Social media and ecommerce are becoming even more visual. With apps like Pinterest, Instagram, etc., the use of the correct photograph and even well shot video is critical in selling your products effectively.
So let’s take a look at a product image this week and please list your top 3-5 suggestions for optimizing it.
I chose my favorite backpack for traveling when I carry my laptop; it’s the eBags TLS Workstation Laptop Backpack. There are so many reasons why I love this backpack but I don’t want my preferences to influence how you would improve the product image.
So what things would you test as the primary image display? They have multiple images, are all the best ones there? They even have a video, what would you do with it?
*Update: To see the follow up post see:
Conversion Optimization 101: Make Your Product Image Sell http://t.co/oZp1ulXQ via @TheGrok
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Conversion Optimization 101: Make Your Product Image Sell -http://t.co/oSlPngFR – How would you optimize this product image?
Conversion Optimization 101: Make Your Product Image Sell http://t.co/FnTWQ2Bl
Conversion Optimization 101: Make Your Product Image Sell http://t.co/ijjp06DO deceptively simple #cro challenge, up to it?
I’m not very graphic design oriented but I would make the four color changes less prominent and incorporate them into the main bag picture. It seems like the advertisers themselves aren’t that excited about the video by giving a tiny amount of real estate. I would definitely give it a bigger area and push it further to the top of the page. Lastly, most of the review real estate is going to information that does not actually help the consumer decide how much they like the bag. Either cut it down further or add information that can help the consumer make a decision. I wonder if other people agree?
Bryan,
Because the video is so compelling and is placed in such a non-prominent position on the page, I might suggest having the primary photo overlayed with a video “play” button that would, when clicked, launch the video. As one commentor on the video put it: “Dude… this video just sold this product.”
If that did not provide a major lift, I might also test using annotated and interactive images, similar to how Amazon allows user-uploaded images to be annotated. E-bags should be doing the annotation, however, even if they steel some of them from customer review highlights.
My last suggestion is to actually comb through the reviews to find frequently mentioned bag features and ensure that they are photographed, if possible. For example, more than a few of the reviews mentioned the fact that the material was much tougher than they expected based on the photos. Well, why not provide a close-up of the material with an annotation, talking about toughness?
But, overall, e-bags has done a fabulous job making sure they had plenty of great, high-quality photos.
- Jeff
Challenge from @JeffreyGroks: Conversion Optimization 101: Make Your Product Image Sell http://t.co/iw1P681I What would u do? #cro
Oooh, now these are getting harder.
The one thing I know is that after going to the website and watching the video I now want something I didn’t know I was missing. So something must be working.
1: Make the video more prominent.
As others have said, the video really does do a good job of showing how great the product is.
2: Marry the pics to the product features
One of the great things the video does is show and describe the bags great features such as the “shelf” and “books seat belt”. I’d try and match pics of these with feature/benefit description captions. EG As a user mouses over each image a description of the feature could appear as well.
3: Speed up the Larger View App
The larger view application was quite slow to load. It’s very useful and well done, but it’s effectiveness is let down by it’s slow loading time.
4:Test the Default Bag Colour
Not sure if green is the default product image colour, but I’d test to see which colour bag gets the most clicks. Or just look at which colour sells the most and make that the default colour.
5: Centre the image
I’d also test moving the image into the centre of the page. This is where people tend to look. Also at the moment with the image being on the left side there is huge lateral eye movement and disconnect from the image to the “Buy” button.
6:Use Real People Not Dummies
A small thing, but the pic of the bag being worn is on a mannequin. A real person is always better.
Agree with Jeff on bringing the video up with a Play button overlay – that can double or triple view rate. Combine that with in-video shopping, and you have a very strong play for selling both the product and cross-sell/upsell. The same could be accomplished with better use of the video box, which has one thumbnail and is otherwise empty space. The fact that there space is underutilized doesn’t make sense unless it’s a limitation of the video platform.
I’m always up for testing the non-obvious elements of the primary image. Back at Dell we saw big differences from things as simple as testing the default color for a laptop with color options.
Make Your Product Images Sell http://t.co/odQSedUe @thegrok
Conversion Optimization 101: Make Your Product Image Sell http://t.co/ynDTI7Rl by @TheGrok #cro #seo
Hi Bryan. The main point here is that the product picture is focusing on the product description “what it looks like” but not focusing on it’s very specific funcion: It’s a workstation laptop backpack. We knoe possitively that everyone who is buying it will own a Laptot.
So, in this case, is one of those times when we don’t need to make a survey to find out what questions the Point Of Resolutions should answer: Is it OK for my laptop? Will it fit? No matter how nice it is if i’m not sure of it accomplishing it’s main function.
I’m not suggesting any specific test as I have some advantadge here as MasrketMotive student .