If you want to make money online by selling physical products on an ecommerce site, it’s important your goods look their best. This article offers some tips for ensuring the photos on your site attract potential customers and encourage them to buy through your site rather than through a competitor’s.
Preparing for a photo shoot
The first thing to decide is where you will shoot your pictures. This could be a professional studio, on location, or a DIY home studio. Think about what will most effectively showcase your items and the resources each shooting set-up will require.
When it comes to equipment, a smartphone camera can certainly offer the quality needed to take good photos. However, a mirrorless or DSLR camera will offer increased flexibility and functionality, such as in the choice of lenses. This can be important if you want, for example, to photograph items close-up.
Other gear to consider is a sturdy tripod, a light source (unless you opt for natural light), a plain white background (this could be a studio-type set-up or simply a roll of uncreased white paper), and a reflector to minimize shadows.
Shooting your merchandise
How you set up your shoot will depend on what you sell. For example, capturing the detail on smaller items such as intricate jewelryor custom socks by Anthem Branding will require a different set-up than shooting larger clothingitems, such as suits and dresses, or homewares and décor.
For clothing, think about whether you want to display your items on a mannequin, live model, on a stand or just against a plain white backdrop. Try a few options and see which works best. There are advantages and disadvantages for each, so experiment until you’re happy.
When you’re ready to shoot, switch your camera to manual or aperture priority mode. This will give you extra control over your images. Learning the relationship between shutter speed, aperture, and ISO can be daunting but the best way is to practice. Take some test shots and look at the results at high resolution before proceeding.
Editing and posting the images
After you’ve captured your images, the next step is to edit them using paid-for software such as Adobe Photoshop, or one of the free alternatives, such as Adobe Photoshop Express Editor or GIMP. There are also Photo apps for Mac and Windows.
It’s easy to get carried away with photo editing. However, if you’ve properly set up your photoshoot, your images should require minimal editing. Things you might want to adjust are cropping an image to size, removing flaws, sharpening the image, and enhancing the color vibrancy and saturation (which is where things can get out of hand).
The final step is to post the images on your ecommerce site and add your product description and pricing, as well as that all-important ‘buy now’ button. One thing to remember is to include alt text on your images to enhance your site’s search engine optimization.
After posting, check to make sure everything displays correctly on all types of devices and that the images look good, with no pixelation or other distortions that can make your site look unprofessional.
While setting up a photo shoot, editing the pictures and posting them on your site can be time-intensive, it is certainly worth while. Quality images can mark the difference between customers clicking on your products and making a purchase or clicking away from your site and not coming back.