How Great Website Photography Can Raise Your Sales

As the old saying goes, a picture can tell a thousand words. Great website photography will surely be worth a million! The photographs you have on your website are, along with the text, what your customer will use to decide whether to purchase from you or your competitor. Today we’re going to discuss what makes a great website photo, give you some tips on taking those photos and share some great sizes for website photos.

Why is Great Website Photography Important?

Product photography is the most effective way you have of promoting your products online. You can use your product photos in social media post and on your website to increase brand awareness and demonstrate how great your product is. Your website photos need to be top quality because:

• Photos will be the first thing a visitor sees and help them decide if they are in the right place or not
• Great photos are more likely to be shared on social media
• Product photos go hand in hand with excellent product descriptions
• Detailed product photos lower your product return rate as customers can see exactly what they are buying
• If your photos are better than your competition’s, this will impact upon your customer’s decision-making process

Tips on Taking Fabulous Website Product Photos

A great website photograph is one which is of a high quality, offers alternate views of the product, lets the customer zoom in on the photo, utilises lifestyle photos, keeps photos consistent with one another and up to date. To help take great product photos, try out these tips:

• Use a white backdrop – put your products in front of a white background to help reflect light back at your product and show your product’s colours accurately. A white sheet, wrapping paper or even a white wall can work quite well.
• Take photos near a window – using natural light in photos is not only easier, it also looks better in photos. Position your backdrop so the window is on one side of it.
• Use a light reflector – on the side of your backdrop opposite the window, use a piece of white shiny card to reflect the light back onto the other side of your product. This stops shadows forming.
• Take photos with different angles – these give your customer the ‘feel’ of your product and helps make their purchasing decision easier.

Sizing Product Photos for Your Website

Photo file size can vary significantly. The larger the file size, the slower a web page will be to load. In order to keep your website loading quickly, you’ll need to optimise it’s file size. If you read our article Best Ways to Optimise Website Images, you’ll get links to a range online software options which will help you do this. In terms of website photo image sizes, consider using these:

• 1200px wide - great for full screen images, or product zoom images
• 960px wide - great for full page width images, 
• 600px wide - great for half page width images.
• 320px wide - great for category thumbnails and 3+ columns in our drag and drop editor. 

The ratio size of your images do not matter, but you need to be consistent, as any variation in ratio will look terrible in a list view. 

Our templates allow you to set prefered sizes for different areas within the website. These are usually set as a maximum height/width, but you might set any dimension, and auto crop the images to maintain ratio.  

Remember that great content and great photography work together to bring you the result you want from your website. If you need some help designing your website or taking your product photos, check out our list of Solution Partners and Consultants! They’re experts in their fields and will get you sorted quickly and affordably.