Top 8 Must-know Product Photography Tips to Boost Sales for Beginners 2022

Selling online is profitable and easy to start. How do online store owners catch their potential customers’ attention? One of the best ways is to create great product photography for their products. Let’s see why and get tips to get impressive product images in the post:

We can often see beautiful and appealing pictures everywhere. But what do these photos mean to e-commerce websites? Great images can bring more sales to a store. When shopping online, what impresses you most is how the products look like. In other words, product photography is key to attracting store visitors and possibly turning them into a customer. Why is it so important? Let’s continue to read to know.

Why Product Photography Matters

First of all, when customers are purchasing online, you will not have much time to make a good first impression of them. Thus, what your customers see on your site influences their decisions of whether they will stay on this site or lose interest. If you want to let them stay, you’d better build an online store that catches their eye and keeps them intrigued.

In addition, you might know how amazing your products are if you are running an e-commerce business. However, your customers may know it until they have your product in hand. Before that, all they could know about your products are the pictures on your website. Thus, the best e-commerce websites not only have great products but also great products photos.

Moreover, the high-quality product photography is key for dropshipping businesses to converting sales. Dropshipping, different from the traditional business model enables millions of sellers to sell the same product. Thus, great product images can make your products have advantages over your competitors. So, you should experiment with different product photography ideas and think about methods to present products in the best way possible.

Therefore, when starting selling online, you have to learn a lot about product photography and try your best to make your products appealing.

8 Crucial Tips for Product Photography

Great product images are crucial to impress your potential customers and boost sales. Thus, how could you create impressive photos for your products? Check the 8 must-known tips for product photography and succeed with your online business.

1. Choose Proper Lighting

When it comes to product photography, the first thing jumping into my mind is lighting. Proper light can make both your product and your background easy to notice. For example, you may find that white background will not appear white in a photo without suitable light.

You can choose studio lighting or natural lighting when selecting product photography lighting. When deciding which setup to go, you should consider the product types that you’re photographing, the purpose of the photo, and the selling platform that you will promote it. Natural light is good for taking product photos, including edible objects, people, and clothing. On social media like Instagram, these natural-looking photos can work very well to convert sales.

Proper lighting is critical to beautiful pictures. Hence, you should try your best to photograph your products under different lighting to ensure they have better looks.

2. Use a Tripod

Tripods are an alternative product photography tip I would like to recommend here. They might sound like an unnecessary piece of technical equipment. However, the truth is that tripods make a huge difference in the clarity and quality of your product photography. Moreover, there is no requirement for technical skills and it’s cheap to use.

When using tripods, there is no need for you to worry about the influence of your shaky hands. These essentially stands can make your camera more stable. With tripods, you can reduce the blur, which is crucial for professional and high-quality product photography.

You might need to take an extra minute to set up a tripod since there are many tripods on the market in varying price ranges for every type of camera. However, better-looking product photographs in return can bring you more. Hence, the extra step is necessary and important.

3. Get Inspirations from Other Brand

When you are photographing your products, it’s better to look to others for inspiration. Your creativity is limited so sometimes you may have nothing in your mind about the image's layout or picture lighting. Then looking to other brands may be helpful.

You have your favorite brands. When visiting their websites, what impresses you most? Images, descriptions, or layout? You just need to take a look at their product photography and ask yourself whether a similar shot or technique could work for your products, too.

For instance, if you are operating a local women’s boutique, you can find your favorite women’s clothing brands on Instagram. Then browse their sites, you may find what you love about their product photos. Next, you can work these aspects out to make your products attractive and impressive, too. For example, if the monochromatic color scheme and simple background of their products highlight the product, maybe you can create something similar with your products.

4. Try Simple Props

It's not so good if you get overly ambitious when it comes to product photography props. When creating product photography, you have to focus more on the product. Props are just a supplement helping brighten the photograph for your viewers.

Which prop do you decide to use? It's better to keep product photography props simple, aligned with the color scheme, and related to the scene or your product. For example, Erin Clarkson is a popular baker on Instagram. She always uses a plain white cake stand, a container of caramel (which is relevant as it is a component of the recipe), and beautiful fresh flowers for a subtle pop of natural color to show off her new cake recipe. While photographs still can stand out without these items, they enhance the beauty of her finished product.

5. Take Shots from Various Angels

It’s significant to take more than one or two photos of products although you have a fairly large line of products you need to shoot. You only can show very limited information about a product with one or two pictures. Alternatively, what you need to do is take shots from various angles.

This product photography tip can show your customers exactly what your product looks like from a variety of angles. In addition, when you want to edit, it will provide you with options. You only need to add something to make your products more impressive.

Different customers may want to know different things. For example, when buying clothes online, some people will pay more attention to the whole style. However, others may focus more on the collar details. Thus, when showcasing the product, you need to take a picture from different angles to show how the clothes look to target specific customers.

6. Put Your Product in Context

Making your prospective customers be able to envision themselves using your product is vital for your online selling. In a word, the customer will not purchase a product when they see appealing photos of your product online but can’t easily picture herself using it.

The truth is that you need to make your customers feel confident that the product will improve daily life in some way since they have a limited disposable income to buy something.

It’s hard to imagine yourself using some products out of context. For example, if someone wants to buy a sofa to decorate his new apartment, he may not be able to imagine using a sofa with a blank background on the advertisement. Alternatively, if the advertisement is coming with the context of using it in a home, he will be able to imagine how the sofa looks like.

7. Display the details

Detail plays a vital role in the purchasing process since the details describe the true value of your product. Displaying these details make your potential customers get the full message about the products, then they are more likely to buy it.

Moreover, most people can read a couple of bullet points and create accurate mental images in their minds. However, others may need visual guides that you demonstrate in your product’s details to help them absorb information. In other words, creating photos with all product’s details will make nothing to be left to the (often inaccurate) imagination.

Here I will take backpacks as an example to explain. When selling backpacks, you’d better include photos of all the best features of your product listing, such as ample zipper pockets for supplies, mesh pockets on the exterior, and a laptop sleeve in the interior. Showcasing photos like that gives your potential consumers a much better idea of what your selling is. Therefore, there might be more sales conversion.

8. Create a Diagram

What is a diagram? This product photography tip lets people illustrate the products' features that they cannot fully explain via standard images. Needless to say, unless people understand how your product works, they will not buy your product.

How does a basic diagram benefit you? It is an effective way to identify the specific details of your product. In addition, it can help you explain the contribution of each detail to the whole product. For example, you are able to zoom in on the mattress and break it down into four parts. Then your customers may understand the differences between memory foam mattresses and standard mattresses from the diagram.

In a nutshell, a great diagram allows you to demonstrate the unique value your product offers to the consumer. You cannot show more to your customers than this kind of product photo.

Final Word

In this post, we have explored the top 8 must-know and practical tips for photographing products. Learning these tips can benefit you a lot since brilliant products photography can boost sales for an online store. Moreover, if you are doing dropshipping, great pictures can make you stand out from your competitors. Then you can get your sales faster.

After learning the article, you may have known how to photograph your products. Therefore, why not get appealing pictures now and start an online selling journey.