Optimizing Your Amazon Product Images

As for the looks, research and experience is proof enough that someone will only buy what appeals to the eye. This makes the quality of your product photos very important if you are to make good first impressions and increase your conversion rates.

Since compressing your image beyond a given size could render it useless, you must always make trade-offs between size and looks.

At 250Kb, the image loads in 2.5 seconds and is still clear enough

At 100Kb, the image will load within a second but will be fuzzy, especially on zoom mode

With these facts, you could opt to work with the 250kb image, sacrifice the 1.5 second difference and ensure that the visitor likes what he sees after the image loads.

With the better part of your website is made up of images, your first online store tweak must focus on the quality and size of your product images.

Capture their attention; make them imagine; leave them in awe

Let’s take a look at what I would do once they land on your website.

Scan around your catalogue looking for something that would capture their attention. If I find something that is worth a second look, I take a closer look and try to imagine how it would look on me. I am either pleased with what I see and consider buying or I sneer and move on to another online shop

What you want to serve the visitor the best image that is a perfect representation of your product without any distractions.

Mind the original image’s quality

A good product image begins with an almost perfect original shot. Even though you can do impressive optimizations with professional photo editing software, capturing the true beauty of your product in the first place goes a long way into making the perfect image. Using a professional camera on a tripod if you can. This will make your images steadier and easy to edit. If you don’t have a DSLR camera, make use of the best digital camera you can get.

Before shooting the image:

Clean up and prepare the product to ensure it is at its best condition. This involves getting rid of any creases on garments by ironing or giving your glossy furniture a sparkle by cleaning and polishing. Ensure that it is in a well-lit room and a non-glare uniform background at the rear. A black, green or white piece of cloth would make a perfect background. If you do not have sufficient natural light, bring in strategic spotlights with multiple brightness settings to give you adjustment flexibility.

Spark imagination

Make your product appear as it would when in use. If possible, get a model to wear the garments and take pictures of the model instead. This will create a mental image of how someone would look like in your product. The idea here is to put your product in its immediate use environment. If it is a coffee table, place it on an even surface that could easily edit into a fancy room.

Focus on what matters

Inasmuch as you would like to capture your visitor’s imagination, focusing on the most important aspect of the product will help you edit the photo better without losing any detail. If your iPhone case’s selling point is its rubbery ornamented back, make sure to take a close-up photo of the patina.

Editing the photos – what to keep, and what not to keep

Photo editing deals with two important things:

Final appearances by altering colours, contrasts, brightness and hues. A couple of final changes on Photoshop or any other photo editing application can enhance a picture and make it more impressive. Playing with the contrast and brightness can cancel out lighting defects or give the item a deeper high quality colour. In other cases, hue and colour changes will help you present a product variation you can deliver but don’t have it on stock. You can easily make your white tuxedo black hence giving your customers an idea of what the same product would look like in a different colour. Editing the image’s placement or getting rid of the backgrounds

An iPhone or a pair of jeans would look amazing on a white background. Chopping off the background and retaining only the product lets the customer concentrate on what you are selling, nothing more. A couch or carpet, on the other hand, would be more impressive in an exotic room. This is where you have to get rid of the original background before putting the image into a more appealing background. Whilst image editing focuses on perfecting your product’s look, keeping it as close to the original as possible has its own benefits. You do not want to lose credibility by delivering something different from what is on your catalogue.

Speed

Smaller images load faster. However, compressing your images could either have an adverse effect to the quality or render them useless on zoom mode. The solution to satisfying both search engine and customer speed needs lies in serving the best-expected quality to every viewer.

Understanding Image Compression

There are two types of image compression. Lossless and lossy compression. Lossless compression uses algorithms to encode the picture into the smallest size possible without omitting any information. Lossy compression discards what it thinks is not necessary in presenting an image. Since image formats are a simple translation of the used compression, they play an integral role in defining your choice. Lossless compression formats like PSD and PNG will generate impressive images but give slight size changes. Lossy formats like PNG will discard as much as you want leading to smaller images. Using simple image compression tools that give you control over the image quality as you handle the compression should help you make better trade-offs between quality and size. Moreover, since they have multiple devices at their disposal, they can make better quality vs. image size comparisons than you would using your computer and smartphone.

While the Amazon product image guidelines might be a great incitement to your editing efforts, the ABCs of a great product image might prove more useful.

Attractive: Make your photos accurate and professional with no blemishes

Big and Bright: A well-lit setting with the right background will set you up for the perfect image editing session. The goal is to end up with a clear high-resolution image. The customer should zoom without distorting quality should he want to. Current: If anything about your product changes, take a new photo for your stores. You customers want to see what they’ll have delivered from you; not more, not less. Over 70 million consumers will search Amazon every month. A good fraction of this traffic will land on your products. You have the power to bore them with bulky and slow images, or amaze them with light detailed professional photos.

It’s your call.