One of the most important and often overlooked things in ecommerce is having good, high-quality product images. Clear product descriptions with sharp and truthful pictures take the customer closer to the final purchasing decision.
One of the most important and often overlooked things in ecommerce is having good, high-quality product images. Clear product descriptions with sharp and truthful pictures take the customer closer to the final purchasing decision.
When your online store sells excellent products, the provided product information needs to be excellent as well. A lot of online shoppers make their purchasing decision based the overall feeling they get when browsing around in your store. This overall feeling consists of the overall shopping experience, the product range, the price range, customer service, and the purchasing experience. High-quality product photos are a great way to make a positive impact on the feeling shoppers get from your products and store in general. Some good first steps are to have multiple images available from different angles, add photos of the important details of the product and have zoom available for a close-up look.
Nevertheless, it is good to bear in mind that brilliant product images will not be the solution if your product is not quite as brilliant and the beautiful photos mislead your customers. This is a sure way to disappoint your customer when he or she opens the package. The customer may not return the product but is also unlikely to purchase again when expectations are not met. The key is to be truthful in setting up your product images and descriptions because a loyal customer who keeps returning to your store is the most valuable type of customer.
In fact, the truthfulness and accuracy of images is very important in a lot of cases, also beyond ecommerce. Think about the popular dating application, Tinder, for example. In Tinder you can browse through other users’ photos of themselves and, if you’re lucky, you might yourself on a date with one of them. When setting up your Tinder profile you make the first impression to other users with a photo of yourself. You are basically “selling” your pictures to other Tinder users, or “customers”, if you like. In order to get the desired attention, the “Tinder store keeper” often selects only the best photos of him-/herself and these may sometimes not show the whole reality (viewing angle or an old picture, etc.). In this case too, the truthfulness of the image plays a big role: your Tinder match may have been able to make a good first impression with a nice photo, but if the truth is totally different, you may be in for a disappointment when you two meet up for (what was supposed to be) a romantic cup of coffee. It is in fact quite likely that this “customer relationship” ends sooner rather than later.
Producing product information and quality pictures and keeping them up to date takes a lot of work, but it is surely worth your while. If you are not good at taking pictures, hire someone to do it for you. If you want to do it yourself, you can find a lot of photography guides online to learn how to take a good picture. And finally, read the first paragraph of this text once more!