Tag Archive for: amazon product photography

Mastering e-commerce fashion photography to boost online sales

/in /by

When it comes to online shopping, high-quality visuals are a powerful tool for your eCommerce brand. eCommerce fashion photography is a sub-niche of fashion photography that accentuates the attractiveness of clothing, apparel, and accessories to catch the attention of customers and push them towards making a sale. Research indicates that consumers make 90% of their purchase decisions based on images, so alluring product photos are a must-have source of eCommerce success.

From styles and techniques to preparation and important trends, this article will explore everything there is to eCommerce fashion photography. These tips will assist both new brands and experienced online sellers in creating captivating images that effectively promote their products.

What is fashion photography for eCommerce?

In order to use eCommerce fashion photography, you must photograph the products in a way that makes them visible, while also highlighting the unique features of the clothing visually, resulting in functional yet attractive images. It involves skillful manipulation of light, composition, and angles to best showcase each item in all its unique glory to the prospective customer.

The objective is to develop a digital in-store experience that allows customers to better imagine how they would look wearing or otherwise using the item to help close the gap in between the online and offline shopping experiences. Unlike product photography, this type creates a story around the product.

The Different Types of Fashion Photography for eCommerce

There are several styles of fashion photography for eCommerce, each serving a specific purpose for clothing or accessories. Let’s explore these styles to make an eCommerce strategy effective.

Ghost Mannequin Photography

Ghost mannequin (also called invisible mannequin) photography is a style of product photography that involves photographing a garment on a mannequin and then editing out the mannequin in post-production.

The technique emphasizes the shape and fit of the garment, creating a 3D effect that enhances customers’ understanding of the product’s structure. This is particularly true for items such as jackets, shirts, and dresses, among others.

Flat Lay Photography

One of the most popular uses of the flat layout style involves showcasing multiple items in a creative layout. Flat-lay photography presents a visually appealing way for brands to display an outfit or list of specific items by laying products on a flat surface and capturing it from above.

This is a form of artistic layered photography that is ideal for showcasing accessories and bags or a full outfit style.

Catalog Photography

Catalog Photography: A simple technique intended to showcase products as clearly as possible Usually, the product stands in front of a white or solid-colored wall, drawing customers’ attention to the product itself. Catalog images provide precise details about the product, such as its texture, color, and shape, without any distracting elements. It’s the perfect photography style for eCommerce listings where customers want to see what their product really looks like.

Lookbook Photography

Lookbook photography is about the story behind a collection. In contrast to focusing just on a single piece, you can style an entire collection of products together, displaying how items work as a set. The latest style is based on the fact that if you create an emotional bond with the users, they will treat themselves like a part of the lifestyle that the brand is providing.

Advertising Photography

Advertising fashion photography employs a punch line approach. Beautiful pictures with captivating lighting, props, and models create a dramatic image that likely resonates with the target audience.

Advertising photos need to grab the viewer by the collar, shake them free of whatever their brain is currently occupied with, take a look at this amazing product that needs to be in their life (preferably right now), and thus be in alignment with the brand. They are frequently employed in social media and campaigns for building engagement.

High Fashion Photography

Luxury and high-end brands, extravagant setups, models, and complex compositions form the core of high fashion photography. This style needs a big budget, a lot of gear, and a lot of talent, but it yields beautiful results. High-fashion photography works best for brands that need to establish a more luxurious feel with an upscale clientele.

Street Fashion Photography

Street fashion photography captures clothing and accessories in everyday settings. This fashion is more relatable, showing apparel in a stylized way that feels attainable to consumers.

By shooting models in natural urban environments, brands can also highlight how their products seamlessly integrate into everyday life, making them more attractive to customers.

Editorial Photography

When the focus shifts from fashion to a series of images telling a story, that photographer is more likely an editorial fashion photographer, often including lifestyle and artistic elements in their work.

You typically see it in magazines and haute couture books, where fashion meets fiction. Aspirational lifestyle shots inspire customers and create brand appeal in editorial photography.

Runway Photography

Runway photography documents the pictures of clothing as they weave and follow down the runway, creating a dynamic photographic style. This is a wonderful style for showcasing fabrics, textures, and the way garments move. Fashion shows often associate runway photos, yet eCommerce brands can also utilize these images to create anticipation for their product designs.

360-Degree Photography

360-degree photography is a method that enables customers to explore their products in every direction. Brands can also benefit from a product rotator, which showcases all the elements of each item to customers, enabling them to make informed purchasing decisions. It excels in showcasing intricate products or providing customers with a comprehensive overview of the product.

How to prepare for eCommerce fashion photography.

If you are shooting inside or outside, preparation is essential in order to capture professional-looking product photos. Here is a plan to provide the best photography:

Essential Equipment

Camera: Use a DSLR camera, for example, a Canon EOS or Nikon D series, to capture images with excellent detail.

Lens: Use wide-angle lenses to achieve blurry backgrounds or use zoom lenses (35mm, 50mm, 85mm) for close-ups that capture details.

Tripod: Stability is important for getting sharp images, and a tripod can reduce camera shake.

Lighting: When it comes to light, you will need reflectors, diffusers, and portable lights for both outside and inside control.

Indoor Photography Setup

For indoor shoots, setting up a simple DIY mini studio is fairly easy. Here’s a quick guide:

Step 1:

Collect the Equipment: A camera, tripod, light source, and white foam board can help you set the base tone for a professional setup.

Prepare the setup: Place the product on a sturdy table, adjust the lighting to eliminate shadows, and ensure the background is clear and uncluttered.

Play around with your lighting and camera settings to ensure that the product is well-lit and that the angles are as flattering as possible.

Outdoor Photography Setup

The lighting tends to change outdoors, making it more challenging if you decide to spend some time outside. Here are a few tips:

Mood Board: Create a mood board that serves as a visual reference and a shot list.

Light: Make the most of daylight whenever possible, utilizing reflectors to prevent shadows. Don’t shoot in direct sunlight where you will create ugly shadows.

Shot List: Create your shot list to ensure that not a single angle or detail goes uncaptured.

Getting professional results with camera settings

Aperture: Use a lower aperture (f/2.8–5.7) for sharper product images.

Shutter Speed: Use a quick shutter speed (approx. 160) to prevent vibrations.

ISO: Use ISO 100-400, depending on light conditions, to find a balance between good exposure and image noise.

Ecommerce Fashion Photography Trends

Tracking trends in fashion photography is crucial for every brand to maintain growth and appeal. Consider the following trends as an example of the present:

Sustainability

Consumers today are more environmentally aware, so brands that align their photography with these values may earn more loyal customers.

Emphasize sustainability using earthy backgrounds and natural tones with a minimalistic composition.

Cinematic Storytelling

When brands incorporate cinematic elements into their product photos, it transforms into a narrative. The use of lighting, props, and composition amplifies the emotion in the photographs, thereby enticing customers to buy products.

Diversity and Inclusivity

Focusing on a representation of people through fashion photography promotes diversity and ensures proper brand exposure.

This trend underscores the importance of incorporating a diverse range of body types, ethnicities, and ages to create a more authentic brand.

Nostalgic Aesthetics

Vintage and retro influences have become popular due to their ability to create a timeless impact. Historic themes enhance the emotional connection between customers and the brand, leading to improved brand loyalty.

Bold Colors

In print media, the use of stark colors attracts customers by making the product stand out among numerous similar products on an online platform.

Bright hues can work together for a fun, utterly modern look that speaks to younger targets.

eCommerce Fashion Photography Best Practices

To improve the quality and appeal of your product photography, consider the following best practices:

Put yourself in the customer’s shoes.

Always think about what a customer would like to look at. Use close-up photos to reveal every detail, every thread, and every texture—helping customers understand the quality of the product and its fit.

Maintain Consistency

Having consistency among lighting, angles, and backgrounds gives your brand a strong visual identity. A consistent aesthetic makes consumers recognize and trust you, resulting in brand loyalty.

Show multiple angles.

Show the complete look of each product by taking photos from multiple angles. Rather than limiting a customer to just one angle on a product, high and low, as well as eye-level shots, truly highlight the design and fit of an item.

Use props carefully.

Even in a widescreen shot, props should complement the product without overshadowing it. Select props that build upon the product and help tell the story of the brand.

Hire professional editors.

You should professionally edit your images to make them visually appealing and maintain consistency, even if every other image is not. What image editing does is improve colors, plug in holes, and make sure images reflect your brand aesthetic.

Conclusion

eCommerce fashion photography is key to enhancing the shopping experience and boosting sales. Prepare for a variety of photography styles and ensure alignment with them.

Images that enable brands to capture customers and shape an identity are crucial. The competitive nature of eCommerce often forces us to compensate for a shortage of creatives with lower quality images or poor fashion photography. However, investing time and resources into professional shots can only lead to long-term success in this competitive landscape.

 

Amazon Product Photography: Guide for Ecommerce Brands

/in /by

Having an Amazon store of your own products is a great way to reach a global audience of prospective customers, to spread your brand name worldwide, and have an advantage of the  existing channel. But it’s so crowded with more than two million sellers. So, to grip the market of your products, you need to make your own market strategy.

One of the best ways to drive more sales of your products is to put deep thought into the product photography. In this article we’ll discuss how to shoot and reach the optimum level of  Amazon product photos to achieve this target.

 

The Importance of Photos to Sell Products

The audience reacts to the visual first or more immediately and the effect retains. It was found in research that the human brain processes visuals 60,000 times faster than text. Hence, it is vital that the photos can render the benefits and all the features of the product. The presentation of the photos should be such that it helps buyers make purchase decisions without going through the text part of your listing. If the product photos fail to do this, it means that the buyers are knowing about your products 60,000 times slower, and eventually will shift to a competitor’s products.

 

Images Communicate Faster and more Details than Text

Say, you are looking at a picture of a boy carrying a basket of apples, and instantly you gather the information of:

  • How big the basket is
  • Approximate weight of the basket
  • The color
  • The material of the basket
  • How many books can be held in the basket, etc.

 

To explain all these in words will take much more time, effort and elaboration in a few sentences. So, images communicate better with the buyers than text.

Amazon Mobile App is Optimized for Images

According to statistics, almost half of the ecommerce sales are made by mobile shopping. But long texts are difficult to read on mobile screens, images are small and it requires more scrolling. Moreover, Amazon makes many text fields short on mobile that can be available in full form on the desktop version. Bullets points can’t be read at a time. Details of images are not clear enough to see and needs cropping to see the product benefits, etc. But text of icons are large enough to be easily read on a mobile screen.

 

Many Buyers Avoid the Text

Every seller has the bitter experience that sometimes customers return the products because it wasn’t what they wanted, though the photo and the text clearly showed that it may not meet their requirements. Then many of the customers leave  negative reviews on the review section. This might lead a seller to believe that buyers don’t read the description of the product.

 

For example, we can consider accessories for smartphones. The accessories will be compatible with specific models of smartphones and the sellers of these items clearly state that. In Spite of this, many buyers make online purchases and get disappointed when they receive the products at home. They blame the sellers for deceiving them with different products, leave a 1-star review.

 

To get rid of this awkward situation is to have a dedicated image as the second image. The image will have clear, large and readable text. The shoppers who usually avoid the product description will also be compelled to see your essential message. Here’s a unique example.

 

How You can Create High-Converting Amazon Product Photography

It is worth learning how to create photos that will convert shoppers into buyers. These techniques come from study, practice, and mostly experience.

First you should make a list of shots that will properly showcase your product including the key information and benefits of the product. This step is usually overlooked by the sellers. Taking some nice random pictures of the product might lack the key features buyers care about. Product photos must present the essential pieces of information to the customers, looking great comes next.

A deep research on customer psychology and demand needed to identify what customers look for in the images of the products while they make online purchases. You are expected to highlight each of these key pieces of information in at least one image.

For a ready example of this, we can take a picture of a set of plastic cups that shows the versatility of multiple uses of the cups.

 

The Triple Optimization Technique

There are three key optimization techniques that lead to fully optimized Amazon listing when applied together:

  1. Keyword Optimization
  2. Key Information Optimization
  3. Persuasive Design Optimization

 

Keyword Optimization

Most of the sellers lack the knowledge of the necessity of right keywords in their listings. Presence of the right keywords in the product listing helps Amazon to identify what your product is, and for what searches your product shows up. It is important to put the right keywords in the image file names and metadata for the optimization. By right clicking on the image we can rename it with keywords, but optimization of metadata with keywords is trickier.

 

Key Information Optimization:

Identifying the key information about what customers want to see when they decide to make an online purchase is the most important to create great product images. Great product images show this information.

We can do this by following process:

  • Do a vast customer research on Amazon reviews of the competitors, how they highlight the benefits of their products, record potential benefits of the products, likes, and dislikes, etc. in a list.
  • Keep an eye on the trend of what customers frequently like or dislike, what customers say about the product, and cross check everything on the list.
  • Highlight the benefits that come up often and matter to the customers. Other benefits should be discarded.
  • Make a list of the most benefits of the product and plan the photo shot list on it.

 

Persuasive Desire Optimization:

The third and final of the triple optimization technique is all about creating persuasion and desire. This technique uses the sales psychology and portrays the product as the bridge from the customer’s painful current situation to a better future situation. We can do this by writing excellent sales copy and boost the conversion rates.

 

Use the Three Essential Image Types:

On Amazon stores, the seller should take advantage of posting images on all available slots. Customers usually can see seven images, and two more images are kept hidden. If the shoppers press the +2 button, then they can view the remaining two images. Sellers should focus on the first seven but must use the other two slots unless the photos are of low-quality.

 

Product on White Background:

According to Amazon’s guidelines, the main image of the product on Amazon stores must be of pure white background. Text, logos, or any other things are not allowed but the image.

 

The Amazon website has the white background web pages. If the background of the image is not pure white, it will look poor. The platform can even reject the image. To ensure  a pure white background, it is better to utilize Photoshop’s clipping path background removal technique and add a new pure white background instead.

 

Lifestyle Images Featuring Models:

To present a product with a real human interacting with it is a very effective way to show the product in action. For this reason, most of the top fashion houses feature people in their product images. This helps the shoppers to grasp an idea how the product would look like when they wear it or use it.

 

Properly shot images have the power to invoke emotion in the shoppers minds. If you showcase party dresses, and take photos of some ladies wearing those dresses in a real party and having conversations with laughing faces, the photos will create the same feeling in the shoppers minds and create a strong desire in them to have those dresses so that they can have the same experience. But be careful about one important thing. When you use a model, you must be aware of the age, gender, locality, country, etc of the target audience. Selecting the wrong models might distract the buyers and reverse the sales.

 

Lifestyle images with models should portray the models in such a way that the model is really enjoying the main benefits of the product. The model’s positive reaction will also drive the potential buyers to have that product. What the product does must be shown as clearly as possible.

 

Infographic Images:

Sometimes it so happens that some of the features of the products can’t be shown without text or graphics. For example we can consider the size of a product. The product has to be kept somewhere. So, the size of the product matters to the customers. if the product doesn’t fit the place where the customer decided to keep it will throw him in an awkward situation. If the actual dimensions of the product are shown both with some texts and with numbers on the product, the customer will have a clear view and won’t be disappointed with the product being smaller or bigger than he thought. It’s a common mistake that infographics are clumsy with too much information. The font size of the text must be large enough for clear readability on mobile screens. But larger font size also limits the scope of information you can squeeze into one image. So, the balance is crucial.

 

Basic graphic elements and icons should match your branding colors and style. Intelligent utilization of them will make the brand look higher quality.

 

Order Your Images Effectively:

How you order your images is essential. The images with key information of the product must be ordered first.

Image numbers 2, 3 and 4 must have the three most essential information about your product the buyers should know before they make their decision. Image number 1 will always be your main white background image as per the Amazon guidelines.

 

If you are callous to the ordering of the product images, you’re certainly going to lose potential customers. The image that relates to the customers best may seldom be seen by the customers. With faulty image ordering, a potential customer loses interest to scroll to the next image, and your sales rate goes down. So, the second and third image slots must contain the best images that express the most key information of the product.

 

You can fill you image slots with the following order:

  1. Main image (white background)
  2. Infographic showing product size and most key information
  3. Lifestyle image with model showing the main benefit of the product
  4. White background image showing the back side of the product
  5. Infographic highlighting less important benefits
  6. Lifestyle image with model using the product in secondary benefit
  7. Image stating guarantee or special bulk discount code

 

The Final Litmus Test:

Before you post your images on Amazon store, the images should go through a final test with real customer experience.

 

Send the images and other information to a group of people, ask them to look at the images, and interview them about the images. If they can gather all the key information about your product regarding the benefits, size, price, packaging, etc. and ordering of the images, you pass the test. If you don’t pass the test, you will know where the drawbacks are and can fix them. Through this process, you will have key insights about the customer reactions about your product, image ordering, photo quality, etc.