collaborative post // Humans are visual beings; to us, appearance is everything. The quality of a picture can make or break your website’s design and overall experience. A quality picture on your web page or social media platform can encourage customers to linger on your website longer, creating a better brand experience and encouraging them to buy from you.
Regarding brands and websites, customers judge a book by its cover. Hence, it’s important to have a clean website. Quality photography highlights your professionalism and projects your brand as credible. Poorly taken pictures, in contrast, project your business as unprofessional and disorganized.
Photography is undoubtedly an art; like all arts, it requires skills and creativity. But you need more than these to help you achieve quality and professional pictures. To achieve excellent photography, you need top-tier equipment.
Effect of High-Quality Photography on your E-commerce Business
In an era of fleeting attention spans, you need the best picture to grab and keep your audience’s attention. Here is why:
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To Grab and Retain Customer’s Attention
The internet is saturated with lots of content, but you can grab your audiences’ attention with high-quality, scroll-stopping pictures. Besides, it’s been proven that social media posts and websites accompanied by pictures are ten times more likely to get engagement.
The brain responds quickly to images rather than blocks of text; hence, you must invest in high-quality Photography to get the engagement you need.
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Builds Brand Identity
Posting high-quality pictures that people instantly associate with your brand will help build your brand identity. Consistently posting high-quality, relevant imagery across your social media platforms and website will grab your audience’s attention, communicate your brand message, improve engagement, and make your customers loyal to your business.
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Pictures Show your Product and Services in Action
High-quality images show potential clients how your products and services are being used. With one photo, you can show how a skincare product is used or how a gadget can be assembled. It can serve as a handy manual where texts seem confusing.
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High-quality Photography Keeps you in the Mind of your Customers
Research by John Medina shows that humans only retain 10% of what they hear after 72 hours; but if accompanied by pictures, people can remember as much as 65% of the information after the same time frame.
This huge increase shows pictures’ importance in marketing your products and services. No matter how captivating, text-based marketing is not enough on its own, but when paired with the right picture, it can make all the difference.
Equipment Needed for High-Quality Photography
Having clean-looking, professional and beautiful pictures require a professional photographer’s skills. But where you cannot hire professionals, the next best thing is to invest in high-quality Equipment. Here is a list of gadgets needed for high-quality Photography:
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Camera
There is no image without a camera; hence, investing in a camera is a given. If you are starting, you can use a smartphone with a high-quality camera. However, if you desire pictures that are of better quality, then it’s best to go for a traditional camera. Nothing expensive; just a DSLR (digital single-lens reflex) camera will do fine.
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Tripod
One feature of a high-quality picture is the absence of blurry lines, shadows, and images. This is not easily achieved, especially when using a hand-held camera. Hence, a tripod is an essential gadget in Photography. Fortunately, tripods are cheap and efficient, enabling you to take great pictures from various angles.
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Lenses
If you are going to settle for a traditional camera, then you will need lenses. This will help improve the quality of your pictures. The lenses should be a good prime, and if you like to zoom in on your subjects, go for a zoom lens. Although there are various lenses, beginners should go for macro lenses as they can capture close and wide images.
Importance of Lenses
- Captures moving objects in low light
- Capture subjects in quick motion (for instance, birds)
- Ensures flexibility and thus promotes creativity
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Lighting Gadgets
Even with the best camera, tripod and lens, proper lighting is necessary for your pictures to look good. Thus, it is important to consider artificial lighting to add light to your image. The device is easy to attach to your camera, creating natural and professional lighting. And if you are taking pictures in a studio, you will benefit from a full light gadget and bounce cards to soften and direct the light on your subject.
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Reflectors
If you prefer natural lighting, you will need a reflector. They are cheaper than flashes and are easy to use when shooting outdoors. There are different types of reflectors available, each with different surfaces. For example, a silver reflector brightens shadows and highlights, while a white reflector produces a more subtle and softer light.
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Color Checkers
You also want to include a color checker in your list. This s because the color of light is subject to dramatic change depending on weather, time of day and the environment; hence, you want to be prepared. Your images must always be consistent, accurate and sharp, especially when taking product shoots and portraits and a color checker can help you achieve all these.
When placed on the subject, a color checker uses its grey values to adjust the white balance in the post-processing.
You can read more about product photography equipment.
Conclusion
Every e-commerce owner wants to show their products and services so potential clients can buy. The best Photography provides pictures that customers can connect to, essentially capturing the customer’s attention, encouraging engagement and purchase and consequently converting them to repeat and loyal customers.
However, great Photography can only be achieved with high-quality equipment. The best gear converts the drabbiest scene into something stunning. And even if you only have basic photography skills, just as long as you have great gear to work it and follow all the rules of photography, your pictures will always look stunning.
