AMAZON PRODUCT PHOTOGRAPHY IDEAS

Did you know that people form their first impression within a fraction of a second? You don’t have a lot of time and chances to grab your customer’s attention in the sea of competition that is present on Amazon.

The world is now deep in this new era where a massive number of information is being processed by users on a daily basis. User’s attention span has dropped from 12 seconds to 8 seconds max (from the year 2000 until now). It is imperative for sellers to find a way to serve information in a format that is interesting enough for customers to pay attention to it.

Internet users will pay a lot more attention to the piece of information that contains images and videos than only text. Amazon knows this and recently they’ve introduced an option for brand registered sellers to start adding product videos to their listings (which was an invite-only option for a very long time until now). Understanding all of this and keeping in mind that the competition is fiercer than ever, how can you nail the product photography?

FIRST IMPRESSION – MAKE YOUR PRODUCT STAND OUT FROM THE COMPETITION

On the search results page, there will be at least 38 different results that are all competing for the same person’s attention. Your primary goal is to drive their attention, by an awesome main product image. If your product doesn’t stand out from the mass of other products, it simply won’t generate a click, and that means no traffic and no sales for your listing. If you already thought about all of this while designing your private label product, it should be easier for you to generate interest at this point, like in this example.

You can see a private label brand that specializes in waist trainers, comes up between some of the first results on a search results page. On this image, there is a beautiful curvy lady wearing on waist trainer. What is so different on this image? It is attention-grabbing and most likely to generate a click. It showcases a product being used in it’s best light. Additionally, this product was designed to grab user’s attention, because it’s pink and the majority of waist trainers are usually black. This means that the owner of this brand was not only savvy about product photography, but also about consumer behavior in general.

We decided to dive deeper into this listing and show you more positive examples from this seller.

Notice how this image is zoomable. It was posted in the highest possible resolution so that viewers can examine the product closely and fully understand its features.

Aside from making your image high resolution and zoomable, what else can you do? Try to avoid white space on the main image as much as possible. Make your product appear big, barely touching image edges. Some products have additional packaging inserts such as warranties, how-to guides, recipe booklets and similar.

You can show the packaging inserts next to your main product to drive more engagement. Another idea to differentiate your product from the competition is to add its packaging box next to it in your product image. This move will increase brand awareness, and build more trust between your prospects and you.

THE SECOND IMAGE – EXPOSE THE PAIN POINT THAT YOUR PRODUCT IS SOLVING

There are many ways in which you can be creative with this part. In this phase, when a customer already clicked on your listing thanks to the main image – the next goal is to keep their attention on the product listing page. The best way to do this is to show them that this problem exists (most of them aren’t even aware of that), and that your product helps solve the problem.

Feel free to exaggerate the problem a little bit, to evoke stronger emotional reaction.

Which emotion should you use? Researches say that the most powerful, action-inviting emotions are happiness and fear. In most of the cases they are too strong for Amazon as a placement, so a lot of marketers leave them out for social media. You probably saw tons of Facebook ads leveraging a certain emotion, and you weren’t even aware of that. Outside of fear and happiness, there is also a very wide range of emotions you can use.

In this example, from a marketer’s point of view, it is very clear that our case study listing is using two emotions: guilt and hope. Let’s see what it looks like:

To understand what emotions apply to your product, start by gaining a really thorough understanding of your brand’s audience and the problems your product solves. You will see that this is a really good start and pretty soon come up with ideas to express the customer’s pain point.

THE THIRD IMAGE – SHOWING THEM THE SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM

In this image, you should best represent your product being used. These are also called lifestyle images. Your product photographer will help you think of good ideas for this. To show your product in action, you will most probably need some additional scenery. If it’s a kitchen product, lifestyle photos will be shot in the kitchen; if it’s an automotive part then the photos will be shot in the garage etc. Make sure to think this part through and think of various ways in which your product can be used, and if you can – combine them in a short infographic like in this example.

THE FOURTH IMAGE – PRODUCT FEATURES IMAGE

This image should emphasize all special features that your product has. While choosing which product you will sell – you should dedicate some time to a process called “product tuning”. What is this? This is a process of improving existing products that already sell well on Amazon, and you’re looking to enter their market too. For example, if you know that waist trainers are usually made from neoprene that is a synthetic material – you can produce yours from natural latex that is harmless for human skin.

 This would be one of the features to show in the product features image. You can also choose to have different color patterns for customers to choose from, which can also be added to the product features image. If you widen the straps on this product for more comfort for your users, be sure to mention it on the product features page. Ideas are endless – and ideally, they increase with improved product customization.

THE IMAGE NUMBER 5 – LIFESTYLE IMAGE WITH A COUPON

If you offer any kind of quantity discount or are enrolled in “subscribe and save” option on Amazon, this might be a great way to maximize you upsell potential with visual content.

Here in this example there is no lifestyle image present, but it does show in very prominent letters, a strong incentive to join their “subscribe and save” program, to save money and never run out of the product that is being used on a recurring basis. 

You should really focus on adding this one image that will get the message across to your customers, because it is one of the proven strategies to achieve the best upsell results.

SOCIAL PROOF IMAGE

Aside from product images, the second most influential features of online purchases are reviews. In other words – other people’s opinions. Customers are tied to it – and are much keener on making that purchase if experiences of other buyers have been good.

That is another great angle you can use to increase the product page’s conversion rates and there are various ways in which you can do this. The most ideal scenario to nail the social proof image requires a bigger vision. You know that customers develop certain feelings towards a brand, much more likely than what they do for a certain product.

Focus on what your brand makes them feel like, and think outside the box about how can you provide additional value to them? For example – we’ve recently worked for a client that sells diaper genie refill bags, and they created a Facebook group that customers receive access to, after purchasing one of their products. When you enter that closed community of moms, you are given tons of advice related to this industry, that a lot of moms find useful (especially new moms) and they provide additional value by providing relevant information to moms. This is the best way to build brand loyalty and they are nailing the game.

Additionally, on their Amazon listing, they added an image that lets customers know that they will be welcomed to the “tribe” right after the purchase if they want to. They left the facebook group URL on the image so that users can easily find and verify that there truly is a group they might join. Now, this represents slightly bending Amazon’s TOS (in terms of diverting online traffic away from Amazon), but the ratio between risk and benefit is truly in their favor.

If you don’t feel like doing this, or yet haven’t built a strong brand outside of Amazon, then you can simplify the approach and use a couple of combined selfies of customers using your product. It goes without mentioning that you should have their consent to do so. We found a good example of simplified social proof for a waist training product: