How to Use Product Images to Attract Customers Online

Product photography is one of the most important things for eCommerce businesses. Since the customer can not touch or feel the product online, product images are the only thing that helps them to make a buying decision. By making sure that the product images are high-attractive and are of good quality, the business owners can really attract the customers and influence their buying decisions. This ultimately leads to higher traffic and thereto, higher conversions.

[Edit]Steps

[Edit]Capturing High-Quality Images

1. Use a good camera. The camera is the primary tool in photography. It all depends on the camera quality for how the images will turn out to be. Use a good digital camera brand to ensure the best quality images. It might be quite expensive, however, it is a very important investment if you want to capture high-quality images and attract more customers to your eCommerce. Any good DSLR camera would allow you to capture high-quality images without much effort.^[1]
   
2. Use proper lighting setup. Lighting plays a major role in photography. Make sure that you have enough lighting while taking product images. Regardless of whether you're shooting indoors or outdoors, it is necessary that the lighting setup is decent. Lighting helps you capture each and every detail of the products and also capture the correct colors at the same time. You can use artificial lighting equipment for indoors like:^[2]
   
   • Photography light bulbs
   • Softboxes
   • Umbrella lights
   • Camera flash
3. Remove distractions. It is pretty important that you put everything out of the frame that might distract your customers. These could be unwanted props, stains, or dirty patches in the background, and bright colors that might overpower the product. Always make sure that the focus is your product and nothing else is stealing that focus away.
   
   
4. Use a neat and clean background. A clean background ensures that your product is the main attraction. Most eCommerce businesses prefer using a clean, white background for their products. This brings consistency in the product images and your images look more appealing to the customers. You can add different backgrounds for social media posts, however, for your eCommerce website, a white background for products could be most effective.^[3]
   
   
5. Keep your products clean. Be sure to remove dust, scratches, and fingerprint smudges from your products. In the case of clothing items, remove wrinkles and stains of any kind.
   
   
   • A clean product is the most common requirement to make any product image look attractive and of high quality. This makes your product images more professional and welcoming.
6. Use relevant props. Using props that are relevant to the products can help you improve the aesthetic of a product image. though, make sure that the props do not overpower the product but only support it. Such props help your customers to get an idea about the product and understand what is used in it or what it is used for.
   
   
   • For example, if your product is a moisturizer with ingredients like vanilla and cocoa, you can keep the moisturizer in the center and spread some cocoa powder and vanilla pods around it. This will enhance the look of the product image and attract customers.

[Edit]Using Different Methods of Product Photography

1. Capture images from all angles. Every customer wants to explore the product in the best ways before making a buying decision. Using multiple product images captured from different angles allows the buyers to explore the product from every angle. Also, making your customers completely satisfied with the product before buying also helps in reducing the returns.^[4]
   
   
   • When a customer only sees a single product image and purchases the product, they might not get a complete idea about the product. This leads to dissatisfaction after the receiving of the product and thus encourages the buyers to return the product. Multiple product images not only give the complete idea about the product but also improves your business credibility.
2. Keep up with trends. To survive the eCommerce competition, it is crucial to stay updated with trends. Capture the product images in ways that are currently trending. The color palette, the angles, etc. must be aligned with what customers are more attracted to. There are many trends that you might follow such as:
   
   • Ghost mannequin^[5]
   • Monochromatic photography
   • In-use photography for products^[6]
3. Follow photography themes. There are many trending photography themes that businesses are using to engage more customers. If not directly on the website, you can carry out these trending themes on your social media page. Since social media is one of the best places to engage a wide variety of audiences, using photography themes in your post can really help you increase conversions.
   
   

[Edit]Using Product Photo Editing

1. Use editing software. Product image editing genuinely makes the products look more professional, appealing, and converting. You can never convince a customer by using dull and unattractive product images. A few things like removing the background and using multiple backgrounds in the same image, correcting colors, and removal of stubborn dust, scratches, and stains can easily be done using photo editing software. Such things can not be corrected without editing.^[7]
   
   
   • Product image editing makes your product look highly attractive and flawless. People also use editing software to refine models representing the product. The flaws like stray hairs, smudged makeup, etc. can be fixed using editing software.^[8]

[Edit]Tips

• Share your product images on as many social channels as possible to increase your reach and engage more people through product images

[Edit]References

1. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_single-lens_reflex_camera
2. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photographic_lighting
3. ↑ https://www.wikihow.com/Remove-the-Background-of-a-Picture
4. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/360_product_photography
5. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packshot
6. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifestyle_photography#:~:text=Lifestyle%20photography%20is%20a%20genre,inspire%20people%20in%20different%20times.
7. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Editing_software
8. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_editing