Do better product photos actually increase sales?

Does research show better photos increase sales?

Indirectly. It shows how shoppers use photos, rather than giving one uplift figure: in usability testing, shoppers go to the images first, use them to judge size and detail, and pass over products they cannot judge.

Baymard Institute found that 56% of users began exploring the product images as soon as they arrived on a product page. In a separate study, 42% of users tried to work out a product’s size from its images, and misreading the size led some to reject products that would have suited them, and in some cases to leave the site.

Be wary of any claim that better photos lift sales by a fixed percentage. The effect depends on how weak the current photos are, and on what else on the page is getting in the way.

When do better product photos make the biggest difference?

When buyers cannot judge the product from the photos they have now: one angle only, no sense of size, no close-up of the material, or no setting that shows how it looks at home.

• Considered purchases, such as furniture, rugs and lighting, where buyers study every photo before spending
• Products where look and feel decide the sale, such as bedding, apparel and homewares
• Products advertised on Meta, where the image is the first thing a buyer sees
• A catalogue where every product has a single photo on white
• Products with returns marked not as pictured

When will better product photos not increase sales?

When the problem is somewhere else: the price, the delivery cost, the stock, a slow page, or ads reaching people who were never going to buy.

If visitors leave before they scroll, or add to cart and abandon at checkout, look at the page and the costs first. Why a store gets traffic but no sales and whether it is the ad or the store walk through the checks in order.

How do I measure whether new product photos worked?

Change the photos on a group of products, then compare their add-to-cart and conversion rates with the same period before, and with similar products you did not change.

1. Pick a group of products with steady traffic, and a similar group to leave alone
2. Note each group’s add-to-cart rate, conversion rate and return rate for the last four to eight weeks
3. Swap in the new photos on the first group only, and change nothing else on those pages
4. Compare both groups over the same number of weeks afterwards, so a sale or a season affects both
5. In ads, run the old and new images against each other with Meta’s A/B test

Do better product photos reduce returns?

They can, when returns come from products that looked different in the photos. A customer who saw the true size, colour and material before buying has fewer reasons to send it back.

Read the return reasons before and after the change. If not as pictured, too big or too small and colour different fall away, the photos are doing their job. How to cut returns caused by not as pictured covers the rest of the fixes.

How do I improve product photos across a store quickly?

Start with the products that sell most and the products in your ads, and add what each one is missing: a scale shot, a close-up, a room or in-use scene.

Bartley Studio makes those frames from a couple of phone photos of each product, made with AI and finished by hand, with nothing posted. The first look arrives in 2 to 3 working days. The smallest order is one product with six images for $350 plus GST, and ten products with eight images each comes to $2,040 plus GST.