Top Product Image/Video Tips for eCommerce

1) Invest in high quality images for eCommerce

Technology has come too far to try and trick customers into buying a product they can barely make out. Savvy shoppers know their phones take high-quality images and won’t trust a business that can’t produce the same high-resolution images and videos to showcase their products. Basically, your first line of business is always to ensure your products are shown in the best possible light.

You need crisp, clear visuals that create a professional impression so customers can make confident purchases trusting you’ll deliver the goods they expect. Pixelated and grainy images are outdated and lack professionalism, quickly deterring shoppers from making a purchase. Invest in high quality visuals and set the right tone for your brand to build trust.

2) Maintain consistent branding

Your brand identity tells customers who you are and helps create a constant drumbeat that customers recognize across all channels. Therefore, maintaining a consistent visual style throughout your product images and videos is necessary if you want to continue reinforcing your brand identity. Although you might think consistency in the products you sell is enough, customers need to connect those products with a visually tangible brand.

When they see similar images with the same feel and mood, it helps build trust while boosting your brand with instant recognition. Therefore, using similar lighting, backgrounds, and color schemes is all it takes to create a cohesive visual experience. Basically, you want to provide the same visual experience for your customers across all marketplaces and touchpoints.

Consistency builds brand recognition, and as long as you back your brand up with quality to meet customer expectations, brand recognition equals trust among your target audience.

3) Show multiple angles

Flat, straight-on images make it difficult for shoppers to get a true feel for your products. Customers want a brick-and-mortar experience when shopping online and interact with products. Since they can’t physically touch a product, you need to provide your customers with a comprehensive view of your products so they can explore every nook and cranny from multiple angles.

For example, one of the best ways to do this is through video. However, if this isn’t possible, capturing different angles that show the front, back, and sides enables customers to flip through the images and get a better sense of the size and different aspects of its features.

You should also have close-ups of unique features and add little notes pointing to features such as “Easy zoom button” for a camera or “Wicking fabric” for active wear.  Therefore, you eliminate the guessing game and help customers experience your product in a more meaningful and educational way. As a result, you reduce the likelihood they’ll abandon their cart or return purchases due to missed expectations.

4) Leverage Zoom and interactive features

Leveraging zoom functionality or interactive features makes your brand feel “leading edge” while enabling customers to really examine the details up close.

What might seem important to you isn’t necessarily crucial to your customers, and what is essential to one customer might not be necessary to all customers. Therefore, customers need to control what features they want to examine up close and persona. They can make informed purchase decisions by closely inspecting the product’s texture, patterns, or intricate parts.

5) Introduce lifestyle and contextual images for eCommerce

While your basic high-quality images help, taking it one step further by incorporating lifestyle and contextual imagery hits home with customers.

By showing your products being used in real-life scenarios or within relevant contexts, customers can relate to the product, its purpose, and even the models using or wearing the product.

When customers can envision themselves using the product, it enhances its appeal, and they will aspire to own it.

6) Video demonstrations and how-to guides

To hit it home, supplement your product images with videos demonstrating the product in action. Short video clips showcase key features, demonstrate functionality, and create usage scenarios that expand the possibilities for the product. Better yet, produce how-to guides or tutorials for product assembly, typical product projects, etc., to further illustrate the simplicity of use and what customers can achieve.

These image and video tips enable you to stand out in the highly competitive eCommerce landscape regardless of what you sell.

Using high-quality visuals, consistent branding, multiple angles, zoom features, and contextual imagery, in hand with video demonstrations and how-to guides, improves customer shopping experiences. In turn, you help customers make informed decisions that translate into profitability and growth.

If you would like to enhance your product visuals, Pimberly’s PIM/DAM helps keep everything ready to use across all channels. Arrange a free demo with our team today to see how our PIM/DAM helps bring your product pages to the next level.