The crucial role that images can play in giving a sense of product size
It might seem an overly obvious point to make, but a given shopper is unlikely to commit to purchasing a particular item from your online store, if they don’t feel that they understand what the item is. And when it comes to developing such understanding, knowing what size the product is will greatly help the prospective customer in making a decision.
At this point, you might imagine that the customer would surely read the specifications laid out elsewhere on the given product page, in order to determine the size. But the fact is, you can’t depend on your own ecommerce outlet’s customers always doing that.
And in any case, shouldn’t your own e-tail shop be in the business of making everything feel easy for the customer? This is why the ongoing optimisation of your store’s product pages should definitely include work to make it easier for a customer to gauge a product’s size, particularly in the context of “real-world” use.
So, how can you accurately convey size with your product images?
The below steps should all help ecommerce stores to use their product imagery in ways that give an accurate, rather than inaccurate, sense of each product’s size. That, in turn, should help minimise product returns arising from customer dissatisfaction, thereby benefiting the business’s bottom line.
-
Show the product in common settings
Ask yourself: where will be the item actually be used and based? Some fairly obvious examples would be a rug in a living room, or a barbecue grill in the garden, accompanied by human beings using or next to the product in question, and perhaps a few items of standard-sized furniture as well.
And of course, such imagery won’t be merely good for assisting the customer’s efforts to gauge size; it will also help them imagine actually using the product, and the “pain points” in their life that the specific item could help them relieve.
-
Make it difficult for the customer to miss the product dimensions
As we touched on above… in the “real world”, a customer might not refer to an item’s dimensions in the list of specifications before they buy it. Indeed, it’s something that many of the people reading this will have done in the past – presuming a particular item shown in an online store is a particular size, only to be shocked when it turns up at their doorstep in a very different size.
So, we really would advise you to give your products’ dimensions front-and-centre prominence. That might entail incorporating the measurements into some of the images themselves, or making use of bold elements next to the images, such as red text or bullet points.
-
Take your own photos of the product in a real-life environment
The point we’re really getting at here, is: don’t simply dig out a stock photo from somewhere on the Internet, and impose the manufacturer’s product image on it.
Unless you have some fairly advanced image-editing skills, doing this will almost certainly produce an amateurish-looking result. But more to the point given the subject of this article, it is also almost guaranteed to give a misleading impression of the product’s “real-world” size.
Hopefully, the product manufacturer will have their own high-quality “in-context” images of the item that you will be able to incorporate into your site’s relevant product page. Otherwise, consider creating a few of your own such images or even videos of the product in real-world settings, provided that you can achieve the necessary professionalism.
Could our experts help you achieve greater impact with your brand’s online presence?
It is in your e-tail store’s best interests to make sure it only uses images that give an accurate impression of each given product’s size. But of course, there are also so many other things you can be doing to help your brand penetrate its target audiences during 2023, 2024, and beyond.
Whether you are on the lookout right now for the most reputable website design, graphic design, search engine optimisation (SEO), or PHP development companies in Gibraltar, the UK, or Spain, Piranha Designs stands ready to bring you the benefit of in-depth knowhow.
Simply enquire to our team now via email or phone, to learn more about what could be possible when you work with us.
