Marc Neal
There are many reasons your product photography matters. But ultimately, the benefit of high-quality product photos boil down to basic benefits. They give a correct representation of the product and so are illustrative of the value proposition of the product, they address the importance that your customers place on them, and they are shareable on different platforms.
Product shots make the sale.
Image quality is important to customers
Online shoppers have product images and a brief description to convince them to buy your product. It’s no surprise that consumers have strong opinions about good product photos. Around two-thirds (67%) of consumers consider image quality to be “very important” when buying online. It stands to reason that customers want clear, concise copy paired with high-quality product photos is what customers want.
Illustrate the product’s value proposition.
Customers can’t touch or try out your product when they’re browsing your e-commerce store. They have to understand the product’s value proposition and why they should buy it. One way to build that kind of trust with customers is to give crisp, clear product photos. High-quality images allow shoppers to see a product’s details, check out a product from different angles, and get a deeper sense that they understand what they’re purchasing.
Alex Schult, founder of PhotographyTalk, told Entrepreneur, images illustrate what your brand and products are about — which is precisely why you should make sure every photo is a solid representation of the brand. Photography helps people understand what the brand is about, i.e., telling someone that your business cares about the community is one thing, showing them photos of you actually helping the community is much more powerful.
Poor quality images can leave potential sales on the table, they can also degrade trust between the brand and customers. Blurry images prevent them from examining a product’s details and bad lighting means the product’s actual color or dimensions may be different from how it looks in photos. That can mean more returns or exchanges and a loss of customer loyalty.
Images are more shareable
Want your product to go viral? That will probably not happen with dark, blurry photos. Consumers are 40x more apt to share content that features an image across their social channels. For example, research showed that Facebook posts with photos saw the most engagement over any other post — they accounted for 87% of total interactions. Another study showed tweets with images receive 18% more clicks, 89% more favorites, and 150% more retweets than tweets without images.
One solid example of this is Oreo, which created a 100-day, image-driven campaign to celebrate the cookie’s 100th anniversary. The results speak for themselves: In 100 days, the brand gained more than a million Facebook fans and boosted interactions by 195%.
Images matter
If you are relying on e-commerce to sell your products you want to have great images. They say a lot about you and your business and what you are selling. Customers are drawn to great clear images and a great image has a far greater chance of being seen. When you scrimp on the image you portray, what are you saying to your customers.
