7 Great Ways to Create Better Images of Your Products … and Sell More

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Humans are very visual animals, so if you want to connect with customers and convince them to purchase your products, you need excellent images to kick start the sales process.

Unfortunately, plenty of brands settle for less when it comes to product images, and this can leave them at a disadvantage.

To avoid this happening to you, here are some top tips that will let you overhaul how you present products in promotional images, and ultimately allow you to send sales in a positive direction.

Start with the right raw materials

If you are capturing the product images yourself, it is possible to get decent results if all you’ve got is a modern smartphone; you just need to use it in the right way, which is something we’ll discuss a little later.

Most importantly, make sure that the makeup of the image itself is adequate to allow for tinkering and adjustment. This means setting the device’s camera to capture in the highest possible resolution, giving you more pixels to work with in the output file.

When you go to use photo touch up software, the more data the program has to work with, the better the results. Feeding in a low-res file, on the other hand, will seriously limit the effectiveness of even the best editing platforms.

Make sure the framing is on-point

It should go without saying, but if you can’t see all of your product at the same time because of how the image is framed, then it will look sloppy and unprofessional.

Badly cropped images are also unhelpful from a user perspective, because there might be some key aspect of the product that’s just out of frame, and which therefore comes as a shock when the item is received.

Indeed online marketplaces like Amazon and eBay have rules in place which require sellers to have well-framed product images, so there’s even more reason to get this right.

Leverage close-ups to showcase materials

Having one full frame image of a product is a good starting point, but from here it pays to provide prospective purchasers with a closer look.

Adding multiple images which reveal the item from several angles is sensible, and using close-up shots takes this tactic a step further. This is because when you focus in on the detail, you will reveal other potential selling points of the product, such as the materials used and the textures that these create.

This is the reason that you’ll see many automotive marketing campaigns home in on minutiae like the stitching of the vehicle’s upholstery, or the texture of the dash materials. It’s about juxtaposing the big picture aspects of the aesthetics with the small scale detail to make it seem a more rounded package.

Use scale where relevant

In sales, size matters. But it’s not just product stats that can win over a customer, as sometimes it helps to give context to the dimensions you’re dealing with.

Good images will be able to provide a sense of scale, usually by placing the product alongside other items with which the audience will be familiar. This might be an everyday household item, or a familiar domestic scene which can act as a backdrop to make the product shine.

Delivering an accurate sense of scale is also a way of avoiding customers getting the wrong end of the stick when placing an order. It’s surprisingly common for people to buy products online without first checking the dimensions, and only seeing an image with the item isolated and out of context, which can lead to higher levels of customer returns.

Source snaps from customers themselves

You don’t need to do all of the legwork when it comes to conjuring up product images. And in fact, it might be more engaging for customers who have previously purchased a product to submit their own pictures so that these can be shown alongside your own.

Part of the reason for this is that people tend to recognize that official product images are overly sanitized and pushed a little too far towards perfection through editing and behind-the-scenes tricks. If they can also see that the images you provide are accurate by comparing them with customer submissions, you’ll earn their trust.

That doesn’t mean you should use every single customer photo that’s sent your way, as not all of them will meet the standards you set in terms of quality. But it’s a nice option to have if you want to catalyze conversion rates without overstretching your own resources.

Display different colors

Plenty of products, particularly those that fall into categories such as clothing and soft furnishings, will have one uniform design that’s available in several different colors.

Rather than just telling customers that they can have a product in all the colors of the rainbow, then only showing them one as an example, aim to demonstrate the breadth of the range visually right there on the page.

Once again, image editing tools can make this easy, as with the right software you can alter the hues of a single item to represent different colors, without necessarily needing to set up a photo shoot for each one individually.

Call in the professionals

No matter how much of an amateur photography expert you think you are, it’s still better to pay a professional to complete any product photography and image editing work you need doing.

There will be costs that come with this, but the rewards you’ll reap in terms of sales increases will let you justify the expense many times over.

Wrapping up

Selling anything involves a combination of skills and strategies, of which product images arguably have the biggest impact, especially in the e-commerce age.

Neglecting to create high quality product images will not just allow sales to slip through your fingers, but will also harm your brand’s reputation.

Hopefully you now have an understanding of where improvements can be made, and what product image missteps you’ve taken in the past.