Product photos are significant to every online shop. It’s what your customers base their purchases on. Without relying on the physical presence of your product, customers turn to photos for reference. High-quality product photos, then, are essential to the success of your business.
The opposite is also true; bad product photos affect your business negatively.
What Happens with Bad Product Photography?
In a study done by the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School on the reasons for product returns, they discovered that 22 percent resulted from the actual product looking nothing like the photos displayed on their website.
Product returns caused by this may result in negative customer reviews and affect customer retention. It will also affect your potential revenue today and in the future. Low-quality photos may also drive away customers because they didn’t find the image appealing enough to buy the product.
What You Could Lose
More people are shopping online, making competition even tougher. And one of the ways to edge out other online businesses is to present your products the way they should be seen: appealing and accurate.
Otherwise, you risk losing opportunities:
- Loss of revenue – you lose potential revenue because your product photos did nothing to entice your customers.
- Loss of trust and credibility – good product photos are a mark of professionalism and credibility. This is especially so for high-value items, like jewelry. Online jewelry stores typically look to jewelry retouching companies to take photos for them. When your product photos look professional and clean, they get a better reaction from your customers. Badly taken photos reflect laziness on your part as the seller. It makes you appear less professional because you didn’t even take the time and effort to post decent photos of your product.
Bad photography could mean poor lighting, lazy product arrangement, and a poor choice in the background. It could also mean that shots are too far away from the product, they’re blurry, or pixelated. When your customers can’t see your product properly, they’ll lose interest and move on to the next seller. You should keep your product photos as clean and clear as possible, so they can make accurate judgments on whether to buy your product or not.
Because of bad photography, all the claims you make about your products and services may appear fabricated. Even if you are a legitimate seller, product photos affect how your customers see you, and by extension, the legitimacy of your shop.
Businesses exist in an age when consumers operate on visual-first shopping. Pricing and product details do matter, of course, but your products’ photos are the first to catch attention. And when the images you put on your website fail to do just that, you’re likely to lose a potential sale.
Customers want the reassurance that the products they’re buying are what they’re going to get. Affirm this assumption by presenting them with the best set of product photos on your website. In doing so, you’ll raise your credibility and invite more customers to your online shop.
