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5 Reasons to Invest in Professional Website Photography

Product Images Influence Online Shoppers Now More Than Ever.

In 2017, an estimated 1.66 billion people worldwide purchase goods online. During the same year, global e-retail sales amounted to 2.3 trillion U.S. dollars and projections show a growth of up to 4.48 trillion U.S. dollars by 2021, according to Statista. 

Our last blog revealed eight strategies to strengthen your eCommerce marketing (Learn More), including creative photography. Here, we expand on the significance of photography for eCommerce websites.

The way people use the internet is extremely visual, think about social media alone. Images flood social media channels such as Twitter and Facebook. Pinterest’s business value more than doubled from $5 billion in May 2014 to $11 billion. Founded in 2010, Instagram was sold for $1 billion in 2012 and has had more than 40 billion photos shared throughout its history with an estimated 95 million photos uploaded daily. With three billion searches per month, You Tube has become the second largest search engine behind Google.

So, if you don’t think visual images and photos matter, think again.

People both ideally and inherently want to see and experience products before they purchase them.

MDG Advertising reports 67 % of consumers say the quality of online product images are “very important,” even “more important than product descriptions.” In addition, content with images average 94% more views compared to content without photos.

Although eCommerce continues to evolve and is undoubtedly a rapidly growing industry, the competition is fierce. Not only does eCommerce compete with online stores, but brick-and-mortar stores. A study by Merchant Warehouse revealed 46% of customers want to touch and feel a product before they buy it.

Two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) product photography can’t engage all five senses, so what a website visitor actually sees, and experiences online becomes even more significant. 2D photography taps into customers’ emotions, while 3D photography appeals to customers’ logic —  the rational need for to make an informative and educated product purchase — as well as can offer interactive 360° experiences online.

The engaging and interactive nature of 3D imaging produces 20-40 percent higher conversion rates, depending on the industry.

If you still don’t believe in investing in photography for your website, here are an additional five reasons:

Photos Deliver More Views — One study that found online content with images gets 94% more views than pages without photos.
Photos Show, Don’t Tell — Scientific research has found that the human brain can correctly identify images in as little as 100 milliseconds. In other words, photos quickly capture visitors’ attention even before they read a word.
Photos Increase Website Traffic — You’ve heard the age-old adage, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” It’s true! Over half — 60% of consumers — report they are more likely to consider, or contact a business if search results include an image, according to Search Engine Land.
Photos Boost SEO — When images are properly labeled with keywords, search-friendly metadata and captions, you are providing search engines additional content to index, doubling the opportunity to be discovered in search results.
Photos Often Go Viral — Huffington Post reports that studies have found including at least one image per page is associated with more shares, at least on Facebook, while other research has found social media posts which include images receive higher engagement rates than text-only posts.

So, if your business has an online store or eCommerce component, you might want to revisit — and possibly re-think — your photography strategy for improved search results and increased sales!

WebRealSimple offers professional commercial and product photography along with setup, staging, and photo editing  for your eCommerce website. Contact us to learn more about this service and other eCommerce marketing services to increase your audience and improve your visibility.

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