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How long has it been since you looked at your store photos through they eyes of a buyer? Are they looking their best and creating a good first impression, or do they need a little freshen up?
This blog post gives you three ways you can quickly and easily update your store images to maximise the likelihood of them grabbing a buyer’s attention.
It’s no secret that having great product photos will help sell your gorgeous creations. In today’s busy online world you literally have a few seconds to grab a potential buyer’s attention, so if your photos aren’t eye-catching then shoppers are likely to scroll right past. Think about the types of images you’re attracted to when online shopping. Are they light and bright with the product clearly the focus of the image, or are they dull and gloomy and leave you wondering what is even for sale?
You know you have amazing product for sale, but can shoppers immediately see that?
Here are a few simple ways to help your images stand out and have your store looking its best for the biggest selling period of the year.
1. Cropping
This simple edit can do wonders for your photos and can be done using any photo editing program, including ones that may already be on your computer or phone, or free online software such as Canva or Fotor.
You’ve put a lot of time and hard work into your product, so why not show it off. The idea here is to make sure your product is the focal point with nothing else competing for attention. This usually means cropping out some of the excess area around your product so that your eye is immediately drawn to what is being sold, not everything around it.
Take a look at the before and after examples below.
Sometimes it’s not even necessary to show the whole product in a photo. Cropping in to highlight a feature can also work well to grab attention, but make sure you include an additional photo showing the whole product in your listing as well.
Note: Using props is perfectly fine, and recommended, but make sure they're subtle, compliment the product and don't compete for attention.
2. Brightness and Exposure
Most digital photos need a touch of brightening and this is one of the easiest and most effective edits you can do. Again, there are many free editing programs available that will allow you to adjust the lightness and brightness of your image.
Some common adjustments are Brightness, Exposure, Highlights, Shadows and Contrast. Not all editing programs have all these adjustments, but it’s worthwhile having a play with what is available in your chosen program to see what gives the best results. Sometimes adjusting just one of those things can make the world of difference, but other times you may need to adjust a few. But, be careful to not go overboard and make your image so bright that it distorts the colours and looks overexposed.
Bonus Tip: To help get a cohesive look to your store, having consistent editing is important. One way to check for consistency is to put all your images together in a folder so you can easily scroll through and see if there’s any particular ones that stand out as being darker or lighter than the rest. It's a good idea to do this before uploading any photos to your store.
3. Correct Photo Size
Having your photos the right size for the platform you’re selling on is really important so they display correctly and are nice and clear.
Madeit has recently changed their thumbnail image size to double what it used to be. This is great news because now your images are much larger, clearer and more attractive to shoppers, but it may mean you need to re-upload your images otherwise they’ll appear blurry. Images now need to be at least 1400 pixels wide, which is what most phone and digital camera photos are anyway, so for most sellers it should just be a matter of re-uploading the photos for listings created before September 2019. They'll resize automatically and your store will look a whole lot better!
So there you have three easy ways to improve the look of your store. It might seem like an overwhelming chore if you have a large number of listings but it could well be worth the effort!
Something to always keep in mind with your product photography is that potential buyers can’t see or touch your products in person, so you need to try and convey everything they need to know through photos. Your listing description can help with that, but your photos are what shoppers will see first...and first impressions count!
I hope you’ve found this blog post helpful and if you have any questions please feel free to contact me at vicki@vickielle.com.au.
