The Importance Of Quality Product Photography For E-Commerce

An ecommerce store that showcases their products with poor quality photography is working at an abysmal disadvantage. Considering how internet users are spending a few good minutes every day browsing and admiring high quality photos of places and products that they find interesting on social media and in online stores, the importance of having high quality product images has never been more vital for your ecommerce business.

There are only a hand full of ways that your consumers can measure your product before deciding to buying it, so it is in your ecommerce store’s interest to provide quality images and visual information about a product to convince your prospective consumer that you’ve got something great to offer them.

Unlike the traditional brick and mortar store, your ecommerce store does not allow your online shoppers to come into physical contact with your products. Instead, shoppers are limited to their visual sense to measure the value, quality, and trustworthiness of a brand and its products. Shoppers are grounding their judgment on your ecommerce store based solely on how you present your merchandise visually, and so they rely on product pictures to gauge whether they like the product or not.

Remember that images have the power to delight, attract, and to inform your target consumers. The right product images can help you stimulate and drive the agenda of your marketing campaign and help you make more sales from you online store.

To help you find out why product pictures are so important, we decided to write this article to give you the most pressing reasons why you need to step up your product photography game in order to improve your sales and drive the success of your online store. So without further ado, here are the most compelling reasons why photography is so important for your ecommerce business:

Gives you a competitive edge

You’re store has competitors, does it not? There are other ecommerce stores out there with a similar theme or idea, selling the same or similar products as you. Naturally, you are doing what you can to stay competitive and one of the best possible things for you to have against your competitors is better quality and more attractive product images.

Human beings-being visual creatures, have a natural propensity to gravitate towards what looks pleasing and good on the eyes. When shoppers are surfing the net and doing their research for a particular product that they are interested in, they tend to compare products from different stores. When faced with identical products and with identical prices, the majority tend to favor the ecommerce site that has quality, professional product photographs, simply because it looks better.

Quality images improves perceived value

In relation to humans admiring and being attracted to what appeals aesthetically, we tend to dodge products displayed by sellers online who did not put enough thought and effort to their product photos. It doesn’t matter what it is you are selling. You could be selling authentic, high-value products online, but if your images are poorly lit with a terrible background, then no one will be visually attracted to your products, so you can expect your store to suffer from lousy conversion rates.

This is because your customers will reflect the quality of your images upon the value of the products you are selling online. Poor quality images will bring down people’s perceived value of your online store and brand. Great product photography, on the other hand, will only uplift your store and people’s perceived value of your brand and its available products.

It’s what your prospective customer notices first

Product images are what captures the eye of your target audience first. Our eyes are naturally drawn to and attracted by images of products we find interesting, even before we check to consider the price tag. Good quality photos have the power to capture the attention and the imagination of your consumers. Before most people make a purchase, we image to some degree the role that acquiring a certain product may play upon our lives. Quality product images can help build upon this process.

Your prospective buyers also have the need to make sure that the products that they are viewing with interest matches their expectations. Your images can help you showcase the qualities and specifications that your target consumers may be looking for. For instance, color, size, style, function, and other qualities that will help your consumer determine their final decision.

Images show your prospective buyers what you have got to offer them. If your images are great, they might decide to stick around for the further product details.

Provides product information

While shopping online is considered wildly convenient for many people out there for a variety of different reasons, one drawback to online shopping is that your customers will not be able to physically handle the product that they want to purchase. Many shoppers go through a process where they consider the product and want to be able to reflect upon the product’s design, color, and observe its other functions before making a purchasing decision. Populating your ecommerce website with high quality images will help you fill in the gap for your customers and help them make a decision.

As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. You should use your product images as a means of providing necessary information to your consumers, for instance, make sure to include photographs of all the available colors, include pictures of the product from multiple angles, show images of the products being used in real life situations, include product infographics, even videos and gifs. When customers get all the information that they need about your products, the more readily they will be to complete a purchase from your store.

Helps you build your brand

High-quality photography is a great medium for building your brand and conveying its unique personality and voice to your consumers. If you aren’t aware of the importance of branding, creating and building a brand is an integral aspect of your business. All successful businesses have their branding at the heart of their business efforts, and owning high-quality images of your brand and products is one of the best ways to build brand persona and brand recognition.

Ideally, your brand and ecommerce store is populated by a consistent and unique visual style that will build recognition in your consumers. Because your brand imbues the personality and voice of your business, your product images must stay true and consistent across all product pages, all social media platforms, and throughout all advertising campaigns. The images you wind up posting and using on your product page should come to represent your brand.

Quality images gets shared on social media

Having great quality visual content available throughout your shop and used in your social media marketing campaign will increase the likelihood of people sharing your product images online.

It’s been found that, in our social-media run world, images are 40 times more likely to be shared. This is because many online shoppers like to talk about their purchases and experiences with brands on social media. Many of whom also like to share images-which could potentially be excellent exposure for you brand!

As it were, people who use social media have a high tendency of basing their purchasing decisions over information and products that they come across off of social media, and share this information with their friends through stories, link shares, repost, or through pinning images from Pinterest. Having people repost your brand’s images is great free advertising for your brand, so you want to make sure that the images you use are high-quality and represents the personality of your unique online store.

Back to you

Investing in high-quality product images is a must for any ecommerce shop, because quality images do the selling for you. When you are selling online, the photos do a considerable amount of work for your store to get the conversions it needs.

Images are the first thing that people see, not your product descriptions. In fact, most people scroll through content very quickly, stopping only when they find something attractive that catches their interest. Your store needs images that are sharp, clear, and images that represent your brand’s personality well and with consistency across all platforms. Having lousy product images will not get your ecommerce store far, because it will hamper people’s ability to trust in you for the lack of professionally photographed goods. Remember, your prospective consumers are most likely to buy from online stores with excellent quality images.

So, now that you know how important high-quality product images can be to the success of your ecommerce business, it’s time to step up your game and beat the competition to the punch with vibrant and informative images.

Your thoughts

How important do you think images are to the success of your online store? Do you believe that improving the quality of your images can help you and your online business? Ecommerce Pro would love to know what you think. If you have any queries or concerns, please feel free to start a conversation with us today. Together we will help you build a better ecommerce website.

Originally published at https://ecommercepro.com on April 22, 2019.