The Pursuit of Making Money OnlineHow to Create Killer Product Pages (Using Pictures)
Ecommerce September 14th, 2007
Part 2 of 3
Selling a physical product (or service) over the internet is not as effortless as one would like to think. You may be exceptional at drawing targeted traffic to you’re online store, but do you know how to capitalize on it and convert the visitor into a sale? Like I mentioned in Part 1 of this series, writing killer page content is absolutely crucial and in all honesty – just as important as having an excellent product or service to sell in the first place.
Today, I’d like to expand that point even further by showing you how the proper use of pictures can *and will* increase online sales.
Due to my experience in the field, I’ve concocted a three part mini-series in creating killer product descriptions. This is part #2 – and I will be covering how to effectively use Pictures to sell your products.
Use Pictures, and Lots of Them!
I love using pictures to sell products online. They say that a picture is worth a million words, and this phrase couldn’t be any truer than in an Ecommerce situation. There are two types of pictures that I use on a consistent basis:
1. Stock Pictures. A stock picture is essentially a picture of the product (by itself) with a solid background. This picture is meant to give the prospective customer a general idea of what the product looks like. When possible, the option to zoom in and inspect a larger version of the same picture is highly recommended.
2. Action Pictures. I try to include an action picture of some sort on every product description page. Action pictures show off the product being used in the “real world”. I’ve found this to work especially well within the sporting goods industry.
Quality versus Quantity
I honestly feel that the quality of a product picture is much more important than the quantity. Having one great picture on your ecommerce product page is a good deal more valuable than three of which that are simply OK or lacking. OK pictures do not sell products online. Great pictures do.
Think about this: the quality of the pictures in your product pages goes hand in hand with the quality of your ecommerce operation.
If there’s one point that I’m trying to drive home it’s this – Think QUALITY!
Compress Your Images
As a final note, I’d like to mention that it’s extremely important to compress the images that you’re using on your product pages. Image compression can be done by a plethora of image editing applications (I prefer Adobe Photoshop), and is a must because customers will not wait for your product page to load up if it’s slow due to large image sizes.
Your Thoughts?
I’d like to hear your thoughts on the subject as well. At the time of this writing, I have successfully launched five ecommerce websites and have learned so much by doing so via forums, articles, common sense, and trial / error. That being said, this is a never ending process of learning what works so I’d love to know… what works for you in regards to your product pages?
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September 15th, 2007 at 1:19 am
pictures speak louder than words. That’s absolutely true for me. Most of the time, when i browse through a site, what attracts me to read on are the pictures that comes with the article. At times no matter how much you can say on a product, the best is to show a picture of it.
September 15th, 2007 at 11:40 am
I’m not such a visual person but i do agree that a good pictures make good product pages. It should go hand in hand with the text content, supporting each other to for maximum impact.
September 15th, 2007 at 3:40 pm
Why would people buy something they can’t see? I found even with ebay, you get a higher price, and more bidders if you post more pictures.
September 17th, 2007 at 8:43 am
Very true. Unless I already know a lot about the specific product I’m buying, I won’t get it unless I can see a nice close-up. Of course, it depends on what, exactly, you’re selling.
If you’re selling something like DVDs or video games, it’s much less important than if you were selling other electronics, crafts or clothes. That’s the difference between needing one decent photo and several close-ups. (I’m a fan of the 360-degree view, even if it’s just four photos showing all sides of the product.)
September 19th, 2007 at 2:18 am
I will not spend much time (or spend any money) on a site with crappy photos. Looks unprofessional and there is no excuse for it.
The next thing that really bugs me are spelling mistakes in product descriptions. Really no excuse for that!
September 19th, 2007 at 4:07 am
If you put too much picture for an article, it will make the site slower to load the entire pictures. If im the buyer of ebay, of course I will look for the particular product picture first otherwise i got no interested on the product.