How To Make Your Product Photography Pop On Abound

As Abound’s content manager, I look at a lot of product photography. Every photo we share on our social channels is carefully selected to make sure the products really pop. In this article, I want to walk you through my photo selection thought process, so that each brand can be featured in all of our channels. 

However, this isn’t just an article about my opinions. Everything I mention has been objectively proven time after time. These techniques lead directly to increased sales, no matter what platform you’re on.

It’s no secret that product photography is super important when it comes to online sales, but it’s good to be reminded every once and a while. Uploading photos is a repetitive, time-consuming slog. However, improving your product photography is also the easiest way to increase sales without adding any extra cost to your business. 

Abound is completely online, so photos play a crucial role. Even though we all know this, it’s important to keep in mind that retailers make all their decisions from product photos, without being able to sample, hold, or touch. 

1) More Photos = Greater Customer Trust = More Sales

When I’m deciding who to feature, the first thing I do is look at their Abound profile, and see what their product photography is like. The biggest differentiator between good and meh product photography is having multiple photos for each item. 

Your photos are where retailers are going to get 90% of their information. They’re the first thing retailers see when deciding whether or not to purchase. If the photos are good enough, then they’ll look at price, dimensions, shipping time, etc. 

“Conversion rates double for listings with two images instead of one.”

I know this is a monotonous task, especially for brands with tons of products, but there’s simply no substitute for multiple photos. Studies have shown that listings with one image have 2x the conversion rates of listings with zero images.

Plus, conversion rates double again for listings with two images instead of one. Double! That means if you only have one photo per listing, you can double your sales on Abound right now just by adding another photo to each item!

Pro Tip: Online shoppers also particularly value pictures that show products from different angles. 

Brand Shoutout:

The Jonsteen Company has multiple photos on all of their products. They also use photos that can be repeated easily, like their ‘everything’s included!’ image.

2) Take the Time to Upload What You Already Have

This is essentially a re-hash of my first point, but it’s so important it’s worth saying twice! Something that happens to me ALL THE TIME, is that I’ll check out an Abound profile, be disappointed with their product photos, and then I’ll check out their Facebook and Instagram photos and find the most amazing, professionally shot photos of the exact products on our site. 

I’m always happy to have found those photos so I can share them on our social, but I always have a twinge of sadness that these amazing photos won’t be seen by the retailers making purchases on Abound. 

If you’ve taken the time to have professional photography of your products, use it everywhere you can to get sales! 

Brand Shoutout:

SIC Cups has some of the best product photography on Abound. Almost every individual product has a super high quality lifestyle photo listed right there on the item page. 

3) Have Product and Lifestyle Shots

There are two different types of photos you really need for your business: product shots and lifestyle shots. Most Abound brands completely nail product shots. All you need for a successful product shot is to take a picture of your item from head on, with good lighting and a completely white background. 

As long as it’s not blurry or low resolution, you’ve done your job. 

These photos are great for clearly showing the buyer exactly what they’re getting, and they’re necessary. You don’t want anyone to feel confusion when they look at your photo. 

The problem with these photos is that they don’t give much context. They don’t show the size of the item, how it’s supposed to be used, or the tone of the brand. 

Product photos are kind of like the foundation and walls of a house. Every house needs these things, but you don’t want to stop there. The furniture, the decor, everything that makes a house a home – is the lifestyle photos. 

4) Invest in Truly Excellent Lifestyle Photos

Every maker on Abound is an awesome entrepreneur. We take great pride in hand-picking who sells with us, and we know that you guys create with love and dedication. 

You wouldn’t spend all this time and energy creating a product just to use a ziploc bag as packaging. Even though the ziploc bag doesn’t make your product any lower quality, you know that people read into packaging to learn what your brand and product is like. 

“Lifestyle photos are your packaging’s packaging.”

When you’re talking about online sales, lifestyle photography is just as important as packaging. Really, lifestyle photos are your packaging’s packaging. Everything in a lifestyle photo is telling your potential customers what your products are like, from the background, to the props, to the quality and composition of the photo itself. 

I personally recommend carving out a budget for professional lifestyle photos. In my opinion, they more than pay for themselves in terms of brand elevation. You can shoot lifestyle photos on your phone and have them turn out pretty well, but a professional photographer is going to think of a ton of things that you won’t be able to. 

If you have super high quality photos, you’re going to be like the popular kids at school. You will be picked first for Abound’s ads, emails, features, and social media campaigns. You will be remembered not only by the customers, but also the team members who look at brands all day long. 

Even as I’m typing this, I’m thinking about one brand’s excellent photos in particular. They were part of our first 50 brands, and even though I haven’t seen their product photography in months, I remember the photos clearly. 

The epitome of good lifestyle photos by Calyan Wax Co. 

Although professional photographers are costly, if you time it right, you can get product photography for years out of one professional shoot. The photos you get will be good for as long as you have that packaging. 

Focusing so much time and energy into product photography when you’re already running a business, and being a maker on Abound is extremely difficult, but it’s always well worth the effort. High quality photos are often the last piece in separating the good brands from the great.