If you're running an eCommerce business, you know the importance of excellent product photography and media. High-quality images and videos can make a huge difference in your sales, but that doesn't mean you have to spend a fortune on creating them!

In this episode, Kasim Aslam, our founder and CEO, John Moran, our Senior Client Strategist, and Ivan Bunin, our CTO, will share the basics for creating effective product images and media for your website, Shopify store, or Google Ads campaigns.

With these tips and tricks, you can create powerful product images and media that help you build your brand, attract your ideal customers, and boost your sales without breaking the bank. So tune in and start maximizing your eCommerce potential today!

PS:

This episode was taken from eCommerce Masterclass, an 8-day masterclass designed to help eCommerce business owners set up, run, and manage Google Ads campaigns.

Kasim and John look different? That’s because it was filmed in 2021! The concepts taught, however, remain the same ;)

eCommerce masterclass has sunsetted, but if you’re interested in getting the most comprehensive training in Google Ads, check out https://sol8.com/paid-traffic-mastery/

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0:00 Intro

0:29 How to Build Your Brand with Powerful Product Images and Campaign Media

5:58 Getting creative with your product images goes a long way

7:20 Recommended image size for Shopify

9:03 Need help with Google Ads? Get your FREE action plan here: https://sol8.com/ap/

15:09 Lifestyle images are critical prerequisites for shopping ads

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Product media.

You don't need to be a professional photographer.

When John and I rolled up our little basket site, just for the examples,

we bought a soft box on Amazon.

What was that, 50 bucks?

Yeah.

It was a little like I think 25 inch by 25 inch box that has a l e D light on top and

you crank it up and the whole thing glows.

then you can do different backgrounds.

I don't know.

I think they came out great.

the lifestyle ones.

That was Aaron.

Yeah, that one.

He put those in his living room.

Can you go to the product page?

Yeah.

How do I do that?

I think these are all his, but mine looked pretty much identical to that.

Like it looked just like that.

And y'all, this is an Amazon soft box that comes with the lighting in John's iPhone?

Yeah.

And Aaron did.

The guy who runs our Amazon channel for us, he did the same thing.

it's.

Amazon purchase lighting and his iPhone.

So I'm not telling you that these are the greatest images in the whole world.

I'm just telling you that it's possible.

Your smartphone iPhones and Samsung galaxies specifically do really

well use a plain white background.

You can buy a plain white background.

the backdrops on Amazon, they're about a hundred bucks.

If you get the whole T frame, if you don't, it's like $20 just

for the paper that you tape up.

And just as a side note on Amazon with those pictures, This last year

we've sold $16,000 for the baskets.

Yeah, A little bit more.

I mean, there's a testament like, we're not just saying like,

Hey, you can kind of get, it can work like it worked pretty well.

just as a, a proof of concept it was kind of our like, well, we don't

know what we're doing, so we threw it in the white box and all of a

sudden it was like, it was great.

But we've seen a lot of our clients do it.

Yep.

Nia says I have several types of soft boxes and the, and the best

picks end up being poster board and foam core and natural light.

That's really good to know.

Thank you for that.

Nia.

Wanda says Replica surfaces has great backdrops and has a ton of how-to videos.

That's awesome.

You'll notice here that we say use daylight as your lighting.

This is Yvonne's note.

Who does really well with photography?

You don't need to go out and buy a bunch of lighting or a bunch of lights

as long as you have the ability.

No, you gotta time it, but as long as you have the ability to capture that

natural light Don't zoom in it Pixelates, don't use Splash because it reflects

and then edit the photos if you can.

If you can't, it's cheap.

Go to fiber.

There's a billion people on fiber.

I bet you there are more people on fiber offering image editing services

than any other single service.

It's like what fiber was built for.

Just know that this is available and accessible to you.

I just found this, tool today when I was doing the search and they just offer

bundles, like you can open the prices.

It's like 40 bucks for a hundred pictures or something like that.

And they will amazing.

Change the color.

They will do like everything you, you can open Yeah, as a

pricing order, how it works too.

So they remove the background, they change the color of the product, they do whatever

it takes and you can scroll below.

I believe there is bundles.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There you go.

That's awesome.

That's super cool.

Yeah.

So like four box per image.

This is decent.

Yeah.

Y'all, I know this is tedious and annoying.

It's important you don't wanna drive traffic to a

product that people can't see.

You especially want people to be able to see details, features

the image that tells the story.

and I've had this experience, I think we all have, even though the

description says the thing does what it does, I need to see it.

I need to see it because that's going to connect those dots for, for me.

So if you have, images that are sparse or that don't necessarily explain everything,

or don't show texture, don't show some of the functionality, I think you're

putting yourself at a disadvantage.

Can I share a a site too?

This is one of our clients.

and this is someone that I think does it really well.

he was actually on our first three X Shopify calls, our guest speaker.

This one is obviously, kind of a beginning hero image of lifestyle image.

This is, The pictures that they take at their house, so they don't

have a professional photographer.

The, one of the owners she actually does all these imagery herself and

sends it to her daughter to edit them.

looks amazing.

Like you're looking at these things, you're like, wow, these are great imagery.

There's a theme, something that, when I hover over, there's lifestyle images here.

These are actual real customers.

But.

It looks amazing, but when you think about it, it's not that hard.

they took some I'm not sure exactly what that I forgot the, what they

call that plant, but they just filled off a couple rose pedals, set it

aside, put it in on their table, then snapped a picture of it and sent it

off for just kind of color matching.

But you can see that this is done really, really well.

Like you feel confident in ordering from this place.

And that's what's interesting is everyone here has been to the site.

Been to a site where they look at and they're like, ah, I don't know if this is

like a lot of thought into this company, when you look at this one, they stack some

boxes and then they took a picture of it.

But there's, you know, there's shadows there.

Not everything's perfect.

Some images are too small to read, but it doesn't matter.

It looks good.

And that's where people look and, and you look at this and

you're like, it's colorful.

And it looks like they put this in water.

And then took a picture of it.

Not difficult stuff.

You're not having, a, a $50,000 photographer come in and, and

fly you to Bermuda and put it on a beach , and just, cut.

Getting creative with the imagery goes a long way.

And in a show of hands or anything at the thumbs up or thumbs down, looking

at this imagery here, anybody feel comfortable buying one of these products?

They look like they put some effort and some thought and

some quality into their imagery.

That makes you feel comfortable by giving them your money.

And if there's anybody here that says, no, don't like it because

of imagery, I'd like to know that.

I really would.

Don't be shy.

It's not gonna be like, you're wrong.

I really wanna know that.

Because I'm not a very creative person.

I'm a data-driven person, as you probably all can imagine.

But this looks good to me.

I'm like, yeah, that this, this took some care.

I think that these people care about their products.

That's what this tells me.

Mm-hmm.

They are proud and that they care about their products.

So just wanted to give that as an example.

It's not super difficult.

But it is, it is something that I think, in my opinion, needs to be done.

If you're gonna spend $200 on a four pack of shampoos, you want them to look good.

I think you hit the nail in the head, man.

When you said inspire confidence.

Mm-hmm.

People wanna be confident.

Couple of good pro tips.

Don says that Sunna creates photos for $39 a pick.

If you wanna outsource photography, that seems worth it, depending

on how many products you have.

That's awesome.

Marianna says, do you have recommended image size for

Shopify products for the carousel?

I don't like to upload images that are too big because the site speed,

but they need to look good zoomed in.

Is there a sweet spot?

I don't know the answer to that.

Yvonne, do you have any strong knee jerk?

I mean, it kind of depends on the theme, right?

Thousand by thousand usually goes good.

is good enough.

Because if you will have 500 by, it'll look good on, but once you

open that, it'll still be small.

the majority of the sites using a.

2000 pixel wide screens, not sites, users, they use 2000

wide, so it's 1920, I believe.

so a thousand will have half of your screen once you open the image.

So that's, that's decent.

If you will see that you lose quality, you can scale it up, not that image that

you scale down, not the original one.

You could just use like 12, 1200 for example.

And Robin, I do 72.

Tamika just said the value of the content covered in this course is immeasurable.

This course is worth the investment.

Thank you.

Tamika.

F fives Ivonne.

I said 72 d p I just cuz.

Three hundreds print.

Ready?

Would you agree?

Yeah, absolutely.

It's like the standard for web is always 72.

Mm-hmm.

So for like auto editing, you will have 300 DPI and et cetera, et cetera.

But for web, it's always 72.

Nia is saying that she disables the Zoom and her product images.

I think it depends on the product.

I think certain products, like, if you have a, wool sweater for

instance, I really like to see the texture on something like that.

But if you're still in a bottle of perfume, I don't think it's necessary.

Savita says how many pictures per product is recommended or is optimal?

We, yeah, we'll have them in the case studies.

I sure mention type person.

Correct.

Yeah.

We've got some solid case studies, Savita that will include that as well.

Yeah.

You see like there are some examples that discuss maybe you will be able

to open some of websites use not only images in the preview but also video

like a give and they upload this so you see like image and below you see like.

Person moving in the spa or whatever.

So it gives you a, billion on the product better and yeah, you will

be able to share it later on.

Usually it's about like 7, 5, 7.

This is like a good amount.

It's not much next to few depends of how interesting is the problem because

there is nothing interested about a coin.

If you'll take like 10 images that there is two sides, that's it.

Some said the same thing.

No more than seven product images depending on research

and human psychology.

I agree with that.

I think, five to seven is a really good, sweet spot.

I read a case study recently that was really interesting.

There was an article from Time Magazine that said that a human being has less

of an attention span than a goldfish.

A goldfish has an eight second attention span, and a human has

a seven second attention span, which automatically is depressing.

But what they started to do is somebody, and

I wish I could remember who it was so I could cite them properly.

But they started to play with how to improve or increase somebody's

time on site or attention on site.

And one of the things is what Avania said, if there's any motion.

In your gallery, if there's any motion, it kind of resets that clock briefly

and so you get another couple of seconds outta somebody because they're gonna

take the same, you have seven seconds for them to qualify you as a solution

potentially when they land on the page.

But if you can show them motion, so a a gift or a video, that motion

will be its own seven second clock.

And so you can, double the potential time on site by providing motion now.

Here's where things get interesting.

I don't anticipate that lasting forever.

What ends up happening in the realm of digital marketing is the new thing,

becomes the ubiquitous truth, and then we all back into it because we're used to it.

So there was this old HubSpot statistic that used Infuriate me.

They said that if you use the word watch and the subject line, it

increases your open rate by X percent.

Well, that only works until everybody does it.

And then we're all used to that.

Term being used.

So be careful about some of these pro-tip.

But I do think that using videos and, gifts, especially those that can play

automatically, any amount of emotion on that page can be really helpful.

Square has a photo studio, which is great.

That's awesome.

Good link for that, Wanda.

Thank you.

does two body size images small and plus size.

Seven on one product or seven for each.

I think if it's the same product, Robin and the sizes are changing,

I think you can have seven total.

That's my soft opinion.

John?

Agree, disagree?

Yeah.

I mean, I've never seen a measurable impact on too many images.

Yeah.

if you're getting greats and you have, front side back on people, off people,

whatever it may be I say that, air to the more, more images than less.

But again, I would say that I haven't seen, a person that has

a slideshow with tons of images that hasn't worked comes to mind.

They have a lot of lifestyle images and product images on their

pages and it works really well.

It's 4% EZ for going on two years now.

oh, he was just in a Netflix movie.

, what was it?

Avan?

He was in uh, Army of the Nets.

Army of the Dead.

Yeah.

his hat was featured there.

I like to think that we got him, that it was all us.

Yeah, no, I'll share my screen here.

This is a company called Who We Market for, and they have a That is cool here.

And, and what we saw was using live chat people were saying, can

I open my beer on these notches?

And that was the common misconception because there was hats out there that

have beer bottle openers on their hat, and you can pop open a beer on them.

And so what we did is he created this image here, and this is

what their value proposition is.

It doesn't interfere with your sunglasses.

And so using a close above the.

To show that it's leather stitched and showing the functionality

of it was really cool.

So that when you looked at their main product image, you could

see the sunglasses and the hat.

it was driven towards people that are like outdoors and more tactical type of people.

And so like hunters and shooters had have to wear safety glasses, they

use these hats right here so that it doesn't interfere with their glasses.

But again, it was just a lot of imagery to explain the features was something

that that helped a lot in their business.

So if you have a product that takes a little bit more

explanation, pictures are great.

again, like I said with, same thing with Google is, , we want to

speak to these people on a lower level initially just because they

might be half paying attention.

So a picture showing, here's how this works.

Oh, okay, now I got it.

It was surprising how many people didn't know that.

What's that?

That's my next slide.

lifestyle images, critical prerequisite for smart shopping, and

I wanna explain that just briefly.

Smart shopping it's outbound, so if somebody's searching for a product,

they know what they're searching for.

I think it was Robin that I picked on previously.

Robin had like a bath bomb or something that if I'm searching for

bath bombs, it made a ton of sense.

But if I just saw this image in a display ad somewhere, it looked like a germ

or like a disease, like it was spiky and, and I had no idea what it was.

And you wanna make sure that you've got like, I don't know what mom

with little kid in the bath about to drop in the bath bomb or whatever.

you wanna contextualize the product, even if they know what it is.

They're not in the zone looking for it.

This is outbound.

So we need to capture their attention.

And I say this all the time, y'all will hear me say it at nauseum, but there's

a reason that if you walk through any shopping mall in the world, All you see

are a bunch of pretty people looking at you making eye contact, even if they're

not necessarily using the product.

I was it.

What's that weird it's, there's a shop in Fashion Square John

that has the specialty espressos.

George Clooney endorses him.

You know what I'm talking about?

Espresso?

So espresso.

Here's what's insane.

There's no coffee on the billboard.

It's just Clooney.

And then in the background, out of focus is the coffee machine.

That's how important this is.

George Clooney sells more in espresso than espresso does.

Now, you don't necessarily need to go get George Clooney.

If you do, I wanna meet him.

But we want to take a person who's making eye contact.

There's a dopamine receptor in your brain that fires every single time a human being

makes eye contact with you, and you want to capitalize on the psychology there.

So, Get lifestyle images.

You can get 'em from your Instagram feed if you want to.

Here's a really amazing pro tip is you can send them to influencers.

There's this whole body of people that are trying to be influencers.

Me and John are two of them.

There's this whole body of people that wanna be famous.

They're not yet, and they'll do anything.

It's insane what people will do for attention.

It's unbelievable.

So if you can find that person that has like, 5,000 Instagram followers.

It's not a small amount, it's not nothing, but it's also not like famous.

If you send them a free product, it's unbelievable what

they're willing to do for you.

So now they're promoting it and they do the open box and they shoot

themselves wearing it and you just got a whole bunch of lifestyle

images from somebody who's a pseudo influencer and you got that for free.

So I'd, I'd strongly recommend if your product is applicable, go

find an influencer that you think might be cross applicable for it.

And the influencers that have yet to reach critical mass, they're a gold mine

because it's not gonna cost you anything.

They're just thrilled and happy to be involved.

And if you can get them to also do a video for their YouTube channel that you're

also allowed to run ads to for your store.

We do that quite often with our clients.

They'll hire an influencer.

The influencer will get the product.

They'll do a 20 minute review on that product.

They'll place it on their own YouTube channel on their own social media

so that they get their commissions.

But the free re requisite of that influencer doing that video and

being allowed to sell that product was, we also would like to have the

ability to run an ad with that product with that video to our website.

Now, it won't be found organically.

It won't be.

Most of the time what they said is it's not, it's not gonna be organically found.

So it's not gonna be posted on their YouTube channel.

It's not gonna be posted on their social media.

But they would run an ad on YouTube to for that video, and that drives

traffic to their own pro pages.

How do you ensure that they follow through If they don't make the purchase

and you send them a free product?

You don't, Tamika, you're gonna have some drop off.

There's some folks out there that are just.

Kind of funky or shady, or to be honest with you, some of them might

not like it like we have, we had a company reach out to us who now I

can't name, and they wanted us to help promote their software, which is

specifically built around Google ads.

Well, we tested their software and not only it was supposed to improve

performance in some way, not only did it not improve performance,

it actually hurt performance.

We tested on the five campaigns and three of the campaigns were hurt.

That's the risk that they ran in reaching out to us.

Now I'm a good dude, so I'm not gonna go blast them on my YouTube channel.

But that could have been a flip side.

You know, I could be, Hey, I tested this software and here's what happened.

YouTube overview of your product is a really good thing to have too.

Mm-hmm.

This is helpful for people that are really for, first of all, we live

in the age of the educated consumer.

You have people that are doing 90 minute research on five and $10 purchases.

It's weird, but it happens.

And so you wanna make sure that you give them the opportunity to do that.

Videos are one of the best ways to do it because now it's like, you know,

they get to see it, feel it, touch it, sort of before they, they do that.

We've all been there.

I'm sure you purchased the thousand dollars iPhone, but before you buy the

dollar 99 app, you look at the reviews.