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A product photo goes beyond showcasing your product and how it can benefit potential buyers. Great product photos help shape customers’ buying decisions, convey vital information, and represent what your brand’s all about.
But why are good product photos on Amazon critical to your business’s success? How can you use Amazon product photography to fuel your business’s growth? How can good product photos help bolster your marketing efforts?
It can take anywhere between 17 and 50 milliseconds for people to form an impression. This gives brands a very short window to make a strong first impression on their target audience. Once that impression’s been made, changing your audience’s perception can be a tough challenge. Product photos can influence your target audience’s judgments. Using high-quality photos allows them to learn more about your product’s quality and how it can potentially solve their pain points. Using low-quality or unappealing product photos for your Amazon listings can deter potential customers from checking out your brand and what you have to offer.
Using multiple product images, such as lifestyle photos and infographics, can help you tell your brand’s story to potential customers. For example, you can use lifestyle photos to highlight how your product can solve their pain points or how it can add value to their daily lives. Moreover, being consistent with the product photos helps reinforce your brand identity and aids in brand recall, which plays a role in nurturing customer loyalty and driving conversions and sales.
Product photography allows you to communicate your product’s value and quality to potential buyers. For instance, you can highlight certain features or benefits of your product to help it stand out and make a stronger case for them to choose your product over your competitor’s. Furthermore, by showcasing your product from different angles, you’re providing customers with a better look at your product and what it’s actually like, helping eliminate guesswork.
You’ll be up against a lot of competition on Amazon, and using compelling product photos can help your business and product stand out. The quality of your product photos can help buyers decide whether they’re going to purchase from you and not from your competitor, especially if you’re selling the same items at the same price point.
Great photos can guide customers along their buyer’s journey. High-quality photos let you present your brand and product in a more professional light, which communicates to buyers that you’re a reliable brand that provides high-quality products and understands their unique needs and challenges. Using striking and polished product photos can help gain and nurture customer trust, which, in turn, can translate to better conversion and retention rates. Additionally, using appealing images can benefit your post-sales marketing efforts. For instance, you can use your product images for advertising or targeted emails to consistently remind your customers about your brand.
Visual content marketing refers to the use of engaging visuals to convey your message and capture your audience’s attention. It reinforces customer loyalty and brand recognition, as well as complements your SEO efforts. High-quality product images and short-form videos can strengthen your overall marketing efforts. For instance, if you’re using social media to promote your Amazon business, then you’re likely using photos and videos. Marketers use video (50%) and images (47%) in their marketing strategy. Furthermore, these two formats pull in the highest ROI at 25% and 12%, respectively, compared to other formats like blog posts and case studies.
High-quality product images are crucial for driving sales on Amazon. Aside from showcasing your product’s unique features and value, they help customers assess your products and learn more about them. When you upload your images on the platform, Amazon checks them to see if they meet its technical requirements.
Images that don’t meet Amazon’s image requirements or are in violation of the platform’s Selling Policies and Seller Code of Conduct may be removed. Furthermore, images that don’t meet the platform’s image requirements will result in the product listing being suppressed from search results. it’s worth noting that Amazon may modify your images so that they meet the platform’s requirements and provide better experiences for customers.
Amazon Seller Central has a full list of the platform’s product image requirements, including guidelines for multipack imaging and images for clothing.
The images you can upload on Amazon will depend on the category that your product falls under. When taking product photos, keep in mind that they have the power to influence your audience’s purchasing decisions. Therefore, it’s always best to use high-quality images that showcase your product’s value or unique features. Below are some of the image types that work best for Amazon product listings.
This will be the first image that your target audience will see. To capture their attention and win them over, make sure that you use scroll-stopping photos that pique their interest and make them want to know more about your product.
Secondary images come after the main or hero image. For this image type, you can add photos of your product from different angles. Depending on what you’re selling, you may use several slots for your secondary images.
An infographic lets you highlight some of your product’s best features. This helps potential buyers see why they should choose your product and what separates it from others in the same market. For example, if you’re selling skincare products, you can zoom in on aspects like its benefits, key ingredients, and what the product does.
Lifestyle images allow you to showcase your product in action and how it can add value to your audience’s life. These types of photos help you convey the story behind your product. For example, you can use lifestyle product shots to show how potential buyers can use your product or use before and after photos to show how your product can make a difference.
Good visuals allow customers to see your products in greater detail, helping them make more informed purchasing decisions. Below are some basic tips to help you create more compelling product visuals:
A shot list is basically an outline of the images you need to capture during the photoshoot. Having a shot list helps you plan out your shoot more thoroughly and optimize each image. Furthermore, it gives you an overview of all the things you need, plus who’s responsible for what (if you’re working with a team).
To start, you can picture how your product page will appear and how the images will look (including elements like the product title and description) once they’re on the page. Amazon will usually give you several slots for photos (up to six) and videos (one slot). For example, on your shot list, you can plan for one main listing image, three detailed images from different angles, one or two lifestyle images or infographics, and one short-form product video.
Comparison charts are helpful tools that allow potential buyers to see how your product fares in comparison to other similar products. It’s ideal to highlight your product’s key features that other similar products don’t have.
Including photo guides or instructional photos helps potential buyers learn more about how to use your product properly. If your product needs to be assembled or if it comes in other sizes or variants, photo guides can help them decide which option is the best for them. The following examples show photo guides that help potential buyers measure their feet to find the right shoe size and find the trash bag size that suits their needs best.
Amazon gives you several slots—up to seven or more, depending on the product category. Utilizing all the available slots allows you to provide customers a better view of your product. For instance, once you’ve chosen a hero or main image, you can use up to three image slots to showcase the product’s key features and benefits or what makes it different from the competitor’s product. You can use one or two slots for lifestyle images, while the last slot could be for a short-form video.
Amazon has very specific rules when it comes to product images for different categories, such as the inclusion of nutrition labels or the subject’s placement. Make sure that you regularly check the guidelines to stay on top of any requirement updates from Amazon.
Testing allows you to see which photos work best. To perform tests, you can use third-party tools or services, such as Jungle Scout’s Jungle Stix split test, or you can run tests using Amazon’s Manage Your Experiments program, which lets you test elements like main product images, product titles, product descriptions, and bullet points.
Ready to take amazing photos for your Amazon product listing? Here are some actionable tips:
You may encounter issues when uploading the images, such as adding blurry or pixelated images. Amazon may remove the product listings associated with images that don’t meet the platform’s requirements. Below are other common technical issues that sellers face.
Adding an image that cannot be linked to an ASIN or variant may result in the upload process being unsuccessful. Amazon may reject images that have ASINs that are unrecognized by its system or have external IDs linked to the ASIN that haven’t yet been mapped by the system.
Amazon only supports the following file types:
Uploading images using other file extensions will not be recognized by the system and will likely be rejected.
In some cases, such as when you’re uploading an image that’s too large or too small, or you’re using an unsupported file extension, you may receive an error stating that your image file is incomplete, corrupted, or in the wrong format. This error will cause the upload process to fail. To prevent this from occurring, make sure to follow Amazon’s image guidelines.
Uploading another image for the same ASIN or variant will likely cause errors during the upload. If you have older photos for the same ASIN or variant and you’re uploading new ones, then Amazon will likely prioritize the newer images over the older ones.
If you have access to the right equipment and you know how to edit photos, you may want to consider taking the photos yourself. Make sure that you use a reliable camera. You can use smartphones, but investing in a good quality DSLR camera can help you take better product photos. When it comes to editing your photos, don’t go overboard with it. While you can enhance elements like their color or exposure, make sure to keep the edits realistic. Doing so allows you to highlight certain features or aspects of your product without the risk of your photos becoming misleading or unrealistic.
Alternatively, you can look into working with a professional photographer for high-quality product photography. You can search for local photographers or look for professional photographers who specialize in Amazon product photography. Working with professionals versus going the DIY route for Amazon product photography has several benefits. Aside from leveraging their expertise in the field and their creative eye to capture the best images of your product, you won’t have to purchase additional photography equipment or worry about post-processing. They’ll know how to present your products in a way that captures your audience’s attention. Plus, you’ll have more time to focus on growing your business.
Aside from taking great product images, you’ll also have to consider optimizing your Amazon listing. Doing so allows you to tap into benefits such as standing out from the competition, improving your clickthrough rate and conversion rate for better sales and profits, driving more traffic to your listings, and improving the visibility of both your brand and your products. There are several ways to optimize your product listings. For instance, you can conduct keyword research to discover the search terms that your target audiences are using. You can also optimize your product title and product description by:
Other ways you can optimize your Amazon product listing include getting more customer reviews, sharing your brand story, and running A/B tests on Amazon to boost sales by up to 25%.
Consider using Amazon A+ Content to bolster your marketing efforts on Amazon. When done well, Amazon A+ Content can drive traffic, conversions, and sales, build awareness, educate customers, and give you a competitive edge. Amazon A+ Content gives you access to modules that you can use to present enhanced product descriptions, tell your brand story, and use enhanced images to further entice potential customers into checking out what you have to offer.
Amazon product photography is an essential element in growing your Amazon business. The good news is that there are several ways you can optimize your Amazon product photos to drive traffic, conversions, and sales. Try to experiment with different solutions to see which ones fit your needs best and look into using solutions like Threecolts to nurture your business’s growth.
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Threecolts is a comprehensive suite of advanced ecommerce software solutions. We're designed to empower retail vendors and marketplace sellers on Amazon, Walmart, and beyond. Our tools optimize every aspect of ecommerce operations to ensure maximum profitability.
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