PRODUCT PHOTOGRAPHY AND IT'S IMPORTANCE IN eCOMMERCE
By Pete R., May 2007
Whether selling products, vacation spots or services it can be very difficult to make your products look appealing to potential customers. Attractive web design and complimentary copy writing will help, but ultimately the image you choose will pique the viewer’s interest, and hopefully, a desire to purchase the product.
When choosing a style of photography for your products you need to consider the potential buyer’s opinion of what they find interesting and appealing; what one buyer finds professional, another may find bland or boring. So in a world saturated with banal and boring imagery, making it increasingly difficult to get noticed on the web, the goal is to maintain a balance between creativity and professionalism while still producing a flawless photograph of the product.
Poor photography will communicate to the customer that you don’t care about your products. Unique photography is the key to standing out and showing customers that you’re serious about how you look and what you’re selling. Each product has traits that need to be emphasized and therefore every picture should be customized per item. If all your product shots are the same one after another, the customer will tire of looking and move on, however, if you use interesting photos and give the customer an opportunity to interact with or use their imagination to affect an image, it will stimulate a more responsive reaction. People notice time and effort, and they will be more willing to expend energy paying attention to details of each photograph if someone else did as well.
Poor preparation is obvious and can make or break a picture. Whether it’s ironing t-shirts, cleaning off glass or rearranging lighting, every product needs to be properly prepared before it’s photographed. Beside proper preparation and technical acumen, there is really no way someone can say that one style is right or wrong, but what is best for the customer and product.
Photographing a t-shirt on a person can be better than putting that t-shirt on a mannequin, but it has to be a fitting model. It wouldn’t make sense to throw a Bob Marley tee on a metal head, unless it was in jest. In the same vein, it also wouldn’t make sense to have a female college student wearing a fairy princess necklace for adolescents.
It’s very important that your photos makes sense and are appropriate for your target demographic. When a 14 year old girl sees another teen wearing something that piques her interest, while in a setting she can relate to, her impulse is to buy or at the least consider. So in addition to the product, the surroundings are an important element of the photo, creating an organic selling environment to entice buyers with this pre-designed lifestyle image. In the end, customers want to feel that others are buying the same products they are; and a photo with said product in an appropriate setting is a good way to create that illusion.
Great photos let you show your customers and clients the benefits and key features of your product. Remember, a picture is worth a thousand words, but a great picture is worth ten times that when it increases sales, promotes your brand and distinguishes you from the competition.
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