It is obvious that high-quality images are necessary to achieve good user experience and boost online sale.
The question remains how. What are the ingredients that make a photograph good enough to catch the attention of a viewer?
Here are some tips to try.
Show variations
Provide all necessary viewing angles. Mimic the way we buy products at a brick-and-mortar shop. We take a product in our hand, move it all around, and view it at different angles. You should do the same with images.
Shoot products from all sides and at different angles, capturing all important details and aspects of the products. The more the viewing angles of a product image, the better they help buyers understand the product. This will not just increase sales but also help gain customer satisfaction and positive feedback.
Show products in all colors and styles that you have to offer. Customers are likely to buy a product if it is in their preferred color because it gives a strong sense of what it actually looks like and helps them decide whether to buy or not.
Don’t use pop-up windows to show different variations. These are considered bad user experience.
Provide them a larger product photo. You can either give them a way to zoom in on any part of the product they are viewing or offer them a high-resolution image of the same product through a different link. A detailed view of the product helps buyers take a decision that they are unlikely to regret later.
Be consistent
You might be selling a wide variety of different products. However, it is important that the images of all these products should look similar in style, size and presentation.
Props like background, modeling, lighting and image placement strategy give your ecommerce platform a professional look. Also, it helps avoid distraction and is a great way to build brand reputation.
Be consistent with photos style and background. Photos with different backgrounds and styles are difficult to compare and are considered bad user experience.
Generally, white background is preferred. Depending on the context and products, you can choose a different color for a background. Sometimes, products shown with their natural background look more attractive. An example of this could be football with green grass as a background.
While listing products on the main page, you must keep an item at a consistent angle every time you capture its image. This is specific with clothes on a mannequin or model. Also, you need to keep the context similar so that a user finds it easy to compare different products.
Think Search Engine
The first and the foremost thing is that you must own the images. Search engine ignores and even penalizes websites that feature stock photos or images that they do not own.
All images must include meta information, known as meta tags. These tags tell a search engine what your images are all about. You can hire SEO people to take care of all these issues. Important meta tags include Alt Tag, Title Text, Captions, and Product Description.
The metadata also helps visually impaired shoppers understand images. You can, thus, create a new market segment for your products and boost your sale.
Image file size is very important. Images with optimized size helps your website open fast and perform better. This improves user experience and also gives a positive signal to the search engine. As a result, you may be ranked to the top of a search engine page result.
Large image often takes long to load, but it helps users understand the product. Small images, on the other hand, are fast, but they may not create the same excitement among viewers. Your SEO people will provide a great help here. They specialize in creating a balance between image size and website performance.
Go Professional
Avoid stock photos. Instead invest in realistic, high-quality photos that are unique and your own.
Hire a professional product photographer to take high-resolution images of your products from various angles. Taking photos through smartphones or amateur cameras with not do.
Hire an experienced retouching company to transform raw photos into something that you can post on your website. There are a variety of issues, such as size, orientation, cropping, lightning, background removal, transparency, and removal of unwanted elements. Only an experienced retoucher can help you create professional-grade, optimum-quality images.
Recoloring is a great way to show the same product in different colors.
Also, provide 360-degree images or a high-quality product video if possible. GIFs can also be considered an option to engage customers.
