Product images for the online store — this is how you succeed

Product images play a central role in online commerce, where they can either promote sales or prevent it from happening. Since e-commerce customers cannot physically see, touch or try the product, you need professional and high-quality product images to inspire interest and trust in both the product and your online store.

Taking product photos is often worth leaving to a professional, but you can also succeed yourself

The product image is the first thing that the customer's attention is drawn to.

If the product images are not of high quality and do not show the product in the right light, the potential customer decides to reject the online store, and you lose the customer.

Since you can only evaluate a product in an online store based on the product photos and possibly videos you provide, it is very important to immediately convince the customer that you have something interesting to offer, both worth the customer's time and money.

Professional photographers have the necessary skills and tools to take high-quality and selling product photos for the online store. When you leave it to them to take pictures, the features and details of the product will be perceived by the customer, and your product will certainly be presented in a visually appealing way.

Product photos taken by the photographer also give you a cohesive, branded ensemble that makes your online store look professional.

This can be difficult to achieve when you take product photos yourself, as there is of course much more to taking selling product photos than just pressing a button.

However, if you have decided to take product photos yourself, ensure a successful outcome with these guidelines:

Bet on image quality

Use a quality SLR camera or a good enough smartphone camera to take product photos to ensure accurate, sharp images and clearly distinguishable details.

Nowadays, even non-Apple phones are able to take good enough product photos.

Choose the right background for the product image

For the product image, choose a simple and neutral background, against which the product stands out clearly.

The white and transparent background is a sure choice for your online store product images. If you choose something else as a background, make sure that it does not show any unnecessary stuff or that there are too many obfuscating props that distract attention from the product itself.

Think about the composition and location of the image

Experiment with different compositions, angles and locations in the product image. Present the product from a variety of angles, show materials and texture up close, and describe each version of the product, such as color, separately.

If you do not use a background fabric, choose a location for the shoot that communicates the right mood and purpose. Also display your product in different contexts so that customers can easily understand the product's features, uses and, for example, size.

Pay special attention to lighting

A successful product image definitely requires successful lighting of the background.

If the lighting is not right, the product image will not look good, even if you do everything else correctly. Images taken in low light are also difficult or impossible to edit to look good quality.

Your best option is to use natural light and shooting light, which allows you to control the amount of light and focus it on the product.

However, when shooting outdoors, avoid direct and too bright sunlight so that product images are not overexposed, and on the other hand also dim light, which causes noise and blur, i.e. poor quality images.

Use creativity in your product image

Take advantage of different backgrounds, platforms, locations, angles, props, layouts and contexts! Take pictures of the product, for example, on different surfaces, with props of different sizes, and on top of or in use of the model. Experiment and see what looks good, fits your own brand and you think appeals to your customers.

If necessary, edit the product images you take with something with image editing software.

Also remember to optimize product images so that your online store does not slow down

Product images and videos should be optimized manually or with the help of an add-on, so as not to burden the online store and significantly slow down performance.

If the content of the page loads for more than two seconds, you are very likely to get your customers to leave your online store very quickly. If the charging speed is insufficient, it also has a negative effect organic, that is, natural Google visibility.

It would be good to save the images as PNG or JPG files, the latter of which is the most compact format, least affecting the download speed. If you like to shoot your product images in RAW format, change them to a more web-friendly format after editing.

Then compress the product images by cropping the image size smaller or reducing the file size of several images at once for example With TinyPNG.

It is worth embedding all videos with a link to the online store, as these are usually large files that slow down the download speed.

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