Humans truly are visual creatures. We are greatly affected by what our sense of sight can pick up.
What we see has a big say in what we do. We appreciate and discriminate based on what our eyes can capture.
The influence that visual elements have on our actions transcends even to our shopping behavior. When you visit a store, you are attracted by visually appealing products.
When you try to discern whether or not to buy a product, you make use of your eyes to examine it. As a business engaged in selling products, you should use that to your advantage.
Without a physical store, going about with visuals in an online shop is a bit different. There is not much other sense that you can put into play besides the sense of sight (maybe sound as well for videos but not too much).
This gives even more importance to leveling up the visual elements of your site. You must use high-quality product images which might involve beefing up your e-commerce photography skills.
In order to maximize the positive influence that high-quality product images can have in boosting your online sales, here are some things that you should remember:
High-Quality Photos for Your Website
The first thing that you should do is to ensure that your e-commerce site only makes use of high-quality product photos.
Putting in low-resolution photos would send negative connotations about your brands and your products, and would definitely do a lot of harm to your sales.
To prevent this, the following tips can help you out:
Bigger is indeed better
When a potential customer lands on your product pages, you only have a few seconds to make a good impression so you must maximize that short window. It is ideal to use large high-quality photos in order to give a better look at your products.
Small product images would defeat the purpose of presenting your products to your customers. So use large photos that fully show how your product looks like.
Crisp and Clear
Ensure that you provide images in high-resolution to ensure that your photos are crisp and clear.
When possible, allow your photos to be zoomed in order for your potential customers to examine your products closer.
These are things that we normally do when doing physical shopping, and also has a place on online shopping. High-resolution images somehow equate to high-quality photos.
Low-resolution photos should be avoided at all cost.
If you want to learn more about product photography, see this DIY Product photography guide from Shopify.
Focus on the Product
You should make sure to put the highlight on the product – not anyone wearing or using it.
Of course, it’s alright to be able to showcase your product in action, but your primary photo should only be your product as it is, just like how you would see it in on a shelf in the mall.
When you present your products, be sure to use product images that show the product as a whole, and all of its defining features.
Help your shoppers understand what your product really is and how it is different from others that you have, and those that your competitors have.
Remember that this is your only tool to do so because your customers cannot see your products in person. So do this well.
Make use of Carousels
It is recommended to have multiple photos of your products presented in the form of a carousel. This allows seeing your product in many different angles or highlighting certain features of your products.
Again, this helps to examine your products better. 3 to 6 photos are usually the recommended number of photos per product.
It would also be great if you can provide photos of the product in the various colors that it is available. A simple click on the color should present product carousels on the chosen color.
Make the Background Work for You
Remember to make sure that the background of the photos complement your images, highlighting them and making them stand out.
Your background should also be consistent, and in just one style all throughout your site. The general rule is that the background should be simple, and should not distract your potential customers.
Product images usually come in gray or white backgrounds. You can deviate from this if you have a unique style that you use, but make sure that you do not make use of anything distracting. Keep it plain to be safe.
Experiment with New Techniques
There are many new techniques that you can implement into your visual strategy.
Adapting to some fresh strategies can help you stand out from other business that only has the capacity to do traditional approaches.
Some of the new techniques that you should learn to implement are the following:
360° Photos
360° photos provide more depth to your photos. It somehow recreates a personal experience with the product, seeing it in all angles.
It also empowers your customers as they have control over how they see the photos.
When done right, using 360° photos can definitely help out in increasing your sales. Studies show that using 360° photos can bring about up to 40% increase in sales of a product.
Videos
Videos are not always used for product pages because they tend to be more tedious to do. They also take bigger space and may have an effect on the overall performance of your site.
But if you have the capacity and the resources, using videos can help you out because videos are a lot more engaging than still images. Some video content that you can use are catwalks and instructional videos.
Catwalks are great for selling clothes, shoes, and fashion accessories in order to show your customers how they really look when worn.
Seeing how your products look like in action aid your customers in visualizing how it looks on them.
Meanwhile, instructional videos can help provide information on how to assemble, or how to properly use products. This goes well for tools, for devices, and for items that require assembling.
Doing this can help you trim down on customer complaints brought about by a misunderstanding of your products and how they work.
Box-opening videos also work great on showing what your customers what they’re really getting.
Boost Your Product Images to Boost Your Sales
Without a doubt, product visuals really do play a big part in the purchasing behavior of buyers, may this be in physical stores or online shops.
While online and offline product visuals have different approaches, they have the same goal of pushing your customers to make a purchase.
Being a business engaged in product sales, you capitalize on the visual bias of your customers in order for you to boost your conversion.
High-quality product images are not optional – especially if you aim to make the most out your visuals.
Conclusion
There are many strategies on how you can tap into this visual bias, and some of the most straightforward approaches have been laid out above.
Doing them can definitely give you the visual boost that you need.
Indeed, we are visual creatures. Make use of this fact to your advantage. You can boost your product images in order to boost your product sales.
Follow our tips above and you are a couple of steps ahead in achieving the conversion boost that you are aiming for.
