Ecommerce Photography: The Ultimate Guide to Better Product Photos

Exceptional ecommerce photography is more important than you’d think. 

The photos you use on your website tell an important story. They showcase your brand and your employees, forging human connections with your target audience. They also give your customers crucial information, boosting your conversion rates. 

Ultimately, in the world of online sales, your customers don’t have a chance to interact with your products in-person. They rely on the photos (and sometimes videos) you share on your product pages to evaluate whatever it is you have to offer, and make the right purchasing decision.

If your approach to ecommerce photography is lackluster, it can have a significant impact on your ability to convert visitors into buyers. What’s more, a lack of excellent photography can make it harder to earn customer trust, and drive traffic to your site. 

Studies have shown that product pages with photographs earn 95% more organic traffic than those without. 

The good news? You don’t have to be a professional photographer to master ecommerce photos. All you need is a few top tips.

The Crucial Types of Ecommerce Photography

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Before we dive into our top tips for better ecommerce photography, it’s worth looking at the different types of photos you can showcase on your online store. All of these different types of photos deliver their own unique benefits:

• Brand photography: This includes the photos you take of your office, your employees, and your leadership team. Branded photography can help to make your company seem more human and professional in the eyes of your target audience. You can even use branded photography on your homepage, your blog posts, and throughout your website to differentiate your company from other organizations in your industry. 
• Individual product shots: These are the most common types of ecommerce photos on product pages. They focus on one specific item (the product you’re selling). However, they might showcase that item in different ways. For instance, you might use lifestyle photos to show people how your products are typically used, or packaging photos to demonstrate the kind of “unboxing” experience your customers will have. 
• Group shots: Group shots show more than one product grouped together. They’re often used by fashion companies who want to highlight how different items in a collection work together. However, they can also be an excellent way to show the connections between various different types of products in any collection. 
• Informative photos: These photos are designed to give your customers more information about a specific product or solution. They often include extra data overlaid on top of the image itself, about a product’s scale, sizing, or materials, for instance. These photos can be ideal for giving customers the information the information they need to make purchasing decisions, without filling your pages with too much content.

Tips for Better Ecommerce Photography

Whatever type of photography you’re going to be using on your ecommerce website, there are certain strategies you can use to improve the quality of your images. These are our top tips for compelling, engaging photos, taken from conversations with our own expert ecommerce photographers. 

1. Get the Background Right

You’ve probably noticed that most of the top ecommerce companies use the same strategy when it comes to photography backgrounds. Clean, minimalistic backgrounds are usually the best option for product shots, as they help to improve focus on the item you want to promote. 

Although you can experiment with other, more unique backgrounds (check out the example below for inspiration), at least one of the photos you include on each product page should have a plain background. This will help to create a sense of consistency across your website.

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Choose a clean background, such as a wall in neutral color, relevant to your brand. If you can’t find a space to take consistent product shots, consider investing in a portable white backdrop. 

2. Prioritize Excellent Lighting

Beyond almost anything else, exceptional lighting has a direct impact on how effective your ecommerce photography is going to be. Check out our list of the best Shopify photography examples, and you’ll notice that all of the images are expertly lit, with no obtrusive shadows. 

For branded photos, good lighting gives your company a more professional image. For product photos, good lighting ensures your customers can easily see all the details of whatever you’re selling. 

Natural light is usually the best option, particularly when you’re shooting images that include people (Such as employee headshots or lifestyle photos). However, you may need to consider adding artificial light into the mix if the sun isn’t working in your favor. 

Professional lighting kits can be relatively inexpensive, and they’re usually quite simple to set up. Just make sure the lights you choose come with a soft box to avoid strong shadows in your images.

3. Set the Stage Carefully

“Setting the stage” for your ecommerce photography takes more work than you might think. It takes more to create a beautiful hero image for your homepage (like the one below), than simply placing a bunch of your products on a table and taking a photo. 

The key to success is thinking about the story you want to tell in each image. If you’re taking a product photo, think about how you can make the benefits of that product really stand out with your scene. For instance, if you’re promoting a new skincare product with all-natural ingredients, you might use neutral colors, or images of plants for a botanical theme.

If you’re shooting an image for a product collection page, think about how you should position each item to ensure that every product gets its fair share of “spotlight”. Working with a professional photography can really help here, as they’ll know how to style your shots to perfection.

4. Use the Right Camera and Accessories

It might sound like a no-brainer, but choosing a good camera for your ecommerce photography is crucial. You don’t necessarily need to invest in a top-of-the-line DSLR camera if you’re not going to be using photos constantly for everything from your pop-ups to your email campaigns.

There are plenty of top-of-the-line smartphones that can snap incredible photos too. However, it’s worth making sure you can capture and upload images in high resolution, to avoid any blurriness or pixelation. It’s also a good idea to familiarize yourself with your camera settings. 

Make sure you know how to adjust the white balance, set your aperture depending on the type of photo you’re setting, and alter the brightness and contrast. 

One bonus tip here – accessories can be very valuable. Using a tripod for an image is a great way to give you a greater “depth of field” and reduce the risk of shakiness when you’re taking photos. 

5. Take a Lot of Different Photos

If you’ve ever spoken to a professional photographer, or worked with one in the past, you probably know they don’t just snap one photo and call it a day. They take hundreds of images, often from slightly different angles, to make sure they have a lot of options to choose from. 

You should take the same approach when taking ecommerce photos. Take multiple pictures of every person, product, or scene, from every angle you can think of. Use different positions and settings until you find a strategy that works best for you. 

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The more photos you take, the more likely you are to end up with at least one sensational shot you can use for your specific purpose. Plus, having multiple photos will mean you can use similar images for a range of different asks. For instance, you might share slightly different photos on social media, in your email marketing campaigns, and on your website homepage. 

6. Always Edit and Optimize your Ecommerce Photography

Finally, even if you think the photos, you’ve captured look fantastic, retouching them, and making sure they’re fully optimized for your website is a good last step. Invest in a photo editing solution, like Adobe PhotoShop, Canva, or Lightroom that will allow you to make small changes to each photo. 

You might want to experiment with things like color correction, balance and brightness, or even remove objects from the background of your photos, for instance. 

If you’re not confident with photo editing, don’t worry. You can always find freelancers or experts who can fine-tune your photos for you. 

Aside from enhancing the final appearance of your photos, remember there are other stages to the optimization process too. Before you upload your images to your website:

• Adjust the width and height of your image to suit your Shopify theme or layout.
• Save your photos in the right format (usually JPG or WebP).
• Name your files descriptively, with specific keywords.
• Add alt descriptions to images on your website for SEO purposes.
• Compress your images where possible, to reduce page loading times

Master the Art of Ecommerce Photography

Mastering ecommerce photography can seem complex, particularly for website designers and business leaders who don’t spend a lot of time working with cameras. However, all it takes is a little preparation, and the right strategy to make bland photos great. 

The tips above should help you to capture photos that make a significant impact on your target audience, elevate your brand, and improve your conversion rates.

However, if you need a little extra help, don’t be afraid to turn to the experts. At Storetasker, we can match you with an ecommerce expert that specializes in photography, and image editing. They can handle your ecommerce photography needs for you, so you can focus on business growth.

Get started with an expert today.