Product images for the online store - this is how you can do it yourself

Product images play a central role in online shopping, where they can either promote sales or prevent them from happening. Since online store customers cannot physically see, touch or try the product, you need professional and high-quality product images to arouse interest and trust in both the product and your online store.

Taking product photos is often best left to a professional, but you can also do it yourself

The product image is the first thing that catches the customer's attention.

If the product photos are not of high quality and do not show the product in the right light, the potential customer will decide to abandon the online store, and you will lose the customer.

Since the product in the online store can only be evaluated visually based on the product images and possibly videos you provide, it is very important for these to immediately convince the customer that you have something interesting to offer and worth the customer's time and money.

Professional photographers have the necessary know-how and equipment to take high-quality and salable product photos for the online store. When you leave it to them to take pictures, the features and details of the product will become clear to the customer, and your product will definitely be presented in a visually appealing way.

From the product photos taken by the photographer, you will also get a uniform, brand-appropriate entity that will make your online store look professional.

This can be difficult to achieve when you're taking product photos yourself, because of course there's a lot more to taking product photos that sell than just pushing a button.

However, if you have decided to take the product photos yourself, ensure a successful outcome with these instructions:

Focus on image quality

Ensure accurate and sharp images and clearly distinguishable details by using a high-quality system camera or a sufficiently good smartphone camera to take product photos.

Today, you can also take good enough product photos with non-Apple phones.

Choose a suitable background for the product image

Preferably choose a simple and neutral background for the product image, against which the product stands out clearly.

A white and transparent background is a safe choice for online store product images. If you choose something else as the background, make sure that there is no useless stuff or that there aren't too many blurry props that take the attention away from the product itself.

Think about the composition and location of the picture

Try different compositions, angles and locations in the product image. Show the product from several different angles, show the materials and texture up close, and describe each version of the product, such as the color, separately.

If you don't use a backdrop, choose a location for the shoot that conveys the right mood and purpose. Also show your product in different contexts so that customers can easily understand the product's features, purposes of use and, for example, size.

Pay special attention to the lighting

A successful product image definitely requires successful background lighting.

If the lighting isn't right, the product image won't look good, even if you do everything else right. It is also difficult or impossible to edit pictures taken in bad light to look high-quality.

Your best option is to use natural light and shooting light, which allows you to control the amount of light and focus it on the product.

However, when shooting outdoors, avoid direct and overly bright sunlight, so that the product photos are not overexposed, and on the other hand, also dark, which causes noise and inaccuracy, i.e. low-quality images.

Use creativity in the product image

Take advantage of different backgrounds, platforms, locations, angles, props, layouts and contexts! Take pictures of the product, for example, on different surfaces, with props of different sizes and on the model or in use. Experiment and see what looks good, fits your brand and you think appeals to your customers.

If necessary, edit the product photos you have taken with an image editing program .

Also remember to optimize the product images so that your online store does not slow down

Product images and videos should be optimized manually or with the help of a plugin, so that they do not burden the online store and slow down the performance considerably.

If the content of the page takes more than two seconds to load, you will very likely make your customers leave your online store very quickly. If the download speed is not sufficient, it also has a negative effect on organic, i.e. natural, Google visibility .

It would be a good idea to save the images as PNG or JPG files, of which the last mentioned is the smallest format, the least affecting the download speed. If you like shooting product images in RAW format, convert them to a more web-friendly format after editing.

After that, compress the product images by reducing the image size or by reducing the file size of several images at once with e.g. TinyPNG .

All videos should be embedded with a link to the online store, as these are usually large files that slow down the download speed.

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