Top 5 Ways to Improve Your Product Photos on a Shoestring Budget

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Visual cues are of utmost importance to online sales – customers can’t pick up your product and interact with it as they would in a store, so they have to get that same experience through the pictures instead. But how can a small business owner get started on a small budget?

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This guide will help you take better product photos with the equipment you have in your home right now: whether you’re shooting with a digital camera, a smartphone, or a full DSLRrig.

1. Use a White Background

Backgrounds are distracting. A single continuous piece of paper is all you need to create one of those disappearing white backgrounds the professionals use. This is a great way to help customers visualize the product in their own household, fitting in with their own lifestyle. To get the white background that truly disappears into the white background of your web store, make sure to light the background independently of the object.Increase exposure (or edit later) to ensure that your product remains nice and bright.

2. Eliminate Blur with a Tripod

Nothing looks more unprofessional than a blurry photo, especially to an interested customer that tried to open the full size to get a better idea of the details. This problem affects stores that sell large objects, like furniture or clothing, probably because nobody wants to go out and purchase a full-size tripod. But you don’t even need to use an actual tripod – you can use any table or other flat surface that allows you to set the camera at the right level. A long straight stick would even work well to give your hands some extra stability.

3. Keep Your Products Straight

Real estate listings are the worst offender when it comes to crooked photos; so many houses end up looking like they’re sinking into the soil. But when misaligned products show up in other online shops, the effect is subtle enough to go unnoticed by the seller but the cumulative effect is palpable. Use the grid setting on your camera or phone to make sure everything lines up nicely.

If your camera does not have a grid feature, you can go back through and tilt/crop the photo so it looks right. If you don’t have a great photo editor, you can ​buy and use a photography app

with this feature built-in to make life a lot easier. A good photo editor can help you correct colors and brightness levels as well.

4. Use Soft Lighting, Avoid Standard Flash

Ordinary flash from a digital camera or smartphone will wash out the photo every time. This is great if you want to market a creepy or vintage vibe, but most product photographers would do well to avoid standard flash at all. Instead, shoot under brightnatural sunlight or use a softbox light (a light with a piece ofpaper over it as a diffuser) to ensure the best results. It is even better if you can light the product from more than one angle to eliminate all the harsh shadows.

5. Offer a Variety of Angles

What you photograph matters just as much as how you photograph it. Customers want more than just a three quarter view or full front angle. They want to know what the back of the product looks like. They want to know the size of the product by comparing it to an easily scalable figure (like a person or a car).Depending on the product, they might even want to see underneath.

Try to include the product from two or three useful angles against a white background, and include one lifestyle shot to show the product in action. Every seller will have to tailor his or her technique according to the actual product at hand (seeing sweater from behind might be more important than seeing a bookshelf from behind) but “more is better” is often a good rule of thumb.

Get Started Today

Good product photography is more than just an art form – it’s a science. The professionals charge such high rates because it takes years to learn how to take great product photography, and it takes a huge investment to build up a collection of the right gear and equipment.

But they all got started somewhere: anything you can do to improve your product photos today is sure to provide a solid return on investment tomorrow. Never stop reading about digital photography, never stop practicing, and never stop thinking about new ways to show your products in a better light.

Web Design, SEO and Copywriting: The Complete Package

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You may have just been presented with a stunning, well-branded new website from your web designer, but is this enough to bring you online success. There are numerous important factors which have implications on the performance of your website, and we will outline the three core areas in this article.

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Web Design

The expected standards for web design have risen substantially in recent years. No longer is it acceptable to simply churn out a mediocre (and forgettable) website. The only impact this will have is leaving a sour taste in the mouths of your visitors, who will certainly not be coming back for more. When getting your website designed, make sure that it follows modern web design principles, including the provision of clear concise information and increasingly minimalist layout styles.

Search Engine Optimisation

Once you have a beautiful new website which perfectly represents your brand, the next step is to drive some traffic to it. Time permitting, many SMEs opt to perform these tasks themselves. However, given that there is an ocean of ever-evolving knowledge in the SEO field, many opt to employ SEO consultants instead. The time spent researching and improving your website in line with the latest optimal SEO principles can easy be avoided by consulting an expert within the field.

If you decide that you are going to make the investment of hiring SEO professionals, it is essential that you vet each and every one accordingly. You will no doubt have heard of the terms ‘white hat’ and ‘black hat’ SEO. Many SEO ‘experts’ will claim to be able to guarantee that you will reach the number one spot in Google, even though it is impossible to do ethically in today’s world. Make sure you select an SEO consultant who will provide you with ethical and lasting results, and you can be assured your site will maintain its high rank for the duration.

Copywriting

The written content on your homepage and throughout the rest of your site is one of the most influential factors on how a potential customer perceives your brand. A lot of the time, your website visitors will make their mind up within seconds of landing on your site about whether they are interested or not. Ensure that the copy introducing your site is concise, thought-provoking and compelling. Use this opportunity to portray your brand characteristics, helping you to resonate with like-minded consumers.

Writing impressive copy does not stop at the homepage. The content throughout your site is a constant representation of your site. There is absolutely no excuse for spelling mistakes or incorrect use of grammar and you must focus on making your content as digestible as possible. Without this crucial element, visitors will quickly turn off, click the back button and you can wave goodbye to the chance of getting any new business from them.

Other Factors

There are obviously numerous other factors which play a part in ensuring the success of your website. However, these three are the most influential of the bunch, and must be taken seriously from the outset.

The Best WP Plugins for your New Site

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WordPress has changed things a lot in the world of Web design for small business and is becoming an increasingly commonplace platform for a site to be built on. This is down to the ease of creation, power and also the flexibility of the WordPress platform – in fact there are over 30,000 plug-ins for WordPress.

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This sounds great and in a lot of ways it is, however it can lead to confusion. The paradox of choice is truly something that can cause problems for those trying to select the correct plug-ins to use on their site. So, to limit confusion, we’ve compiled a list of some of our favourites.

WordPress SEO by Yoast

A personal favourite – WP SEO by Yoast is a great tool that adds to the already good SEO functionality of the site. The plug-in allows you to add a raft of Meta data easily, specify which pages Google should rank and even helps with social media integration and sitemap creation. It’s easy to use, powerful and a great addition to any site’s arsenal.

Disqus Commenting

Disqus is a commenting system that replaces the original WordPress option. Unlike the quite limited WordPress option, Disqus makes commenting easier, faster and more interactive. It also facilitates community creation, allows indexing of comments in Google and even auto syncs so your comments are backed up – great for a new WordPress web design.

JetPack

Originally only available if you hosted your site on WordPress, this nice clean plug-in is feature rich and shows a whole host of stats. From social networking, to contact forms, to site activity info – it collates a variety of information into one place, making keeping on top of your site a lot easier.

Floating Share Bars

There are a number of great floating share bars out there at this moment in time, though Digg Digg is possibly our favourite. Floating share bars run up and down the side of the page or blog in a neat and attractive manner – essentially floating around the page. The fact they are visible at all times on a page, no matter how long it is, means people are far more likely to click it. It’s certainly one to implement and one we’d recommend at bibblestudio.co.uk if you are hoping to create any sort of social following.

Akismet

There’s social media and then there’s spam and Akismet is there to prevent the former. It’s a powerful, free tool that is easy to add and just side lines spam, preventing it taking up space on your site and making your loved place look a bit scammy.

W3 Total Cache

Caching is often a necessity for sites with plenty of images as it helps speed up these memory hungry additions. W3 Total Cache is a great addition that adds all the caching features you require and speeds up your site – something that’s very important with mobile versions of a site.

404 Redirected

Hitting a 404 is a pain and a broken link can cause all sorts of SEO and usability issues. So, adding this plug-in will help as it automatically redirects anyone who falls on the dead page to an apt live one. This helps sites pass link juice between pages and means there are no dead ends.

These WordPress plug-ins are must have additions for a variety of websites and could go a long way to making using and caring for your site a lot easier.