Yes, as far as your Online Shop is concerned, your images really are everything.
In fact your images are often the single most important factor affecting your potential customer’s decision to buy. Aside from the images you present, all your customer has is a basic description and price . . . so they had better be good!
And by “good”, I don’t just mean high quality. That should be a given. Rather, I mean that they should be carefully selected and presented to tell a story.
Typically I suggest you consider having the following images incorporated:
- a thumbnail for convenient item viewing and selection at the category level. This should be a small replica of your standard image.
- a standard image that shows a full view of the product.
- an enlargement that either shows a larger version of the standard image, a larger version shot from a different angle, or a close-up of a particular feature.
- an “in use” image. This could be a woman modeling a handbag, or a frypan cooking a delicious meal.
Note that the first three essentially allow the customer to see the features, while the last one shows the benefits: in these examples how stylish you could look swinging the handbag, or what wonderful meals you could cook with the frypan.
The bottom line?
Features describe – benefits sell!
For a good example of how this can be done well have a look at an Online Shop I completed for Eurolux Australia The quality of the images I was supplied with were excellent, but more importantly the range of images told the whole story – features and benefits. Just look at the shots of the meals cooking in the frypans. You can almost smell them!
