Why Product Photography Is a Necessity
Product photography is an essential factor when it comes to marketing your products to the public. Unfortunately, many business owners do not know its importance, and tend to overlook it. The first step to purchasing a product online is online discovery. If a customer cannot find your product online, you will hardly make any sales.
Technology is advancing on a daily basis. Software like the Google lens now allows people to search for things on the internet by using pictures. In no distant time, if you don't have a picture of your product on the internet, people won't be able to find your product in your online store.
Due to several factors that affect people, their attention span is reducing on a daily basis. For example, when people go on the internet, if nothing is amusing or eye-catching, they scroll through for hours mindlessly until they find something interesting. This simply means that no one reads random things on the internet anymore. If it doesn’t draw their attention, they won’t care about it. Beautiful, high-quality photos of your products are a way to take advantage of people's short attention span and convert them into potential buyers.
Reasons For the Importance of Product Photography
Product photography is the foundation of any advertising or marketing strategy that you would ever have for your business. You can use product photography for social media platforms, flyers, billboards, and every other advertising platform where you’d like your products to be presented to the public. Still not convinced? Let us give you some more reasons why product photography is an important investment in your business to drive sales.
Product Photography Gives the Customer a Sense of Authenticity
If someone was trying to sell a product to you by just talking about it without showing you, you might think it is a scam, and the person is trying to dupe you of your money. This is how it works when you don't invest in product photography. When customers can't get a pictorial representation of what they are buying, they would rather look for a vendor that can show it to them. This way, any form of doubt is minimized.
You have likely heard the phrase that "images speak louder than words", and it's true. Instead of trying to describe your product with just words, use visual content to connect with those senses and heighten the product appeal.
Human Beings Heavily Rely on Their Visual Sense of Perception
If you have ever heard the saying "seeing is believing" or "A picture is worth more than 1000 words" or any other saying that relates to visuals, you would know that what we see can have a huge impact on our decisions. This is because human beings rely on and trust more in what they can see. They are visual beings. Numerous studies have shown that human beings are more inclined to trust their sight more than any other sensory faculty.
Think of the last time you bought something online just because you loved the way it looked. When a product looks appealing to the eyes, a customer will feel the need to purchase it. This is where professional product photography can be of high value compared to pictures taken by a non-professional. We hope you are beginning to see the importance of product photography.
Photo Quality of Your Product Photography Can Speak Volumes
The quality of images you and your brand use for e-commerce can go a long way in painting a picture of your business to your audience. It might be a pleasant story or not, depending on how your pictures are perceived.
If you only release low-quality pictures, potential customers will get the impression that your products are of lower quality. This is why you should aim for pictures of higher quality. High-quality images market themselves, and they spread really fast, especially on social media platforms. This can serve as good and free publicity for your business.
If you’re competing with another company to sell the same products, having better information in the form of product photos and descriptions might make potential buyers prefer your version of the product more. When this happens, it will result in more sales and customer loyalty to your brand.
Product Photography Provides Quick Information for Shopping Online
As we said earlier, human beings now have a shorter attention span and would most likely not read anything online except it is important. Written product descriptions are great and also essential because they provide specifics, but it can be difficult for someone to imagine the thing described solely through words.
Customers can better understand product information and reconcile what they read with what they see with the help of images. Anyone with limited time can quickly learn about a product by looking at a clear, high-quality image. They can see the product’s colour, design, and quality by just looking at the picture, and they absorb knowledge faster by visually assessing the product rather than reading the details.
Genuine Product Photography Helps To Set the Right Expectations for Your New Customers
A good percentage of internet purchases are returned because the "products look different from the images." This is the number one reason why people find it difficult to purchase things online. It is easier to persuade individuals to buy things offline than it is to persuade them to do so online.
As a result, it is always preferable to display product photographs as they are rather than applying superfluous filters, effects, and the like. Genuine product photography sets the correct expectations for your customers when it comes to what they're looking at -you help them know that what they see is what they get. This makes up for the in-store experience that always clarifies these doubts.
Quality Photography Inspires Trust in Online Shoppers To Buy With Confidence
Online shopping can be a delicate balance of trust and knowledge, and great product photography plays a crucial role in helping viewers and buyers alike navigate between trustworthy sales and scams.
If your website uses photos that stand out in a digital world full of other e-commerce websites, it helps potential customers visualise products online and how they might fit into their lifestyle. The key to this is, of course, good product photos that promote consumer confidence.
Product Images Can Be Used as a Visual Content Touchstone Over All Marketing Campaigns
From social media channels to e-commerce platforms, the benefits of product photography do not end at just your online listing. Instead, great product photos can be used in a variety of campaigns to promote your business, yourself, and the items you have for sale.
If you invest in the right images, they can be used and reused over your business's product pages, social media presence, and further advertising.
High-Quality Product Images Helps Set the Tone and Reach of Your Brand Image
Another important factor of good product photography is the tone it conveys. From ethereal and heavenly to edgy and fashionable, the feeling an image evokes will define your brand to new customers. That's another reason why investing in good product photography is wise, as these images provide vital information during a split second for online shoppers.
What Makes a Good Product Image?
The first step to appealing to online shoppers with an image is to create a product photo that is high quality, unique, and helps establish the same features of the product that you describe in the listing. After all, one photo can tell a thousand words.
The Image Is Clear and High Quality
Whether you book professional photographers or are shooting it yourself with good equipment, an important factor is the resolution and quality of the image.
Make sure the image is not grainy or out of focus. Additionally, the illumination of the product is very important, and oftentimes the best light is adjustable, scalable artificial light, like LEDs or fluorescents.
The Product Takes up Most of the Image
Your product is the star of the show, so it needs to be front and centre. Avoid confusing customers by adding too many props or extraneous details to the scene, and focus the attention on the product in question.
Typically, a good method is to use a clean, white background for the shoot, as it doesn't distract from the main purpose of the image. However, if white doesn't seem like it fits your brand, opt for a similarly cool simple colour, like grey or pastel.
The Shot Uses a Clean, White Background
The background set behind a product photography shoot is an important factor, as well. Too many details can take away from the central image, and if it's too stark, the final photo could look alienating.
Typically, a good method is to use a clean, white background for the shoot, as it doesn't distract from the main purpose of the image. However, if white doesn't seem like it fits your brand, opt for a similarly cool simple colour, like grey or pastel.
Conclusion
We hope you can now see why product photography is essential to businesses. We hope you won't overlook it, and you will take active steps in producing eye-catching pictures of your product. Do not use low or medium-quality pictures because they actually do more damage to your overall brand identity.
If you don't make use of high-resolution pictures of your product, then it means that you are not giving yourself and your business the opportunity to thrive in today's world. You are denying yourself the opportunity to convert potential customers into loyal ones.