Product photography is not just an important part of any online store, it is vital. It can make or break the success of any business that sells its products predominantly via digital methods. It’s one of the most powerful visual tools at your disposal to showcase your products, and it can help you engage with your customers and stand out from the crowd. In this blog, we’ll look at what product photography is, the benefits of professional product photography, and how product photography can increase sales for brands that sell their products online.
What is Product Photography?
Product photography is the art of taking photos of products for promotional purposes, be it for website product pages, physical brochures, social media posts, or print advertisements. It’s used to showcase products in the most attractive way, and it’s a key component of any successful online store. Product photography is a great way to help your customers to feel more connected to your products. It can also be used to demonstrate how a product works or to give customers a better understanding of that product’s features, whilst you use text copy to effectively describe the benefits your customers might gain from using those products.
Product photography can take place in a professional studio, such as the Picture Perfect Photography studio in Haigh, South Yorkshire, where we have the ability to create phenomenal product visuals with any number of settings or backdrops. It can also take place with models on location, such as in a gym, a cityscape, or even in the home of the model as part of a User Generated Content campaign to inspire customers, providing them a setting in which they can visualise themselves using those products.
Product photography can be done either in-house or with the help of a professional product photographer. Whilst it can be tempting to break out the iPhone 14 to capture some images, bear in mind that professional product photographers specialize in taking high-quality photos that accurately represent the product. They know the importance of effective lighting and product positioning. Professional product photographers also have knowledge in what’s trending in visual advertising and postproduction skills and enhancement techniques such as CGI. Simply put, they know how to make products look their best and stand out.
Benefits of Product Photography
Product photography has many benefits. It can help you show off the features of your product, convey the quality of your product, and build an emotional connection between your customers and the products they’re looking at. Professional product photography also makes your products far more visually appealing, which in turn will absolutely help to boost sales.
Product photography can also be used to showcase the different variations of your product. For example, if you sell workout clothing, then product photography can be used to show your potential customers the different styles and colours available. This can be especially helpful for customers who are shopping online and can’t physically see the product in person.
Great product photography can also be used to create a sense of brand identity. By using the same, consistent style of photography throughout your store and social media posts, for example, you can create a cohesive look that will help to differentiate your products and your brand from the competition.
Research by Lucidpress suggests that brand consistency can increase your revenue by around 20%, which can be driven hard by product photography and creating a defined visual around the way your products are presented.
Professional Product Photography Services
If you’re looking to get the most out of product photography, it’s best to hire a professional product photographer. Professionals have the expertise, gained over many years of experience working with different products, and they have the equipment to create high-quality photos that accurately represent your products.
Professional product photographers can also help you create a cohesive look for your store. They can help you create a style guide for your product photography, which will ensure that all your photos are consistent and professional-looking.
Professional product photographers can work wonders with your products. They can take dull and unappealing photos and turn them into stunning images that will grab customers’ attention. By using the right lighting and colours, they can make your products look their best and make them stand out from the competition.
Here’s a great example of how effective professional product photography can transform the visuals of a product.
The first image is of a product of Veterinary Instrumentation taken on an iPhone. There is no effective lighting, and the backdrop is simply dull and unlit. This is a fantastic product and deserves the best possible treatment in the photography studio to ensure it attracts. Our principal photographer and company founder Collette Evans will use correct lighting, and positioning, and apply an on-brand backdrop to really bring the item to life.
Now in the second image, the background, and products are much brighter and much more visually appealing. It is fully transformed from a standard picture that anybody could take, to a visual treat that does justice to the quality of the product on offer. This transformation can be the difference between that customer purchasing from you, or your competitors.
How Product Photography can Increase Sales
Effective product photography is a tremendous tool for increasing sales for any business. It represents you, your brand, and the products you are aiming to sell to your prospective customers. Online selling is heavily reliant on effective product photographs to drive revenue, especially with new customers who have no experience with what you sell.
As the customer is not in your store, browsing your products with the ability to pick them up, feel them, or sample them, the photographs are what they must use to sway their decision to buy or walk away. Here are just a few reasons why great product photography can enhance your revenue.
Search Engine Optimisation
As the Internet and search tools become much more visually influenced (take Google Lens for example, a tool that searches for images using other images), effective product photography can leverage your website in the eyes of the search engine, which in turn drives more traffic to you and what you do. More traffic to a visually appealing product page will dramatically improve our chances of making more sales.
Up Close and Personal
High-resolution, multi-angled photographs of your product will help those customers who cannot see the items in a brick-and-mortar store to understand what the product is, what it does, and what it can do for them personally. Consider yourself as a consumer; are you more likely to buy the product that you were able to see the minute details of in high resolution, professional quality images, or will you take a gamble on the low resolution, the badly lit image that could potentially fail to meet your expectations?
Brand Elevation
Your product images are a direct reflection of your brand and what it holds most important. A brand that fails to inspire excitement and need with the visuals of its products, is one which will be unlikely to inspire the urge to splash that cash.
Great product visuals in an on-brand setting are far more likely to inspire trust in the quality of the products themselves, therefore far more likely to find the “Buy Now” button pressed.
Picture Perfect Photography is the ideal partner for any brand looking to refresh its product visuals, whether for use on websites, in brochures, or across social media. We offer professional photography and video sessions in our Yorkshire studio for manufacturers and retailers of any products, although we are more than happy to travel to any location to capture high-quality, on-brand visuals.
After the photography shoot, why not consider taking advantage of our creative retouch services, where we can effectively utilise professional CGI techniques, to add a completely new dimension to your product photography? This is perfect for delivering high-quality visuals that can bring a product to life in completely unique ways.
We have a superior social media management partner in Jen Hammonds, who helps our clients to harness their personal brand and deliver social media content that truly engages and grows their audience. This total service approach to working with our clients means that we are well placed to provide a one-stop shop, from devising content to creating it to finally distributing it via social channels.
We have carved out a specialty within the health and fitness industry, having worked closely with numerous notable brands such as Bulk, C4, Eryx Fight Gear, and Gluteywear.
Our principal photographer Collette Evans has over twenty years of photography experience to her name. She has covered jobs and industries as diverse as weddings, fashion and design, health and fitness, and lifestyle photography. Product photography is a key specialism of Collette and Picture Perfect Photography, and we are dedicated to delivering total satisfaction.
Starting with a creative strategy session to fully understand the needs of our client, we will happily provide helpful ideas and inspiration, if it is needed, so that we can deliver the absolute maximum from of a product photography shoot. We are as happy having you and your team along to direct the shoot in line with your vision, as we are having products dropped off and letting our team loose with their skills and imagination.
We can offer one-off professional product photography or video shoots, or alternatively, we offer discounted quarterly and annual subscription deals that provide greater value for clients looking at developing a long-term product photography strategy.
Whether you’re looking at refreshing your product image range, or need some fresh, optimised visual content for your brand’s social media platforms, get in touch to have a chat with the team so that we can understand your vision and objectives, and let us elevate your products to the next level.
