Return to site

High Quality Product Photography and Video Amp Up Sales

broken image

The one downside of shopping online for your customers is the inability to pick up the products they’re looking at. The best they can do is look at an image or maybe a video of the product to help them make their choice.

Having high quality images and videos on your site will help those consumers make their shopping decisions and if you have better quality photos and videos than your competitors, those customers will choose your products.

Video = Conversions

Whether you post a manufacturer’s video for a product or you make your own in-house, allowing people to watch a video of a product will lead to higher conversion rates. Videos allow people to see a product in action and get a clearer understanding of how it works.

Videos are especially good for products that have any kind of complexity associated with them like ones that need to be installed or ones that fold up or move in ways that cannot be made fully clear in photos or text alone.

They can also help to cut down on customer complaints and returns because videos help cut down on the chances of customers not understanding how a product works before they order it.

Follow the Leader

If two of the largest e-commerce sites in the world are doing something, it must be working, right? Amazon just recently opened its third fashion photography studio. This one opened in India to join the others in Brooklyn and London.

And these aren’t small studios. Each one has dozens of individual bays where photographers snap thousands of high-end fashion photos all day long. They employ professional makeup artists and have the air of a major fashion studio.

Why would Amazon spend millions of dollars on fashion photography studios? Because the company knows that amazing images help sell the clothing on its site. It’s not just fashion, either. Amazon also employs an army of photographers and videographers all over the world to shoot product photos and videos in creative ways.

Like Amazon, fellow e-commerce giant Zulily also chooses to perform its product photography in-house. It has dozens of mini photo studios peppered throughout its Seattle headquarters, and now uses sophisticated photography software to shoot thousands of high-quality photographs each day to upload to its site.

360 Degrees

While quality product photos and videos will help with sales, there is another photographic tool that takes the consumer experience to a whole new level. The virtual equivalent of letting a consumer pick up and handle an object, 360 photography lets customers view a product from a variety of angles by turning it around on their screen with their mouse.

It lets them see the product they’re interested in from the angles they want to see it from. For every shopper, that’s different. Giving them this virtual ability makes them feel ownership over the product as they look at it how they want to look at it instead of relying on still images or a video they have limited control over.

The maternity ecommerce site DueMaternity.com reported an increase in sales of 27% when the site started using a feature where products on the screen would begin rotating when a customer hovers their mouse over a product.

As great as it is to give customers this ability to virtually view products however they wish, 360 degree photography is more costly than regular photography.

For new e-commerce startups, it’s clear that high-quality product photography and video is key to success. If you want help with product photography or video, please contact Digital Ink. We can help you create stunning visuals that will help you increase conversions.