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Studio Automation Solutions for E-Commerce Product Photography
Learning how to boost conversion rates in e-commerce with your product photography is critical to success, especially when trying to increase sales for a small or newer webshop. Ultimately, you need to convince potential customers to purchase a product without them seeing it in person or holding it in hand. It’s a tall order, and while increased website traffic might be a good starting point, one of the most effective ways to boost e-commerce conversion rates is through your product visuals. Read on to learn the 6 safe practices to boost your online store’s conversion rates with your product photography.
In e-commerce, conversion rates measure success and boosting these are top priority. They report the proportion of visitors who, in this case, visit a webshop or online marketplace and then go on to make a purchase. When you boost conversion rates, what you ultimately do is increase turnover and generate higher revenue for the webshop.
Obviously, one consideration is in website traffic, SEO, and visibility in general. Websites need to generate clicks, on-page time, organic traffic, and, ultimately, sales. Unfortunately, even with the best SEO practices, a 7% increase in traffic does not amount to a 7% increase in conversion rate. This is where product visuals come into play.
The fierce competition between today’s webshops, e-commerce vendors, and, especially the product photography studios, means that you need impressive product visuals to truly stand out in the crowd. Great product visuals also serve to generate more website traffic, as well as on-page time and higher SEO value. More importantly, however, visually rich product content inspires greater buyer’s confidence in potential customers when browsing your online products.
This is where bringing products to life matters, and there are a number of strategies employed by webshops and online retailers. From pure white background eCommerce photography to 360° spin photos, 3D modeling, or product video content, many of the leading retailers and product photography studios offer it all. Read on to learn more about what to consider when doing any or all of the above to boost conversion rates for your online products or e-commerce webshops.
It's crucial not to leave any room for imagination. This is why studio automation solutions like PhotoRobot enable extremely high-speed image capture and post-processing of product photos from every angle. After all, detail and variety both satisfy curiosity, and, in this regard, you want those viewing your online products to be able to effectively visualize what you're selling.
If one detail in particular stands in between the shopper and them feeling confident in their purchase, provide them with that detail! Give them more angles to look at, various distances to view the product from, and offer as many shots as possible to satisfy the shopper’s curiosity. They might be looking for shoes with a certain tread or with a very specific length or feature, and if they can’t easily find it, they are very likely to look elsewhere.
More importantly, when you offer shoppers a variety of product photos to consider, it is a display of professionalism on your part. It will reassure shoppers when they have doubts, boost their confidence in your online products, and, potentially, boost your ecommerce shop’s conversion rates in the process.
And while you do want quantity with product photos, you should never sacrifice quality. Blurry photos will not sell products. Nor will any images that aren’t representative enough of what you’re trying to sell. Remember, you’re trying to instill confidence in online shoppers.
Ergonomic studies show that images attract viewer attention more than any other component of websites, but they can also negatively impact viewership, SEO, and conversion rates when they are not up to today’s standards in quality. Widely used stock photos are not enough to successfully promote your brand. Aim for quality and consistency above all else with your product visuals to start boosting conversion rates.
When displaying images on a webpage, there are a lot of important micro-tasks to consider. All of these revolve around effective SEO practices and general page design, and involve tasks like image optimization for page-load time, including a variety of images, as well as objectives like adding captions to product photos for more information or for the visually impaired.
Adding captions to product photos, for example, not only provides shoppers with an additional layer of information for products, it also shows that you pay close attention to detail on your website and inspires more buyer’s confidence in shoppers.
On the other hand, when adding captions, you also need to consider the length of the caption and how it appears on the web page in general so that it is not a distraction. If descriptions are too long or seem unnecessary to the viewer, they might not highlight your product images and attention to detail as they otherwise should.
The next consideration for boosting ecommerce conversion rates with your product photography is how you project your images. The background matters just as much as the page’s theme and appeal to online shoppers, so always choose a background that highlights the products on-page.
Shoppers need to be able to imagine holding the product in their hand, spinning it around and viewing it from various angles, and this should be a natural experience set on a background that complements the shopper’s experience on your webpage.
A standard approach is using a white background for better contrast control and enhancement of products, but there are various other background styles to experiment with to enrich your online product experience. Sometimes you might even want to employ real people into your photographs, particularly on homepages, to add even more context for visitors.
The next conversion tool worth consideration is deep, detail-rich zoom capabilities for product photos. This returns to the idea of satisfying your shoppers’ curiosity while also leaving nothing to the imagination.
The power of zoom is often underutilized by webshops and online vendors, but it provides a strong competitive advantage for boosting buyer’s confidence and triggering purchases. After all, the more zoom features you have with product images, the more time viewers stay on your page and, ultimately, the more ranking your webpage will have when tracked by algorithms.
This means you should spend just as much time optimizing the experience on your webpage as you do with the product imagery. When you give page viewers more to interact with, they’re more likely to make purchases, and your page will be more likely to attract more visitors.
Finally, consider enriching your product experience and boosting conversion rates even further with 360° spin photography, product videos, or 3D models.
Give shoppers a completely immersive, interactive experience than with 3D product visuals. Then, you can even add captions or a fact sheet to these visuals, further extending the on-page time of visitors on your webpage. This is a very effective method to not only keep viewers’ attention but to also boost your ecommerce conversion rates over the long-term.
And while this might seem out of reach, expensive, or even too complicated to begin with, it doesn’t have to be. With the technology of today, there is a wide range of equipment available for producing rich product visuals, from still shots with deep fields of zoom to 360 degree photos and 3D models, all at a reasonable cost and within reach for webshops and product photography studios.
There is also robotic-process, automation technology and hardware, like what we here at PhotoRobot specialize in and offer to help studios meet their photography needs. If you’d like to learn more or even set up a free consultation with one of our support specialists, reach out to us today or feel free to browse our website for more information.
