How Photos Help To Set Your Online Store Apart

What’s the biggest difference between shopping at a brick and mortar store location and shopping online? Well, the first and most obvious is that you can pick up, touch and feel the products you’re interested in when you visit an actual store.

When you shop online, however, the best you can do is view your products of interest in photos and videos. This is why excellent photos are so important for e-commerce sites. They can make or break the success of your online shop. How good are the photos in your online store?

E-commerce is more dependent on photos than any other sales channel.

While you may assume that taking away the “pick up, touch and feel” aspect of shopping presents a huge hurdle for shoppers, online shopping remains incredibly popular all throughout Canada and the world. As long as a product is presented in the most favourable light possible, a consumer will generally be encouraged to purchase it.

“Consumers cannot simply walk into a store, pick up, sit on, sit in or even taste the product they are interested in, before making the purchase,” reiterates the U.K.’s LinedUp, “An e-commerce website needs to convey all the same information through a variety of narrower mediums, primarily photographs, words and video.”

Good photography makes great first impressions.

We all know the importance of making first impressions. And, arguably, there isn’t a more important place for your business than your online shop to make good first impressions. Remember that online users can easily jump from one website to the next with quick clicks of a button. When they visit sites that have vivid, eye-catching photos, they are a lot less likely to leave.

“First impressions count when selling online,” insists Julia Priddle on FourthSource.com, “Images are an essential component when trying to stand out from the crowd and attract customers. Clearly, images drive consumer confidence, but with the rise of what industry analysts are calling ‘visually-driven commerce,’ these are no longer just a nice addition, they’re a requisite for success.”

High-quality photos grow prestige.

If you want to gain the trust and respect of your online store’s visitors, you’ll need to ensure the photos on your site are of very high-quality. Again, online shoppers always play the comparison game. If you have a superior product to that of your competitors, you may still lose out on sales if those competitors have better photos of their products on their sites.

“There is a lot of discussion about the ‘perceived value’ of a product, in the eyes of a customer,” says LinedUp, “This is especially important when distinguishing between competitors. When a customer is faced with two identical products, with identical prices on separate websites, it is usually the quality of the photography used to showcase the product that will convert the sale. By nature, humans look and browse things that look good on eye.”

Do you have an online store set up for your business? If not, call Canadian POS at 1-877-748-2884 or email us at info@localhost and ask us about our safe and secure e-commerce solution!