You’ve decided to make the jump from selling products to friends and relatives to selling online. You have negotiated the minefield of finding a web host and someone to build your site.
Lets assume you are going to sell dresses. Unlike a bricks-&-mortar store, prospective customers cannot feel the fabric, or try on your dresses. Obviously an accurate description for each item is essential. However I would argue that the most important aspect of the site will be your images (would you buy a dress online just from a description, however detailed?)
Your options are to shoot the images yourself, or get a photo enthusiast friend to help out. Or you can involve a professional photographer – such as me! There are benefits and drawbacks to each option…so I’ve laid out some of the key issues to help you make an informed choice.
Speed
Once you have decided to move forward with your site you will need the pictures as soon as possible.
Not only should you shoot an overall view, but take time to ensure you have detail shots covering the important features. If you shoot the images yourself make sure you have somewhere to shoot where the background won’t take the viewers focus from the main item. Do you have suitable models? Studios such as mine have dedicated backdrops and registers of models.
Presentation is important too – don’t lose sight of the main subject – the dress and not the model! A creased dress, or a models arm obscuring key detailing on the dress will not help sales! It is common to find a pose that shows off a dress gives rise to an unwanted bulge or wrinkle elsewhere – a pro photographer will be very observant of such issues and will correct them in post-production.
Colour accuracy, contrast, vibrancy…
How precisely is your colour rendition set on your camera and computer? Ensure each image has accurate colouring requires specialist hardware and software so that no inadvertent colour casts will affect the final image. One of my good friends showing me their website , on a public computer a while back – every image had a reddish. He was puzzled as the images looked fine on his own computer. I brought up his site on my studio computer and the same cast was still very evident. His personal monitor had not been calibrated, and was showing images more blue than neutral so he was colour correcting so images looked fine on his machine. Unfortunately they then looked wrong on the rest of the world’s screens!
Consistency
This is where a pro photographer will really help you – it is relatively easy for anyone to take a clear sharp image. A pro will deliver the same colour, sharpness and vibrancy for a number of items, over more than one shoot.
I’ve seen sites where the photographer has over-exposed images by mistake …then attempted to rescue the results in post-production. unfortunately flat contrast and imprecise colours is not the way to guarantee higher sales!
Expense
Taking images yourself will be you cheapest approach – until you factor in that top quality images may significantly increase sales. (would you rather buy from a site that has a DIY feel to it, or one that looks professional?).
Once you factor in the benefits that professional images bring to your site the outlay is surprisingly modest – for example, it can cost as little as £20 an hour for shooting at Retro Photostudio, and competed images at only £4.50 each (reducing for quantity retouching). These are just to give a guide – should you have a specific job in mind do get in touch so I can quote you the most cost effective way to tackle it.
