Seller led: Composing photos that sell more product

[Music] hello good afternoon i hope you're having a great ebay open my name's philip jackson and i'm a seller on ebay and ebay's invited me here to talk to you this afternoon about how to compose photos that sell more products if you have a question about what i'm saying please feel free to put that in the q and a box on your screen at the moment i'll do my best to answer you but do bear in mind as you can tell from my accent i'm from orlando and we have a lot of summer storms coming through this afternoon so there's a possibility i may disappear midway through this apologies in advance so what we're going to cover this afternoon is some ideas for improving the composition of your images on ebay and then some ideas about how you can begin to blend in some marketing messages into your product photos and that's with a view to selling yourself as well as the product we'll summarize at the end with some examples and show you how it works in practice i think a good business presentation should always end with a conclusion start with a conclusion excuse me and the idea is that it keeps me honest and that you know where the conversation is going and this is about the way we use our eyes to make decisions the human eye can absorb vast amounts of information really quickly and we believe what we see we trust what our eyes see so i've been thinking about can i use that in a way to send my messages to my customers that in a way that's much more effective than bearing them in the body of the listing so in this presentation i'm going to encourage you to analyze your business and figure out what key messages you want to send and then maybe give you some techniques for communicating those messages using dynamic tension grabbing images and the images can not only sell the product but they can begin to sell you as a seller which will increase your sell-through rate and i hope your price on ebay let's start at the beginning ebay calls the first image in the stack the hero image i don't know why either but we're going to use that word anyway and this image is by far the most important one it gets viewed at least 100 times more than any other image that you upload so spend the most time on this and get it right because it's got to tell your story really in just one image include any important accessories that drive the valuation by the buyer but do exclude anything that's not included in the package otherwise you'll confuse people and i would encourage you just to take a moment or two when you prepare the image to arrange a nice organized grouping that looks more professional and communicates something about you also bear in mind this image may appear on the viewer screen fairly small let's say three four hundred pixels wide so it's important that you try and fill the frame and make the item as large as as you can in the image so it's nice and visible and the buyer can see what it is you're selling and we'll talk in a moment about ways of making that image more dynamic and more exciting in ways that it's going to encourage the buyer to click on your particular listing when you come to arrange items for photography i think it's worth taking the extra moment to organize them really neatly and carefully it says something about you as a seller that you really care and that you spend time with things now i sell a lot of electronic items so quite often my stuff has wires and cables and stuff so i take time to really carefully coil them up and tie them up with little wire ties that not only looks neat but it's the closest that i can get the item to looking like a retail product as i can also bear in mind that you might organize things on the table in front of you but when you look through the camera things that were parallel are no longer parallel the perspective has changed a little bit so don't be afraid to rearrange things a little bit depending how they look through the camera and if like me you're quite often photographing items that are inclined to roll around the table a little tab of sticky putty is very good for keeping things aligned and in place when you take the pictures now here's a technique i sometimes use when i've got several items that are part of the kit that the buyer is buying they're all important the buyer wants to see all of them but they're different sizes i mean here there's the smallest and the largest maybe a factor of 10 in in size and i want them to all show clearly so i've taken six images and assembled them together in a single image another approach that you might take is when one part of the image is much smaller or larger than the other items so let's say maybe you're selling a shirt and there's a logo that describes the brand and adds value to the listing because of that you could take a close-up of that and include it in the inset image like i've done here only in this case with my example image that round thing is two or three feet across it is much larger than the other items in the image and if i were to photograph them all together it would dwarf them and you wouldn't see the detail in the other parts so i've chosen to include it as an inset image it's important to show it because it really drives the value but it was just a lot bigger than the other items another thing you might do is try and use your imagery to reinforce a call out that you have in the item title this kind of item doesn't sell for much on ebay because most of them have displays that are worn out and barely visible so here's an item where i've actually gone out and replaced that display and i'm getting four times the normal price for it but the only way i can do that is to communicate visually that display has been replaced so i've got a nice inset image showing the display nice and bright in the picture and i kind of feel there's an elephant sitting in the room right you're sitting there thinking okay what is this guy talking about me going off and spending a week learning photoshop the answer is no not really i mean 80 of what i'm talking about can be done with just the normal things that you do today the other 20 well i'll tell you my story i for years and years and years just set my images parallel with the bottom of the frame cropped in around the item maybe light in the background and that was it and that worked fine but i got to a point where my ambitions in terms of the marketing communication exceeded my fear of getting involved in image editing so i took aside some time not very much and just explored what resources were available to maybe learn a few new techniques and the good news is there are lots of resources available the easiest one to find is on youtube there are literally thousands of videos by people who are willing to teach you how to do all of these manipulations in whatever image editing package you care to use if you're an in-person type learning if you're in learning personal learning type person if that makes sense there's also libraries our local libraries do classes in photography and digital editing there's maybe a camera club near you where there's a subgroup who needs to talk about digital editing and of course there's ebay seller meetups you could find someone who handles their images in a way that interests you and maybe they'll show you what they do bear in mind that ebay gives you 12 images in each listing i would encourage you to try and use all 12. certainly success in sales correlates with having multiple images but they're not all equally visible the first six show up as thumbnails under the main hero image but images seven to twelve may get lost unless the item listed buyer presses on a little carrot there which could easily be overlooked so put the best stuff up front and the less important stuff at the back and i can tell you having bought thousands of items on ebay quite often something's arrived in the post and it includes lots of useful accessories i had no idea the seller was including they put him in image 12 i never got around to seeing that image so put the important stuff up fun particularly if it derives value for the buyer still sticking with the hero image here bear in mind that every night ebay sends google a complete set of all the fixed price listings on the platform and that is so that google can index that information and send buyers to your listings on ebay you want that it's really useful but google has a number of rules that you need to comply with for this to happen google is really hot on being given pure white backgrounds it's important that you don't put text and other logos and things on the white background so you don't put messages such as usa shipper free shipper 10 off or whatever that will cause google to reject your listing you also shouldn't watermark the item google considers that an inferior buying experience and will not show your product now if you're wondering well how do i know whether google is accepting my stuff or not well the good news is that ebay has recently launched a listing quality report and you can find that in the seller hub and that will tell you any of your listings that are being rejected by google so you can go back and redo the images and then get yourself back onto google again talking about the white background this is something that ebay is really pushing hard at the moment you've probably seen them launching the tool that helps you do this automatically and the reason is that they're starting to get more advanced in the way they present our images on the platform this screenshot was on a listing result page and it shows two of my items and one from a competitor of mine now what's happened here is that the images that i submitted to ebay were cropped as rectangles and with a white background now they're being presented as squares in a gray background what ebay has done has lifted my item off my background and reformatted it to suit in this case the desktop presentation but they also may format it differently for the mobile application so it gives them the flexibility to present the images in the best possible light and i think it looks really slick and i think it looks to me like ebay is actually endorsing my product whereas my competitor who took a saved a few seconds and didn't bother giving them a white background to my eye looks less attractive do you agree now i promise this would not be a technical presentation okay i lied at least as far as one slide goes because people are going to ask me well how do i get a white background and this particular piece of equipment i won't say it's the cheapest or necessarily the simplest approach but it's the most effective a shooting table is a piece of plexiglas that's frosted and as well as having lights above you also shine a bit of light through from the underneath from the back now that makes that tabletop go whiter than the whitest background paper you can buy so effectively you're making the background go white in camera so really there's almost nothing to do afterwards you've got almost a perfect image straight in the camera it saves you a lot of time and that's a worthwhile investment to set one of these up if you're going to do a lot of photography you know it's a challenge because there's lots of people on ebay selling the same stuff as you and me we all appear in search results and we somehow have to figure out how to get the buyer to click on our item versus our competitors and one thing you can do is just try and make your images a little bit more interesting a little bit different try something new almost all of my hero images are arranged on a diagonal composition and that's just not me making something up that is because the human eye finds diagonals much more attractive they're more interesting the eye engages more so here's some example of images that i've used and i just avoided having the items square on in the frame it's easy to do doesn't require anything other than just turning it a few degrees but it makes for a more diagonal image a more dynamic image okay now the thought here uh these images are the listings are the same which looks best to your eye you see i look at image a and the only difference by the way is the photos you don't need to worry about the text image a i find difficult to look at because i've got a listing that scans from left to right because that's the way pretty much all web pages in the west are designed because we read from left to right the most important stuff is on the left hand side less important stuff on the right hand side but then i've put an image in there that to my eye scans from right to left so it's dragging my eye out of the listing you know and it just have that conflict going on far better approach pick a different hero image and now i've got one that's turned around and looking into the frame and this seems much more comfortable to me it's bringing me into the listing from the outside and focusing my attention on the item for sale so i would pick image b if i were clicking on two things everything else being equal and this idea of things facing directions also applies to inanimate objects for example here's a rather fancy m1 voice processor and that item looks better looking to the right and yes it can look i can should be talking next time about why i shouldn't fall in love with my inventory because i'm speaking to you through one of these boxes i have it set halfway between howard stern and walter cronkite another photographer's technique that you might want to keep in your toolkit is what they call rule of thirds and really what this says is it's best not to put the subject right bang in the middle of the frame move it to one side a little bit so i didn't have to look much further than my own desktop on my computer to find this good example the photographer has placed his subject one third of the way in he's also and i guarantee this is no accident put the horizon one third of the way up and there's also a secondary subject a third of the way in from the other side so this makes for a dynamic image with lots of things going on your eye can scan around it and it enjoys receiving all that information yes the the crosshairs in your viewfinder where the focus works are in the middle but don't just put the subject there try and move it around a little bit see what works for you now there's times when you can't take a photograph of the actual item for sale let's say you've got some vintage computer game cartridge that will be worthless if you break the seal how do you take a picture well the answer is maybe you can use an image from an outside source if the owner is happy with you doing that but everybody else i'm sure has the exact same idea and you know what happens you get a page of search results everybody has the same image well it's just a random process to which item someone clicks on far better strategy change that image slightly just tweak it around a little bit flip it around put some background in make it bigger smaller rotate whatever but just make it different so now we're looking down the search results page and there's a different listing well there's much more probability someone's going to click on that because it's just not the same as everybody else now it wouldn't be proper to talk about product photography without dwelling on what happens before we pick up our camera if you're selling used items like me the closer you can make that item look like new the bigger the value is going to be in the eyes of the buyer so the cleaning and prep is really important rid of getting rid of fingerprints and dust really adds value i mean just as something as simple as a quick spritz with windex and a wipe down with a dry cloth will make that item shine it adds value straight away also i sell a lot of electronic stuff as i mentioned so these have knobs and buttons and those things accumulate that sort of black grease that builds up from your fingertips i always try and remove that and something like isopropyl alcohol that's available in a drugstore it's really good at removing that stuff and it's very mild it won't damage the item so start with a mild cleaner and work your way up as necessary and again we're bearing in mind that yeah you can say in the listing this is a lightly used item but we're going to use our eyes and form our own view of that so the time you spend making it look like it's not been heavily used really pays off in terms of the price that you can achieve on ebay my aim is to try and make the item look like if it was a previously owned item the previous owner looked after it and cared for it or maybe never used it at all ideally also i tend to sell a lot of stuff that has black paint on it so i keep a few pots a little touch-up paint on hand and i will quite often paint out little scratches and dings in the paintwork to make the item look nice before i start taking pictures now part of this process is to try and get you to think about what's important to your buyers what's the first thing on their mind when they buy from you i sell professional electronics so that my buyer is spending money on their corporate amex card to buy a product that delivers value in use so the key question i have to address is does this item work if i can answer that i'm halfway home towards the sale so something like this is important to show that it does actually work and i've tested it and i try and find a way of communicating that in the images that i put into ebay so i'm lucky i do electronics quite often it has a display or a light or something that comes on so i try and photograph that but you may have things that to do with your products that you can also photograph in the case of things that illuminate the trick here is actually take two photographs you take one with the lights on as normal and you turn the lights off take a second one and capture the bits that light up and put the two together and everything looks good in the final edit also bear in mind that you maybe can differentiate yourself from your competition because you have particular test facilities or test equipment or maybe you have a certificate from a manufacturer saying you're an authorized service agent or whatever it is all of this stuff is about crafting a story for the buyer that establishes your credentials and makes them feel comfortable spending more money with you again all of that can maybe be included in your photos the trick here is to try and flatter the item make it look as good as you can but you don't want to go into editing images to falsely represent the item the test is would the buyer be pleased to receive it and recognize it was exactly the same item as appeared in their images so we talked about the various ingredients let's have a go at putting together an image show you how it all comes together the special source if you like so here's an image or an item i want to sell it's been cleaned up there's no fingerprints on it looks pretty good but to be honest just aligning it horizontally looks pretty dull to my eye takes no time at all to move it through a few degrees make it a bit more dynamic so diagonal composition step one with this particular item i want to sell an antenna that's what it uses and best place to do that is to put it in on the table where i can see it if i put the antenna on top then i've got a black item on a black background we probably won't see it or notice it so that's the kit of parts i'm going to receive but what about the question is whether it works or not if i can produce an image that shows it working that is much more convincing to the buyer i know it's small on the screen but you'll see on the display it says locked in the case of this particular item that means deep breath it is accurate to naught point no no no no no not one second so it's pretty accurate clock pretty cool huh and someone who buys this item probably also knows that there's a whole reporting testing functionality built within it so why not include a screenshot of that in the image as well so i've got myself you know pretty squarish kind of composition included all the information i need all i need to do is crop it to size i'm good to go and the idea here is that i'm trying to take the buyer through the whole sales process just through one image i'm trying to get them down that funnel where they reach for their corporate amex card and say yep i want that one preferably without doing anything else or reading anything else i'm trying to answer all their questions in that one image and obviously you've got to tailor this to your particular situation but and you would know the things that affect buyers of your products i'm sure so how does this work in practice is this any good at all is this useful advice i can tell you it works well for me i mean here's an example there's an item i bought for i think it says 680 including shipping and the seller's done a nice job here he's shown me the item i can see it working i know it's good but to be honest the whole sitting on the office chair thing it's really underselling him it looks like an amateur so i put the listing out of its misery and re-marketed it based upon the techniques that i've showed you here exactly the same process that we just went through added a couple of words to the title keywords in there and it went for twice the price that i paid for it in a day or two so and that's not untypical for what i do so there is a lot to be said for trying to think about what really goes through the maya's mind when they make a purchasing decision and how can you communicate that visually because it is much more effective than writing lots of text in the body of the listing we've talked a lot about selling products what about yourself how do you sell yourself in a picture it doesn't make sense right well you can first of all let's consider how you do it within the frame of the image just the fact that you've taken a moment to clean everything and arrange it neatly that speaks volumes about you most people don't bother doing that you're already in the top 10 just for cleaning something if you can go further and show that it works and that you've tested it again you've got much more reassurance for the buyer and they're much more likely to buy and just by focusing on the item cropping out everything that's unnecessary and that confuses your message you can have them really focus on your sales message and even if you're working out of a home or bedroom or something you can still look extremely professional by just thinking about what do you include in your images now there's a second layer to selling yourself on ebay in my opinion through images and that is how you appear in the search results so let's say you're looking for this kind of item and you run a search on it you're going to see lots of items of that type for sale from me and i want it to be obvious in the search results there's a guy here who's selling a bunch of these things because that's the message i want to send that consistency looks good it shows the buyer that i'm invested in the category that i have depth that i work on a lot of these things if something were to go wrong or they needed some help i'm probably the guy that can answer their question i'm also charging twice as much so i had to justify that as well and from my point of view i'm as lazy as the next person yeah it looks complicated but i do this a lot by having the same production process for the images i can turn them out very quickly so it saves me time too looks complicated but it's quick so let's wrap this up what have we covered put time into the first image that's got to tell your story that is the most important thing that you can do ebay likes you to compose to a square-ish format not essential but it certainly helps but the white background is important and will get more important as time goes on don't clutter it with text or logos or watermarks the fact that you've carefully cleaned and arranged the items looks good and professional i've given you some ideas for how to make your photographs more dynamic and interesting basically be different from everybody else whatever that means and think about how you market yourself not just the product a consistent approach will show up in the search results it will underscore the fact that you are committed to this particular category and that you understand this product in my case it's a big deal to show something working and to convince the buyer that i've tested it and then it works fully and remember this photography business is not a destination it's a journey you never get there you got to keep on trying new things and never be satisfied with what you did last week you can always try something different i would encourage you to just keep working at it look at what's out there take the best ideas see if you can adopt them yourself and with that i would like to thank ebay for inviting me to speak this afternoon they've stepped way outside their comfort zone in having sellers speak to you here at this event i hope that's a good experience for them i'm sure they'll be you'll be given a chance to review the event and if you think that's something that should be encouraged i would ask that you let them know that this is philip jackson saying thank you very much indeed for your time this afternoon and i hope you have a great event here at ebay open [Music]

2021-08-14 14:37

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