d like to sell online. Your products should be free of clutter. Merchants are guilty of adding unnecessary objects in the frame(the photo) that they get customer comments like, “so what is it really you’re selling?”. Believe you me, this will account for low order volume despite the flowery descriptions attached to the photo. Simple is always good. Start with a solid color background – no flowery wallpapers, the focus shifts to the background rather than the product.
Action Shots
Sometimes people can’t fathom their reasons for buying a product. However, when you try to put a photo of the product in action – say a woman wearing the garment instead of just a pasty cold mannequin – then they can imagine themselves wearing the garment. Or imagine a nice set of china plates set on a welcoming table – does wonders for sales.
Lighting
The attraction factor increases big time when lighting is good – no, Great! Look at the models on your magazines – effective lighting transforms them from drab dolls to good looking people – and helps skin tone too. In any case, harsh, unthought of lighting produces ugly photos and ugly products. If you don’t have the dough to get lighting equipment, shoot your photos outside(natural lighting) during the early hours and the last few hours of the day. During these hours, lighting is soft and warm.
Close up
Never put up photos taken from afar – unless they’re action shots vital to the product at hand. Close ups of the different parts of the product (close up of the china pattern, or a handle on a bag), are appreciated by customers very very much.
Points of View
Aside from the close ups, try to add different angles of the product. Shoot from the right, or the left, but don’t try to shoot from radical angles often perpetuated by other ecommerce sites. If it’s for art’s sake, fine, but this is ecommerce, and you want your customers to buy and use your product – not stare at it.
User Generated photos
Encourage your customers to submit photos of their newly-bought items and you not only enhance customer loyalty, you also make your products more REAL. A real merchant who ships products and has actual customers.
It’s easy to set aside photos as a means to increase sales, but as the saying goes, pictures speak a thousand words. You don’t have to hire professional photographers to shoot the products – you can do so yourself. It may sound overwhelming, but with a few tweaks, tricks and useful tips, you can have amazing photos for your ecommerce site.
