Image is everything in the online marketplace – here’s how you can keep up

Product visuals are crucial for an online sale: for years, a simple image of what is being sold has been perhaps the most important asset for e-commerce sellers. But as online shopping becomes more and more popular, consumer expectations are skyrocketing.

 

This includes expectations for how products are presented. And brands that can’t keep up with these growing expectations will find it hard to compete.

 

Traditional product photography was showing its limitations long before we were hit by the pandemic. With the recent growth explosion of e-commerce, things have become even more difficult – and retailers will find using a boring static image for their product listings is no longer enough.

 

Shoppers look for a lot more

 

These days, image quality is not the only thing shoppers expect from product photos. There are also seek more interactive experiences that go beyond a simple zoom feature.

 

The fact that they couldn’t visit offline stores during the pandemic made shoppers seek out product images that could be as close to the real thing as possible. Customers prefer engaging product imagery where they have control over which part of the product detail they want to see. This gives them the freedom to take control of their own purchases and allows them to feel more confident about the money they spend.

 

We are increasingly seeing a demand for more 360-degree product photos as well as interactive 3D photos. There is also a rise in demand for short-form videos that showcase a product in its entirety. No wonder product reviews on TikTok are getting popular.

 

From the perspective of brands and retailers, richer visual content can be a means to distinguish them from competitors and drive brand loyalty.

 

Gen Z shoppers are flexing their buying muscle

 

Evolving customer demographics is another factor that’s responsible for this change – and Millennials are starting to give way to the growing consumer power of Generation Z.

 

While Gen Z shoppers have higher buying power and are more loyal to brands, winning them over isn’t straightforward. Being a mobile-first, digitally native generation, they have high expectations when it comes to product visuals.

 

Moreover, since this generation lives on social media, they prefer it for shopping as well. Today, more than 60 per cent of Gen Z Instagram users in the US use the platform to find and buy directly from new brands.

 

That means another challenge for online sellers is to be constantly active on social media, sharing fresh visual content. They need to regularly produce aesthetically pleasing lifestyle images to boost social selling.

 

Further challenges

 

Another key challenge e-commerce businesses are facing right now is the difficulty of quickly getting product images of their inventory online. Traditional product photography struggles to keep up with demand, and the entire process is time-consuming and expensive.

 

And even if sellers manage to get their product images on time, they struggle with a lack of creative options. It’s difficult to get creative lifestyle product images in a short time frame. Getting videos, understandably, is even more difficult.

 

Fortunately, some exciting start-ups are working on finding a solution to this problem.

 

One such start-up is Dresma, which has launched an AI powered product photography app called DoMyShoot. The app makes it easy for e-commerce sellers to get high-quality product images in a few hours as opposed to a few days or weeks.

 

One of the biggest draws of this app is that it only uses a smartphone camera to deliver studio-like high-quality product images. The app also offers thousands of product-centric backgrounds for users to create stunning lifestyle images and share them directly on their social media.

 

“With DoMyShoot, we are trying to give online sellers an easy way to sort their product photography woes,” says Dresma CEO Siddharth Sinha. “The AI-powered app can quickly deliver professional quality product images for product listing and social media.”

 

The app is perfectly balanced to help sellers keep up with growing shopper expectations, Sinha explains. “We are constantly tweaking our app to make it more user-friendly and future-proof – it will soon support short-form video as well as 360-degree product photos.”

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If you’d like to find out how Dresma could help you with your product images, visit dresma.ai