Why Product Images are so important in E-commerce

Today’s consumers increasingly value the convenience of internet buying, where just a few clicks may get us the item of our desire. As many as 87.6% of respondents thought that the most important aspect of the buying experience was the E-Commerce Product Image of the product. They say that a picture expresses more than a thousand words.

21.8% of the world’s population buys online, which represents 1.66 billion people. However, this huge amount of potential buyers is hard to convince, and as more and more people are entering this pool, more online businesses emerge every day, meaning you have a fiercely competitive market.

Whatever sector of the economy you work in—fashion, technology, cultural products, B to C services, etc.—you need to stand out and come up with innovative ways to do so. E-Commerce Product Photography is one of the many tactics you may do that has a significant effect on consumers’ purchasing decisions.

Good product images: A must for your e-commerce business

Before making a purchase, online consumers also want to understand as much as they can about the item. They cannot touch it, but they may obtain comprehensive information that will translate the product’s qualities into web-speak.

Why E-Commerce Product Image so important in E-commerce — Source: Ergonode

Product information is a set of data that describes a product and allows it to be brought into the digital world. This includes E-Commerce Product Images, videos, technical data, SKUs, pricing and shipping information, or product descriptions.

This information when applied properly has an impact on user experience and buying decisions. On the other side, improper use of product information may effectively deter customers from making purchases or lead to a high rate of returns. One of the most significant sales-influencing aspects, second only to price, is well-designed product information. The E-Commerce Product Image is the most important part, as many as 87.6% of respondents considered the product image as the key elements of the shopping experience. (ergonode)

Source: Marketing Charts

So one approach is to use high-quality E-Commerce Product Images, attractive and informative product images are a big must if you want to sell products online.

What product images can help you scare away precious customers?

Who among us has never seen a circumstance when the things they purchased did not like those in the online store’s E-Commerce Product Image? Most of us probably returned the item, while some may have let it go but chose not to go back to the shop. A disgruntled consumer who also airs their criticisms in public is something that shouldn’t happen. What errors in E-Commerce Product Photography should you avert to avoid this?

#1 The photo does not properly show the product

I know I stated the human face is attractive and that it’s a good idea to take pictures of clothes on models, but I didn’t mean it that way.

What happened? I’m not sure whether more explanation is required because the E-Commerce Product Images speak for itself. The cut and how it fits the model’s figure cannot be seen well because of the clothing worn by the model. If the only goal was to garner attention, the technique was accomplished without a doubt. If it involved selling, I would be quite afraid.

#2 There are not enough pictures

There are some products for which one E-Commerce Product Image is sufficient, particularly if technical details or method of use are the most crucial (household chemicals, basic cosmetics), but in most cases, the client expects more photos, taken from various angles and showcasing the product in context and with attention to details.

Which cap would you choose if you had to make a decision?

#3 The photo is technically poor

Effectively discouraging customers from purchasing, fuzzy, grainy, or overexposed E-Commerce Product Images also give the impression that the brand is unprofessional.

An E-Commerce Product Image taken on a cell phone with a background of an untidy house is not surprising because low-quality photos are typically connected to a platform with ads for used products. However, it is unacceptable in online retailers.

#4 The photo does not show important details

Details matter a lot when it comes to some products. Yes, the majority of this information should be in the technical description, but as we well know, the E-Commerce Product Image takes center stage. For someone who has never used the product before, the knowledge regarding the technical description alone might not be sufficient.

How great image products can influence e-commerce conversion rate?

“90% of online buyers say that photo quality is the most important factor in an online sale” (meero)

According to Justuno, 93% of consumers consider visual content to be the key deciding factor in a purchasing decision. Most importantly the quality of the visuals you’ll use to show how your products look is ESSENTIAL.

Etsy, “an e-commerce Website focused on handmade or vintage items and craft supplies.” (Wikipedia), with a catalog of over 60 million items, found that the quality of E-Commerce Product Image was the most important factor in an online sale for 90% of its users!

“78% of online shoppers want photographs to bring products to life” (meero)

If you run an e-commerce website, photo quality is obviously a must-have, but it’s not sufficient in and of itself. Today’s consumers, particularly those in the X, Y, and Z generations, are seeking for EXPERIENCES when making purchases online, therefore your Product Image For Ecommerce should match your brand’s image and tell a compelling tale.

78% of online customers, according to a Big Commerce study, want product photos to “bring items to life” so they can envision the product as an everyday part of their lives. E-Commerce Product Photography has the ability to tell a narrative about a business, what it stands for to consumers, and why a visitor should care.

Given all of that, you ought to be aware of the demand for “large” photographs on the part of customers. It is a truth that huge HD photos are appearing on e-commerce sites all around the world more frequently. Larger photos improve the aesthetics of websites and the user experience for shoppers, which results in an increase in leads and sales.

Skyrocket your sales and engagement with enhance packshots

The key to selling your things online is having high-quality E-Commerce Product Images. Often, we forget that the customer has not actually seen the products we are offering. Images of products serve as a representation of the actual goods that customers will purchase. One objective is being pursued by e-commerce businesses: “Recreating the offline buying experience online”

Use big images

“Using a larger product photo size on category pages increased sales by 9.46%” (meero)

Having beautiful, high-quality E-Commerce Pictures is not enough in 2023. People today like large graphics and a variety of ways to research products before making a purchase.
A study conducted by Forbes has shown that 50% of online shoppers say “large, high-quality product images are more important than product information, descriptions or even reviews.”

Larger Ecommerce Product Image have an impact on both category and product pages. Since photos on category pages are typically small, enlarging them enables buyers to view the specifics of each category, improving the buying experience. Sales at Mall.cz, the second-largest online retailer in the Czech Republic, have increased by 9.46% on pages featuring larger E-Commerce Product Images.

Add 360° product views

“91% of individuals want the ability to turn products around in full 360° spin” – Adobe Scene 7 (meero)

People desire engaging and engaging purchasing experiences. Simple E-Commerce Product Photography is insufficient. An excellent technique to “recreate the offline experience online” and give the customer the extra assurance they need to purchase your products is to provide 360° product images.

30 percent of online purchases are returns, did you know that? Businesses have been concentrating on finding ways to lower this percentage without increasing costs or altering their practices. The return rate of the products employing them was decreased by 50%, and customers are 85x more likely to write a favorable review than a bad one, as 360° and 3D E-Commerce Product Image are assisting them in making more educated decisions.

Final results demonstrate that 360° view products convert at a 30% higher rate than those without! (meero)

Don’t forget real product images from the customer community

The key to success is to make the products on the product pages as attractive as possible and present them with unique brand recognition so that people choose you and become loyal to your brand. But how does your brand get such unique visual Content? The answer is quite simple: use visual Social Content – User Generated Content (UGC) from your community to enrich your product pages with real product images from the customer community.

User-generated content (UGC) is any content—text, videos, images, reviews, etc.—created by people, rather than brands.

Why do product pages need images from the customer community?

#1 Product pages with authentic images provide a natural aesthetics

The most important thing in wearable fashion is: How does the outfit look on real people? How does the product look in natural situations?

In order to respond to this query, the clothing retailer ZARA frequently turns to the eye-catching E-Commerce Product Image of the product. Moody models wear the fashion while sitting on a stove or hanging bent over a tennis net. This raises the question of how well these depict real-world and authentic scenarios in which customers would actually use the products.

It is artsy in any case, and that is certainly how ZARA aims to display its brand. However, the model images have little to do with the everyday life of most people and only marginally contribute to a purchase decision. What’s the point of knowing what you’d look like in that dress if you were squatting on a hot plate? Let’s be honest, that hardly ever happens, at least when I think about my everyday life.

This contrasts with the content that the brand Eddie Bauer relies on as a visual product description to accentuate the wearability and versatility of their clothing in everyday life. For example, on the product detail page (PDP), the outdoor-inspired brand uses images from the community to show how the same yellow raincoat can look on various people in various situations. This creates a natural aesthetic that doesn’t look polished but is highly authentic.

#2 Product pages with manifold images create more room for identification

Appealing, authentic, and diverse – that’s how users want E-Commerce Product Image on the product page to be.

Oldschool product photos that show clothes on slim, tall, and almost flawless models certainly put the products in a good light and make them look excellent. But such visual content production is obsolete, out of touch with the times, and does not meet the needs of users. These E-Commerce Product images of the product do not reflect what the majority of buyers really look like, are not diverse, and thus offer little potential for identification.

Let’s leave aside that it is questionable to suggest such an unrealistic vision of women as desirable through a perfect E-Commerce Product image. Also, with very dark visuals, like those of ZARA, it is rather difficult to imagine oneself in the fashion it-piece.

Real product images from the customer community provide people with inspiration and thus support their imagination. Users can get an impression of how they would look with the product. True to the motto “a product that can not be seen can not be sold”.

Integrating images of your own customers on the product page not only provides social proof but also shows how the respective product looks on different types with different hair colors, skin tones, and body shapes. This provides much more room for identification and shows different possible styling combinations of the piece. Eddie Bauer integrates product streams on product pages to focus precisely on the versatility of their products.

#3 Product pages with images paint a personal and individual brand image

By using user-generated content, you may give your products a face, specifically that of your customers. Your E-Commerce website, and by extension your brand, are presented in a more approachable, unique, and human way with the help of product photographs from actual customers. Every new piece of UGC adds to the inspiration available to you and offers your E-Commerce website a more distinctive and unique look. In this approach, Eddie Bauer incorporates inspiration into its online store. The well-known yellow raincoat serves as an illustration of this:

On the product page, the brand shows different UGC pieces, each of them presenting this Charly parka. Real people virtually bring the outdoor jacket to life and make the product and brand appear multifaceted and multi-layered. By interacting with the community and centering users in their marketing efforts, brands can stand out from the crowd.

#4 Product pages with images from the community mean lower production costs

Certainly, the use of artistically valuable E-Commerce Product Image like the ones that ZARA aims for has a price that should not be underestimated. With such product shoots, there are costs such as model budgets, location, and post-production, which makes it a challenge for smaller brands to produce such Image E-Commerce.

Thanks to UGC, Eddie Bauer can access a large number of images per product and highlight different facets without incurring high costs. The images excellently reflect the diversity of the company’s customers. This not only provides versatile impressions but is also the cheapest way to present a large flood of authentic E-Commerce Product Image.

#5 Website Performance

Real product images from the customer community as product demos are a social commerce technique and enhance the buying experience through impressions from other buyers’ daily lives, thereby strengthening your website performance.

A click on an individual E-commerce Product Image not only shows who posted the original content on social media and with which caption but also shows a direct link to a similar product. correspond to all product details. Another click takes the user to the product page immediately, and they can easily add it to their cart. This speeds up the customer journey, simplifies the purchasing process, and minimizes the possibility of last-minute bounces.

Innovature BPO’s Photo Edit Services: Enhance your product photography in a proper way

Our solution is personalized to your needs. Whether you need simple editing of background removal, clipping path, or more advanced touches of color correction, model retouching or ghost mannequin.

Content is king, and product photography is the most important of all kings. The image of the brand is greatly influenced by the E-Commerce Product Image, which also helps clients have a good shopping experience. So it is not worth saving on it and choosing experienced product photography specialists. You can’t afford to make mistakes in an industry as competitive as e-commerce since the buyer will move on to another store where the identical product is better presented and described.

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