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Push Your Profits with Professional Product Photography and Videography
When your listing has professional product photography, it communicates to shoppers that your merchandise has value. It inspires trust in your brand and gives your potential customers a little push to purchase. Research shows that your eCommerce success is tied to the quality of the photos and videos on your listings.
The Value of Product Photography
You don’t become a company like Zappos without amazing product photos. Not only do the visual images of their merchandise attract more people to their site, but the quality of their photos has also successfully stimulated more engagement by their customers. Apparently, Zappos shoppers want to see the Simple Circle Crossbody bag inside, outside and displayed on a live model. And site visitors who view all seven pictures of the Noa Waterproof Boots (plus the professional product video) decide they just have to own them.
Some brick-and-mortar stores have learned how to master the process too. For instance, online sales for Best Buy went up 14.5% in the first quarter this year, says DigitalCommerce360.com. That total came to $1.31 billion, versus $1.02 in 2018.
Winners in the marketplace know the benefit of getting the best product photography to attract and retain customers online. The goal is higher sales numbers, so while random traffic isn’t a bad thing, motivating them to put the item in the cart is what you really want.
For the purpose of eCommerce, there’s a psychological advantage to using the best product photos money can buy, says a blog by web hosting giant GoDaddy. The use of high-quality product photography sends the message that your company wants to give its customers the most comprehensive information available before they put their dollars down. It subconsciously tells them you care.
But your investment goes further – it builds expectations. As they enter a relationship with your brand, they assume your policies will be streamlined and your staff will be organized and informative. They expect quality merchandise and stellar customer service. Website visitors get to see what interacting with you and your staff members will entail.
How to Get the Best Product Photos
The quality of iPhone photography is impressive when it’s splayed across freeway billboards. And if you’re a small company, it’s understandable you’d consider snapping images yourself. But it can turn away customers and ruin the hard work you put into your brand. The resolution you get from a DSLR camera can’t be denied.
Update your old product photos – hire a professional product photographer and look for results in your online traffic. It adds credibility to your company and boosts you to a level with your big-box competitors.
Choose a seasoned corporate photographer who knows how to feature merchandise in the best light. To get the quality of images that give you an edge over your competitors you need someone who has sophisticated equipment and knows lighting and editing software, among other things. The equipment that a product photography professional uses is designed to manipulate details such as depth of field.
Product photographers can create customized shots using specific angles and they know the backgrounds and sets that maximize the effectiveness of the shot. For instance, they may use a lightbox to create diffused lighting and provide more complete coverage that eliminates shadows. A pro is capable of determining whether or not studio lighting is a better choice than natural light for a product photoshoot and making other decisions related to outcome.
Wholesale and retail business owners aren’t typically skilled enough to create the kinds of product photos that maximize sales. The close-up your potential eCommerce customers see is a proxy for a brick-and-mortar experience, where they can pick up merchandise to touch and view it closely. That’s why your website images have to be as close to reality as possible.
Product Videography
When it comes to getting in front of customers, the only thing that may eclipse the success of outstanding product photography is professional product videography. For an Amazon seller, it’s a decision that can have noticeable consequences.
It’s imperative that you have an effective method for getting the attention of targeted shoppers, and nothing gets immediate results like moving images. And there’s a secondary effect that comes from the level of expertise your product videographer demonstrates. The quality of product videography has an impact on the way shoppers view your merchandise, so your company’s reputation is on the line.
Some industries need product videos more than others. There are specific categories of merchandise that need a skilled product videographer to produce the visual images that get results on eCommerce platforms such as Amazon.
You’re more likely to benefit from an instructional video when selling such items as:
• Power tools
• Make-up
• Fashion
• New technology
• Toys
• Furniture requiring assembly
• Appliances
Not only do instructional videos inform the viewer how to operate or set up your merchandise, but it also gives you the chance to convert web surfers into more than shoppers – the goal is to turn them into buyers. Calls to action are certainly not limited to marketing in the written text format.
A blog by the sales platform BigCommerce says that consumers are up to 85% more likely to buy a product after seeing the product video. For engaging shoppers and serving customers, it’s professional product videos that can add value to what you provide.
There’s a multi-channel complexity in the world of online sales. Mobile users have had a big impact on the marketplace. We know that a huge percentage of shoppers consult such sites as YouTube before buying, and at least half of those potential customers view the merchandise on their phones. If you want a piece of that market, you have to hire a corporate videographer who can shoot, edit and encode it for you.
Sellers reach out to them by staying in the game with content that engages, explains and persuades. Media users today often hinge their choices on the testimonies of others, and a product video package can accomplish all of the above.
It’s a little like real estate. A product photographer provides the furnishings for “staging” your site, and product videography lets the online shopper “tour” the place. They can see what they’re getting and imagine themselves owning it. It’s the way decisions are made: first, you grab their attention; then you persuade them with compelling product photography; next, you demonstrate and validate through product videography. The customer gets to make the next move.
The emotional response your video elicits may mean the difference between leaving your potential buyer without a decision versus pulling the trigger and putting it in their cart. Your customers can’t touch and feel your merchandise like they can in a physical store. You have the pressure of filling their other senses with accurate representations of your items.
The only way to do that is visual – through product videos and professional product photography.[/fusion_text]
