How to Plan Product Photos for Your Online Store

Plenty of product businesses post well and still have a store that does not sell. The photos are not bad. They are doing a different job.

Social photos are made to stop someone scrolling — mood, process, hands at work, something that looks good in the morning light. Store photos are made to answer a question. How big is it. What is it made of. Will it fit where I need it. What exactly do I get for $65.

Same camera, same afternoon, different shot list. Before you book a photographer or buy a lightbox, work out what each photo has to prove.

What a product photo has to do

Your customer cannot pick it up. Everything they would work out in two seconds by holding the thing has to come from a photo instead, or they hesitate — and hesitating on a product page usually ends with a closed tab.

So work through what someone needs before they would hand over money for one of your products:

• What it is, clearly, on its own
• How big it is in real terms
• What it is made of and how it is finished
• What it looks like in a real room, on a real person, on a real bench
• Which version they are getting, if you sell options
• What actually turns up in the box

There is a cost to getting this wrong in the other direction too. A photo that oversells — a colour a bit brighter than the real thing, a jacket that photographs a size roomier than it fits — does not just lose you a sale. It buys you a return, a refund, and someone who will not order again.

Build the shot list before you set up

Most products need the same six or seven shots. Write them down once and every product gets the same treatment, whether you sell work boots, skincare, pet beds or bags of coffee.

• Hero. Plain background, whole product, the same angle every time. Answers what is it.
• Scale. Next to something ordinary, held in a hand, or sitting where it lives. Answers how big is it, really.
• Detail. Close on the texture, the join, the stitching, the label, the finish. Answers what is the quality like.
• In use. The real setting — on the table, on a person, in the garden. Answers will it suit me.
• Variations. Every colour, size or option you actually sell. Answers which one am I choosing.
• What is included. Everything laid out together, plus the packaging if it is part of the product. Answers what do I get for the money.
• The awkward one. The back, the underside, the zip undone, the box opened up. Answers whatever you keep answering by email.

Then the part that makes the list yours: the shot list comes from the questions customers already ask you.

Plan the session, not the photo

Photography stops being a chore you avoid when you treat it as a half-day you do twice a year.

Batch by shot type, not by product. Set up once, shoot the hero shot of everything, and do not touch the setup. Then reset for detail shots and do all of those. Then the in-use shots. Going product by product means rebuilding the setup twenty times and ending up with twenty slightly different looks.

Before you start, get everything out — products, props, surfaces, the lot. Number or label things as you go, or just work through a written list in order. It sounds fussy. It saves you an hour of "which one is that" afterwards.

Twenty products in a morning is realistic once you are set up. One product at a time is how it becomes a job you never get to. And while the setup is still up, shoot the stock that is not live yet.

You can do this with a phone

• Use window light and turn the overheads off. Mixing daylight with warm bulbs is what makes phone photos look slightly off-colour in a way you cannot fix afterwards.
• Neutral surface, white card. A plain bench or a sheet of paper, and a piece of white card propped on the shadow side to bounce light back. That is the whole lighting kit.
• Step closer instead of zooming. Digital zoom throws away detail you wanted.
• Lock focus and exposure. Tap and hold so the whole batch matches instead of drifting brighter and darker.
• Shoot a bit wider than you need. You can crop consistently later. You cannot un-crop.
• Steady the phone. A tripod if you have one, a stack of books if you do not.

Being honest about when to pay someone: if colour accuracy decides the sale — paint, fabric, cosmetics, anything a customer matches to something they already own — get it shot properly. Same if you are photographing people wearing or using the product, or if you have had two goes and hated the results both times. Paying once for a set you will use for two years is not an extravagance.

Consistency is what makes it look like a shop

Same background, same distance, same angle, same crop for the hero shot of every product.

People read a category page as a grid before they read it as products. Ten photos with different backgrounds and crops read as unfinished, even when each one is fine on its own. Ten consistent photos read as a shop.

Here is the test: open your own category page on your phone and look at the thumbnails, not the products. Squint at it. Does it look like one range, or like a folder of photos taken on different days?

Getting them ready for the website

Good photos still get undone at the upload step.

• One aspect ratio across the store. Square is the safest default. Mixed shapes are what make a grid look broken.
• Leave breathing room in the crop. Themes crop thumbnails their own way, and tight crops lose handles, corners and straps.
• Compress before you upload. A store full of 6MB photos is a slow store, and slow costs sales before anyone sees the product.
• Name files sensibly and write real alt text. Describe the product. Nobody is served by IMG_4471.
• Check the image changes with the option. If someone picks the green one, they should see the green one.
• Then look at all of it on a phone, because that is where most people will.

One shoot, used everywhere

The same session feeds more than the store. It feeds your Google Business Profile, your email, your social, your ads, and any marketplace or shopping feed you list on.

They want different things. Feeds and marketplaces generally want the plain-background hero. Ads and social want the in-use shots. Knowing that before you start is the difference between getting all of it in one afternoon and hunting for something usable in November.

Where to start

Do not reshoot the store. Pick the products that already sell, plus anything getting plenty of views and no sales — that second group is usually a product page failing to answer something.

Write down the questions from the last month of emails and DMs. That is your shot list. Then book the morning.

Give it a fair run before you judge it. Change the photos on a handful of products, leave the rest alone, and compare over a sensible period, allowing for season and whatever promotions were running. Photos are worth doing properly. They are just hard to measure in a week.

If you would rather the store did more of the work, there are eight other checks worth running on it, and it is worth sorting out before a big sale period. Or take a look at our Shopify design and development service and book a chat.