How Great Product Images can Boost Your Sales

Marketers, strategists, and web designers alike have been raving about the benefits of visual storytelling with striking product photos for quite some time. For sustainable brands, in particular, product photos act as a catalyst for conversions all while helping create a solid and memorable brand identity. But why are product images so important? The answer is fairly simple: they inspire trust, reinforce the company’s overall aesthetic, and give customers an excuse to share your product images on social media.

Did you know that quality product images can also help you lower your carbon footprint and minimise material waste? Here are some great facts to help you understand why images are so important for sustainable businesses.

Images that “bring products to life” lead to more conversions and sales

As they say, an image speaks a thousand words. So It’s no wonder why 78% of online shoppers want photographs to “bring products to life.” Customers need transparency and thus, it’s important to showcase every aspect of a product accurately yet beautifully. So much so that less than 1% of consumers want to see a single product photo. In reality, 33% prefer to see multiple photos, and about 60% prefer to have a 360º view of the product. In fact, brands that use 3D images saw a 40% increase in conversions and sales.

Great product photography inspires trust

It’s no secret that higher-quality images convert better than lower-quality images. A study from 2007 found that shoppers are three times more likely to convert on websites that include high-quality imagery (including the ability to zoom in to see a product close up) than those with lower-quality images. That’s not all.

Another study indicated that higher-quality images helped establish trust among online shoppers - which is the most important aspect of building a future-proof business.

High-quality product images can lower your carbon footprint

Showing a crystal-clear version of products online comes with a very important ecological benefit as well: keeping the brand’s carbon footprint of shipping and transport as low as possible. 22% of customers claim that they’ve returned products from online purchases because the “Product received looks different”. Now, if we consider that global shipping emissions represented 1 076 million tonnes of CO2, it’s important to keep returns to a minimum. And luckily, great-quality product images can do exactly that!

Virtual software-generated product images can limit material waste 

Aside from keeping the footprint of shipping and transport as low as possible, sustainable brands are also on a mission to minimize waste. With virtual photography software, companies can test customer demand for products before actually manufacturing them. This concept testing process is based on photorealistic images, so no actual products are required.

High-quality product images boots social media shares & interactions

Social media are a brand’s biggest marketing weapon with a total of 76% of consumers having purchased a product they saw in a brand's social media post. However, you only have a few seconds to catch the attention of potential customers and inspire them to act - whether that’s sharing, double-tapping or actually purchasing through your link. Hence, viral-worthy product content is 40% more likely to get shared on your social accounts by other users.

Images are proven to be more memorable than text

Photos can improve recollection of memory by 65%. However, only a small fraction of people can recall information they’ve read after 3 days. So essentially, attention-grabbing product images are the best way to make customers come back to your website ever after many days. As Dr. John Medina, a developmental molecular biologist and author of Brain Rules, explains “Vision trumps all senses. Pictures beat text as well, in part because reading is so inefficient for us. Our brain sees words as lots of tiny pictures, and we have to identify certain features in the letters to be able to read them.”

Product images & SEO

Let’s talk about SEO, a company’s best ally. We already know that if you properly label images with monetized metadata and captions, your content will be indexed on Google. This leads to your website showing up in both web search results and image searches. However, in order to score those conversions and get more leads, your content should be much more attention-grabbing than all other images that show up next, under, or above yours on search results pages.

What types of conversions-boosting product images businesses should invest in?

• Product-Only Images: A product shot against a plain, white background with the best light from all relevant angles.
• In-Context Images: Otherwise known as lifestyle images, these shots aim to show your product in use and make customers consider it as a part of their day-to-day lives. This option is also the most ideal for social media content.
• 3D images: For extra oomph, choose interactive 3D product photography to add dimension and make images that appear real-to-life.
• AR: Augmented Reality is lauded as the next evolution of eCommerce imagery with interactive content generating conversions 70% of the time compared with 36% for passive content.

In conclusion

If you are still on the fence about giving your product images an upgrade, remember that you only have one chance to give a memorable first impression. Product images can spark interest and persuade potential customers to make a purchase, share the content on their social media channels and keep it in their minds for way longer. Lastly, if all the aforementioned reasons weren’t enough, authentic and accurately-shot images can not only minimise the return rate but also test the demand for products before actually manufacturing them.

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