The Two Types of Photos You Need to Include on Your Product Pages

Creating a solid, feature-rich product is hard. Building product pages that actually sell the product, however, is an entirely different challenge.

When crafting product pages, many businesses focus on the product’s features, as they likely spent a lot of time perfecting them. But, to acquire more paying customers, product pages typically need to go beyond the product’s features and build quality, and tell more of a story.

Through storytelling, you can create product pages that resonate and align with your ideal customers’ interests and beliefs, while also positioning your product as the right tool for their lifestyle or problem. Sure, strong copywriting will definitely help you tell your product’s story. However, mixing in the right types of product photos will help drive your narrative, too.

Not sure how to get started? Here are two types of photos you can include on your product pages today to help sell more products through storytelling:

Standard Product Photos

Standard product photos are generally shots of your product against a simple backdrop. The purpose of these shots is to give your potential clients a clear view of your product, its details and its quality right from your product page.

Think about it. When a potential customer is in a store, they can easily see the details and quality of a product. When online shopping, however, potential customers may not be able to fully grasp what’s so great about your product through the screen. Standard product photos become super important for the customer experience because, when done properly, they help recreate that in-person shopping experience, allowing them to see the product in greater detail before making a purchase.

Because of this, it’s important to use a simple background, so that the product itself stands out in your product photography. In addition, you need to ensure you adequately light your product photos. Sure, shadows may add drama and intrigue to other types of photos, but, with product photography, the goal is to showcase the product in its best light (no pun intended) and highlight all of the product’s details.

Now, standard product photos don’t have to be shot with a simple white background. Depending on your brand, you can also use different coloured backdrops. You can also use strategic props if it helps tell the story of your product or aligns with your brand. Again, just ensure that your product is still the main character in every shot.

Need help snapping standard product photos for your brand? Reach out today and I’d be happy to chat about creating high quality product photos for your brand.

Lifestyle Photos

If standard product photos help showcase your product in more detail, lifestyle photos help tell the story behind your product and align it with your customers’ values, beliefs and interests.

Sure, your product may have all the latest and greatest features, but often customers don’t purchase from brands based on their products alone. A lot of the time, customers purchase from brands because of the why behind their business, aligning themselves with what the business stands for.

To give you an example, let’s look at two hypothetical outdoor clothing brands. Both brands make jackets for enduring cold weather. The first brand creates product pages outlining the type of insulation the coat uses and provides a single product photo of the jacket against a white backdrop. The second brand creates a product page that tells the story of how they created this jacket after trekking through the snow-capped mountains in Banff and discovering that other jackets in the market didn’t provide enough warmth for such an adventure, so they developed their own to meet the need. They then incorporate both standard product photos of the jacket and lifestyle photos of people wearing the jacket out in the snowy mountains. What brand is an outdoor enthusiast more likely to purchase from?

So, when creating lifestyle product photos for your product pages, consider the story you’re trying to tell with your photos and how that story aligns with your customers’ beliefs and interests. If you do this, your products may just got from a basic, feature-filled design to something your customer-base can fully get behind.

Want to start telling the story behind your products through lifestyle photography? Reach out today and I’d be happy to chat about how to make this happen for you and your brand!

Conclusion

To develop strong product pages, you need to both showcase the features and build quality of your products, while also crafting a narrative that resonates with your ideal customers. To achieve both of these objectives, first snap high quality standard product photos that showcase your product with a simple clean background. Ensure that you use proper lighting and eliminate any unwanted shadows and reflections, so that your customers get a clear, realistic view of your product. Second, create a story around your product through lifestyle photography, aligning your product with your ideal customers’ values, interests and beliefs. While you’re at it, combine your new and improved product photos with some strong writing, and then release your product pages out into the world.