Shopping in a store is a rich sensory experience. The lighting, the layout, the products on display, the other customers, and the background music work together to create a unique shopping experience. Online sites cannot replicate the senses of touch, taste, smell, and sounds found in an actual store. Instead, they are at the mercy of their website design and most importantly, their product images. In other words, product photography must somehow make up for the lack of a real store experience.
Is that possible? The various kinds of ecommerce product photography can accomplish a lot as we covered in a previous Petra blog. But what’s really needed is a comprehensive marketing plan that defines the brand and its target audience. The product photos must then not only reflect all these things but also meet website requirements. It takes a professional photographer to pull it off—especially when it comes to capturing lifestyles.
So, don’t dismiss the importance of compelling product photography. Medium.com sums up why you need to invest in your product photos:
Resultsimagery.com mentions even more benefits:
In other words, high-quality photography is WAY more than pretty pictures. And it is worth the investment to do it right.
This chart with 2021 data from Statista shows global online shopping is continuing to grow in popularity:
They report:
“In 2021, retail e-commerce sales amounted to approximately 4.9 trillion U.S. dollars worldwide. This figure is forecast to grow by 50 percent over the next four years, reaching about 7.4 trillion dollars by 2025.”
Yes, people ARE returning to in-store shopping. According to Shopify’s September 2021 Market Credibility Study:
“According to our research, consumer packaged goods and retail companies say sales from their physical retail stores and sales from their ecommerce website are nearly equal, with physical retail generating 18% of revenue and ecommerce generating 19%.”
It’s apparent that today’s shopping journey can start or end on any channel. This means that businesses must promote themselves across all channels, providing a consistent experience from channel to channel.
This also means that the mood a website or social media post creates using product photography and the experiential setting of a brick-and-mortar retail store should mirror each other—if not actually merge.
In 2021, Fieldagent.net published the results of a survey they did with 1,100 shoppers on how product photography influenced online purchasing. The result is seven must-read takeaways.
“36% said photos were ‘extremely important,’ and 39% ‘very important,’ to their online grocery purchases.”
Shoppers also found them helpful to inspect small details (56%) and read package labels (57%).
To read more about 360° or spin photography, be sure to check out our Petra blog on the topic.
And for those willing to take it a step further into 3D AR (Augmented Reality) videos, Shopify reports merchants who use computer-generated 3D modeling can increase conversion rates significantly—by up to 250% on product pages!
Here at Petra, we work with many manufacturers and ecommerce sites. And we’ve pretty much seen it all when it comes to images. We know first-hand that product photography can be everything we’ve talked about in this blog.
So don’t take shortcuts. Take ecommerce product photography seriously. The future of your brand or your store depends on it.
Should you need help with your photography needs, visit our website and then touch base with your vendor business manager.
Now more than ever, photos capture sales before a word is even read.