Can you grab the audience’s attention within three seconds? Well, that’s what you need to do. In the world of short attention spans, you have to be the attention seeker for your business products. But how? The answer is, by professional photography in eCommerce business. This is not an easy task, yet not that hard either if you follow some simple techniques. Let’s talk about professional photography in e-commerce business.
Professional Photography in the Eye of eCommerce
If you are a photographer of an online business your ultimate goal should be to leave a long-lasting impression on your audiences. If you want to have a long-lasting impression on your audience’s eye you need to stand out from the crowd. The competition of grabbing attention increases way more times when you are working in eCommerce platforms. Because e-commerce sectors are the place of photo games. People buy products based on pictures. You need to put picture-perfect products to build trust in audiences.
Do you remember the last thing you bought from an online store? If yes, then what made you buy the product? Let me guess, the pictures. Those promising photos, isn’t it? Well, this is how the eCommerce business works. You want a product, you go on the internet and look up the product, you don’t buy from the first page or website that pops up, do you? You go through several of them and then stick with one of them based on your benefits and comfort. And the pictures of the product are responsible for the trust and comfort that you feel for the company.
Impacts of Professional Photography in eCommerce Business
You already understand the importance of pictures and the impact of pictures in online business. However, as I said before, does every image have the same impact on you? Only a few could have spelled the magic on you.
Image Caption: Professional Photography in eCommerce Business
The effects of professional photography can have a huge impact on your online business. How? Let’s talk about that…
1. Increase of Visibility
Professional photographers can ensure the increment of visibility of your website. Undoubtedly the work is done by SEO. Photography is an unskippable part since photography can make people stay on the website for a longer time.
SEO brings the audience but if the website doesn’t hold the quality of image or content up to the mark then the audience won’t think twice about leaving the website. That leads the website to increase the bounce rate. The bounce rate could easily break down a website’s rank. So, quality photos ensure an increase in visibility.
2. Build Trust and Credibility
Quality brings trust. Pictures and picture quality play a vital role in creating trust. It shows the professionalism of a website. You would barely trust a website with low-quality or irrelevant images or even with bad photography. Often that creates doubt and raises questions about the authenticity of the page.
That is when the role of a professional photographer comes. A skillful and experienced photographer knows how to roll up their sleeves for different photography. An expert photographer can ensure the website looks to match the brand’s voice.
3. Improvement of Social Media Interaction
Social media has the strongest impact on people’s lives worldwide. We are heavily influenced by any trend or post that goes viral. No matter what you do or where you go people can’t stop checking their social media. That’s the main reason why business companies and big brands are also making their presence on social media.
Now here you again encounter photographers. Without a photographer how can you make a bold presence on social media where the crowd and audience are huge at the same time you will find every level of competitors here. That’s why a professional photographer is the person you need the most.
4. Increasement of Sale
What is easier for you? To read out information and understand or look at a visual presentation to understand a concept? Even though the answer might vary, you can’t deny the fact that the human brain grabs visual information much faster than text. That’s how generally the human brain works.
If you look through the eCommerce site then you will notice there are plenty of pictures to showcase a product with bare minimum text. On the other hand, if you look up any information on the website for a product you will find articles full of texts with bare minimum images. Because the picture showcases the products through which customers will make the final decision. So, technically you can’t compromise a good photographer in this case.
5. Build Brand Recognition
What is your favorite online store? Just for example, I’m assuming it can be a clothing or a fashion-related website. Open your favorite restaurant’s website on a new tab of your browser and on another tab. Do you see the differences in the pictures? Of course, there are. Not only because the two brands have different products to offer, but also because they have a brand value.
Brands create their identifications through website design, colors, fonts, writing patterns, and most importantly visuals. You would rarely see two individual websites’ pictures to be shot in the same pattern. That is achieved by the professional photographer. Don’t settle for the unskilled photographers in this case, or else it will increase making your website images look like copies of some other brands. So, don’t compromise with your brand recognition.
These were some common and direct impacts that professional photographers leave on your website and social media platforms.
Equipment a Photographers Need to Create an Exclusive E-commerce Website
The skill is something that comes with time and effort but sometimes, (again sometimes) due to lack of proper equipment photographers have to hold back. But that is not something that can stop a person from his/her passion. Clearing out that let’s talk about what kind of equipment a professional photographer needs to work on your e-commerce platforms.
1. Camera for the Best Product Photography
Photographers first and most equipment they need for their work is a camera. Talking about the photography that will attract prospects and potential customers, you have to pull out the best high-quality e-commerce images. The quality definitely comes with a good camera. A good quality camera doesn’t mean expensive or overly expensive cameras. A good quality camera means a camera with features that are gonna fulfill your demands. In this case, the camera quality and the camera’s ability are the key factors. For e-commerce photography, there are quite a few options to choose from. Let’s have a glance at them.
Nikon D850
- 45.7MP FX-Format BSI CMOS Sensor
- EXPEED 5 Image Processor
- 3.2″ 2.36m-Dot Tilting Touchscreen LCD
- 4K UHD Video Recording at 30 fps
Nikon D3500
- 24-megapixel APS-C CMOS sensor
- EXPEED 4 Image Processor
- 921k-dot fixed LCD screen
- Capable of ‘Full HD’ 1080/60p video
Sony A7R iv
- 61MP full-frame CMOS sensor
- MP Full Frame Mirrorless Camera
- 3in, 1.44-million-dot tilt-angle screen
- 4K/30fps video
Sony A6100
- 24-megapixel APS-C (23.5 x 15.6 mm) CMOS sensor
- Bionz X Contrast Detect Processor
- Rangefinder-style mirrorless
- 3″ Tilting TFT LCD
Fujifilm X-S10
- 26-megapixel APS-C (23.5 x 15.6 mm) BSI-CMOS sensor
- Image stabilization Sensor-shift
- SLR-style mirrorless
- 3″ Touch screen LCD Fully articulated
2. Camera Lens to Make the Picture More Outstanding and Clearer
If you are doing e-commerce photography or product photography, then let me ask you, do you grab your camera, get the product, place it in front of you, and go ‘click, click’ and done? No right? Because we don’t stop at clicking one or two pictures. Simply because of being perfection suckers. That’s exactly why you will need Camera lenses. The camera sometimes lacks the angle and focus of the products. But with the lens, the work process becomes very easy.
Speaking of lenses, not every lens will work for your photography. This e-commerce photography needs specific lenses. Not only that depending on what product you are shooting, but your lenses will also need variation. Let’s know some of e-commerce professional photographers’ favorite camera lenses.
Canon EF 24-70 mm f/2.8L II USM, best for general use purposes. This is a lens that can be used by beginners easily. This camera is not the best for any specific photography yet if you are trying out different types of products and don’t want to spend a lot on a lens then this can be the best choice.
Canon RF 85 mm f/2 Macro IS STM, mostly preferred for shooting artistic products. This lens is famous for capturing the background bokeh effect. Compared to most macro-object shooting lenses this lens is a way more standard telephone, which makes it the artist’s favorite choice.
Nikon AF S NIKKOR 85 mm f/1.8G. Talking of artistry, the first thing that comes to my mind is colors. Nikon’s AF S NIKKOR 85 mm f/1.8G is ideally known for its great features which makes it capable of capturing colorful and detailed products. But it’s mostly used for food photography
Canon EF 50 mm f/1.8 STM is the best option for beginners. It allows you to use it on different products and yet be the most comfortable and user-friendly to use. So, if you are someone new at product photography and want to learn about different products and experiment with them, then this is the camera lens for you.
3. Tripod to Hold the Camera in Place
Well, this equipment doesn’t need any detailed explanation, why do you need this yet since I don’t want to leave any information gaps, let’s talk about Tripods.
There are many simple to fancy tripods for photography. To be honest any tripod will work naturally. In the sense of its working purpose, a tripod’s work is to hold the camera still in place, so that you can avoid any kind of shaking while clicking the picture. It ensures flawless pictures without any blurriness.
Thinking of the purposes you can use any tripod for the use that is stable enough to hold your camera. Here is also a fact. Your tripod has to be in that model which can hold your camera in place. You have to ensure that the tripod goes perfectly with the camera and camera lens you are using for the photo shoot. Other than that, almost any tripod is good to go.
4. Lightings to Avoid Unwanted Shadows
Studio lights or natural lights? What is more comfortable for you? Sorry, wrong question. What is better for e-commerce product photography? It depends on the product. Not every product will need lights for the shoot. You can still use lights for every shoot.
However, there are some techniques to use lights. The lights and light box you will need for jewelry photography will not work for steel products. The lights that you usually use for shiny products, especially the techniques that you use might not work for soft reflective, or non-shiny products like matt clothes and shoes. So, learn about your product and what kind of light it needs.
Other than product temperature is also a good fact to keep in mind. There are usually two types of light tones. Warm and cool tone. Watch-toned lights carry yellow and red undertone lights whereas the cool-toned lights carry more blue and green undertone lights. These lights are used depending on the theme or vibes of the product and photoshoot.
5. Background of the Product
Use a white or light gray backdrop to pop up the product. You were assuming I was going to say something like that, weren’t you? But, no. I’m not gonna suggest average and common ideas because till now you know. Or even if you don’t know you are not gonno use anything other than white or gray since they are safe choices to start with.
Hear me out. Do experiment with colors. Whatever color the brand holds or the product has, take it and start experimenting. Know the color wheel? That will help you initially to understand what color to choose primarily.
Color has a strong influential power on viewers. For example, take red. What does it symbolize? Anger, love, passion, and many more. What does green symbolize? Envy, harmony, safety, etc. Now take your product and set your mind on what to do. What kind of vibe do you want to create? Choose a color that can portray the vibe contrasting with the product’s colors.
6. Editing Software for the Final Output
Hey, photography is not the only thing that you will have to do for your clients, photo post-production is also your department now. You see, a picture is incomplete until you make it post-ready. Clients hire you mostly to get those post-ready images for their websites. You will get high-quality images by the photography but to make it post-ready you have to get the editing done as well.
There are many, many editing software and apps available on the internet just a click away to download. But to my concern, those are not all professionally used apps or software. They are just beginner-friendly to use. That’s the main reason why sometimes simple editing software gets high reviews from their users. But speaking of business and client satisfaction you have to think about the best output at first then you can think of user-friendly options. Adobe Photoshop, Photoshop Lightroom, GIMP, Canva, Pixlr, etc. are the reputed software in the market of photo editing. So, go for quality, after all these software will also become friendly once you start using them regularly.
Impact of E-commerce Business on Our Society
The impact of e-commerce business in our daily lives has come clear as visuals. It’s almost impossible to find a person these days who has never bought something online or knows a person who hasn’t, especially after COVID-19. E-commerce business has now grown to the point that it can cover almost everyone under the radar of the internet. It is booming super-fast. So, if you are still confused about whether you should enter the e-commerce business on this day or not then you can see the growing internet users and fast-forwarding e-commerce sectors.
But if you are confused about the other facts like, how will you manage the big business? How will you produce? What will be your marketing plans? What can make your business go viral? Then chill. We are here for that. Next Bell has it all for you. Check out our one-stop digital marketing solutions to make your business as easy as possible.
FAQ
Of course, images have a menaced level of impact on e-commerce business. Research shows that almost 75% of online shoppers rely on images that are put on the website when it comes to decision-making of a purchase.
The cost of a photographer depends on many factors but generally it can start from $20–$90 per photo with a simple background.
Amazon is the biggest e-commerce site to this day. It is the most successful e-commerce site as well.
