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Standard, Premium or Render? Why should you care about the quality of your photos?
STANDARD, PREMIUM OR RENDER? WHY SHOULD YOU CARE ABOUT THE QUALITY OF THE PHOTO?
We will find out why you should use high-quality photographs in your online store by answering a few key questions:
What function do product photos serve?
Can you afford low quality photography?
Are we sure we'll save money by taking pictures ourselves?
The answers will help you understand the role played by the quality of a product photo in modern e-commerce.
Product photography and its advantages for the buyer and the seller
Nowadays, most companies enjoy the benefits of product photography, and it's not without reason. Photos taken professionally are an investment for companies to help increase sales, build brand credibility and stand out from the competition. If you're not convinced about this, here are some of the most important advantages of good quality product photography.
Encourages sales. Professional product photos, high quality and aesthetics are designed to convince customers that buying your product is the right decision.
Develops the brand. With lifestyle photos, you can create everyday scenes around a product to evoke a certain mood. This helps develop the brand image and share non-business ideas.
It enhances the attractiveness of the product. This is one of the key advantages of product photography. Proper lighting and a photographer's creative eye can improve the aesthetics of a product, making it more attractive to customers.
Increases online visibility. Eye-catching product images are often the fuel of many marketing strategies, helping to attract the attention of online customers and increase awareness of your brand.
Builds credibility. Product images play a key role in the customer path. If they don't tell the whole story or carry important information, you may lose your audience's trust. Therefore, put yourself in their shoes and present your subject from as many angles as you think they will want to see the product from.
Realizes expectations. With clear and accurate product photos, you can set your customers' expectations right from the start. While shopping, they will gain confidence in what the product will look like when it reaches them.
Can you afford low quality photography?
Product images are used for various purposes. As such, they fall into two main categories:
publicity photos,
product images for online stores.
Advertising photography is designed to attract customer attention. Its standard speaks of the quality not only of your product, but also of your company, personnel or service. Therefore, although at first glance it might seem that an advertising photo only promotes a specific product, it also serves as a business card for your company. In advertising, poor-quality photography will be the first thing to be noticed, as people evaluate a message mainly by sight.
Poor photography puts a negative mark on you as a company. This is bad news, which means that customers will look elsewhere for the product they need, entailing a significant drop in business. We bet you certainly can't afford such losses.
Product photography, which is a sales aid for an online store, is designed to highlight a product, emphasize its key qualities and show details up close. This is very important, since customers cannot physically inspect the object of purchase. Thus, the quality of the photos is of utmost importance here, as the reliable display of the product depends on it.
The message is that when an image presents a low quality, the quality of the offered item is also low. Such an opinion results in the loss of some customers and, as in the case of advertising photography, reduced sales.
In either case, using images of mediocre quality will do you a disservice. Rather than encouraging people to visit your store, advertising will instill distrust in your company, while poor product photos posted on your site may mean you are offering poor quality goods.
Order product photos from a professional, or take them yourself?
With the digital equipment available on the market and higher-end smartphones with professional camera settings, it seems that taking a photo of a product yourself should not be particularly difficult. It's true - snapping such a photo is a trivial activity. The challenge, on the other hand, is to get a professional quality photo. And it's not just about the equipment itself, but the necessary knowledge including:
Organizing the actual staging,
Setting the right camera angle,
application of lighting,
preparing the product for the session
and many other things.
After the shoot, the product photos will require further processing. And for that you need a whole new set of skills, other than just shooting. The final processing of a product photo is called post-production. The basic one for popular packshots includes:
color correction,
Preparation of photos in a certain proportion and resolution,
Removal of minor scratches and dirt that could not be eliminated during the session,
Sparring, or cutting from the background.
Contrary to popular belief, professional photography does not have to cost a fortune. Even if there is an expense involved in taking it, in the long run the damage to your budget is less than if you take the photos yourself, because using poorly taken or low-quality photographs will cost you much more as a result of losing some of your market.
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With ever-increasing competition in every possible field, short-term savings on advertising and product promotion do not make economic sense. Any money saved will be lost in the face of declining sales. In the end, amateur photos will cost much more than those taken by a professional.
