What do high-quality digital assets mean to your online retail site?
Are you offering product images that allow customers to really envision how items would serve their needs? Or are you only offering one small, low-quality image on each product page that leaves customers with unanswered questions and a lack of trust in your brand?
The digital assets on your product pages make a significant impact on consumers browsing your site. According to Justuno, 93% of consumers consider visual appearance to be the key deciding factor in a purchasing decision – including digital assets like product images and videos.
One of our recent blog posts explained the benefits of using multiple product images on your product pages. Today’s post dives into the importance of high-quality product images for your retail site and also explores how video content can boost the overall quality of your site’s digital assets.
Top-Quality Product Images Yield Higher Conversion Rates
In his guest article on Entrepreneur, Dan Scalco argues that any brand that sells online should invest in their product images, and the number one tip he gives for boosting conversions through better product images is an emphasis on image quality. According to Dan:
“Professional images will lend credibility to your brand and help customers feel more comfortable purchasing from your site. Avoid pixelated images, stock photos and any visuals that aren’t relevant to the product at hand. Keep the background clean and relevant to the product. And make sure your photos are large and high-resolution to optimize their impact; large photos consistently result in better conversion rates.”
Clearly, high-quality product images don’t just give the customer an idea of what the product looks like and how it works – they also demonstrate the site’s credibility, working to gain customers’ trust and sales.
In order to acquire product images of the best quality for your retail site, it’s always recommended to gather them directly from the manufacturer or supplier, rather than from any unreliable third-party sites.
But the process to obtain the best-quality images possible doesn’t end there: in order for the quality to be truly enhanced and to be consistent with your site’s unique style, images need to be processed to your site’s requirements. This processing can include the use of clipping paths to remove shadows, re-sizing to ensure consistency and adjusting whitespace around the product to attain a certain gutter size (the amount of white space between the product and nearby text).
E-Commerce Site Traffic Sources Show the Importance of Quality Images
Not yet convinced that images of the highest quality entice consumers to make purchases on your site rather than on competitor sites? Take a look at this insightful statistic regarding how much time consumers spend on e-commerce sites based on where the traffic originated. A study cited on smartinsights.com shows that browsers who were referred to e-commerce sites via Instagram spent the most time on the retail site – an average of 192.04 seconds.
(Image taken from SmartInsights)
How is this information related to the product images on your retail site? Instagram is the social media channel that is perhaps the most centered on actual images rather than text. If consumers are impressed with the images found on your retail company’s Instagram feed, then they will certainly be looking for outstanding image quality on your retail site’s product pages, as well.
Also, at a more basic level, the strong connection this study draws between the image-focused Instagram and e-commerce site traffic demonstrates that consumers are highly influenced by quality images when shopping online.
Product Videos Boost Overall Digital Asset Quality
Offering videos on your product pages is a great way to complement high-quality images. Professional-quality product videos make it easy for customers to digitally engage with your items more effectively as they head further down the purchase path. Videos also help consumers visualize how your products fit into their lifestyle and give your retail site a better opportunity to showcase features and benefits that are detailed in the product copy.
What’s more – the numbers show that these benefits of high-quality product videos lead to increased conversion rates. According to an article found on Small Business Trends, product videos on e-commerce sites can increase purchases by 144%.
It’s important to note that focusing on your site’s digital assets shouldn’t overshadow your efforts to deliver unique, quality product content to your customers. However, if your site’s digital assets don’t impress browsing consumers and entice them to take steps toward a purchase, you’re doing a disservice to the optimized content on your product pages.
It’s easy to see how high-quality digital assets, like professional product images and product videos, benefit your customers and your retail site. What’s not easy is gathering and processing digital assets efficiently and effectively.
If you’re struggling to come up with a process that works for your company, turn to Virtucom Group's managed product data service that includes streamlined onboarding of supplier assets, as well as professional image processing. Our team of talented onboarding specialists and image processors are ready to transform your retail site with the top-quality digital assets your customers are looking for.
