Visual Marketing isn’t just for the high street. It is also an essential part of online selling. The way you present your products can make all the difference when it comes to a customer’s decision-making process. This means that everything you present on your site must be of a certain quality. Even for those without extensive web or graphic design skills, it’s possible to use visual marketing techniques to show off your products in a way that naturally encourages engagement. Here’s Probella’s guide to visual marketing for online stores.
Always Use High Quality Images
This is the most important piece of advice in online visual marketing. Even if your design skills aren’t up to a professional standard and your knowledge of web design is a little basic, sourcing high quality images of your products is paramount. When potential customers browse your site, they want to see your products presented professionally and with a sense of flair. Take a look at any successful online clothing store and you’ll notice that all of the product images are crystal clear and very well defined. Though you don’t necessarily need to use the most expensive camera you can find, making sure that image quality is of a good standard sets a professional tone and also means your customers can see the details of any products they’re interested in. High definition images with a decent resolution will always be preferable to grainy or blurred shots, hurriedly taken on a low-quality phone camera.
Editing is Essential
Though you need to make sure you’re providing an accurate depiction of your product, image editing is essential if you want your online store to be competitive. Simple tricks like using white back grounds, adding artificial shadows or shading and labelling specific parts of a garment are all par for the course in the fashion industry. Similarly, electrical appliances such as games consoles and laptops frequently feature detailed diagrams of specific components and aesthetic elements such as lacquer finishes or custom paint jobs. In the property industry, most agents will add light to the background of a photograph to make the house they’re presenting look a little more appealing. Retouching grey skies until they look a little less overcast is commonplace, especially in countries like the UK. Similarly, photographing rooms from their most “flattering” angles is something many letting agents and real estate workers do as standard. There are a host of very effective free image editing programs available and providing you are willing to spend a little time learning the ropes, you can edit multiple product images relatively easily.
Show the Product in Action
Videos of products are the next step in visual marketing. Static images are fine for certain things, but many consumers prefer to see what they’re buying in action. This is especially true of things like kitchen appliances or power tools as it’s difficult to assess the quality of items like this without seeing them work. Short, sharp, simple videos of products can be used in conjunction with images to give your site an additional edge. Between 30 seconds and one minute is a guideline for basic videos that demonstrate functionality, but you may also like to include longer, influencer style pieces to camera where you or your staff discuss a product in more detail. For flagship products, this is particularly effective as it allows you to show off all of the best features. If you’re confident enough about the quality of your product, you could also consider using influencer reviews on your site. This will involve either embedding or linking to a third-party site but providing the review is positive, it can mean a lot more to a potential customer than a standard product description or unboxing video.
Keep Text Short and Accurate
Text will always be important in visual marketing, but unlike writing long form copy or marketing emails, brevity is usually preferable to too much detail. When the human eye looks over a page of products, it is naturally drawn to the images, rather than the text on the page. Though you will need to have basic descriptions under each photograph or video you use, make sure they’re clear and free any difficult or unwieldy sentences. You can always go into more detail when you write the actual product specification. Labels and short descriptions for images are there to provide the absolute basics and to give your product a name.
Titles and sub section headings should be clear and presented in a font that works with your design concept. Though the world still seems to love Helvetica, there are many other options available. Consider how the shape of the text looks when compared to any logos or other design work you have on the page. Though you might not realise it, it’s elements like this that can influence a potential customer’s decision in the first few seconds they land on your page.
Show Off Your Web Design Skills
The way images are placed on the page matters almost as much as their quality. Web designers understand how to present products in a way that is both aesthetically pleasing and clear. Simple tricks such as including a self-scrolling gallery, or a pop out style magnification tool will make your user’s experience far more pleasurable than clicking through pages and pages of static images. You don’t need to be a cutting-edge web design wizard to do things like this as even basic builders like shopify offer this level of functionality. The key is to present images and videos in a way that is appealing and impossible to miss.
Summary
For most customers, visual marketing is a subconscious thing. Decisions are made in seconds, not minutes, so you need to make sure that the first images people see when they land on your page are of the best quality possible. Typography matters, so pay attention to sizing, colour schemes and quality. Essentially, you’re trying to show off your products in a way that is both accurate and visually appealing in equal measure.
