For any seller, the quality of the product images displayed on their online store plays a key role in the success of their marketing efforts. In order to make a purchase from you, customers first need to establish trust on the product offered by you. Clear, quality and enticing product images play a crucial role in building this trust. Especially for eBay sellers, visually appealing product images can be worth a thousand words. Let’s take a look at some of the sure-shot ways to enhance product images that can help you boost sales and revenue.
What Do eBay Rules Say About Product Images?
A seller should begin with the rules, as no seller would want to violate eBay’s terms of service and get their store removed from the site. It has been estimated that listings having high-quality product images are 5% more likely to be purchased by customers. Here’s a summary of product image rules specified by eBay:
- No. of images required: All listings are required to have at least one product image. eBay earlier used to allow image-less listings, but now things have changed.
- Minimum size: All product images must be of minimum 500 pixels, however 1600 pixels is recommended for images of high quality.
- No borders: Borders are not allowed. However, there are exceptions to this rule for images having natural border or if the product creates a border. Though, it is advised to better stay on the safer side.
- Watermarks: Watermarks are allowed only for branding your business, but not for adding more information, and watermark should not obscure the image of the product you are selling.
- No text: Using text on images is no longer allowed.
- Limited stock photos: Stock photos are no longer permitted to be used as primary image for your listing.
- File formats: Upload images in .jpeg or.png file format for best results.
While these requirements are the most updated ones, eBay is constantly modifying their requirements to provide customers with better shopping experience, so it is best for sellers to stay updated about all the changes brought about by eBay.
Now that you are aware of the rules, let’s learn how you can effectively enhance product images for your eBay listings:
Lighting
Natural light is best for showcasing your products. Find a place where natural light falls against a white wall. It’s good for smaller objects where a flash can blur the image or hamper the quality. Try to avoid using flash wherever possible.
Focusing
Mastering focus is crucial, especially when clicking smaller items, as staying in focus and showcasing the details is quite difficult.
Showcasing your product
You can imagine your online listings to be like a virtual store. How you showcase your products can make or break the deal. Product images should be clear and enticing enough to give buyers the confidence to make a purchase. There are a few important things to consider:
- Color: Make sure the color shown in product image is the same as the product being shipped, to avoid confusion.
- Stability: Using tripods and mannequins can help in avoiding shaky hands and displaying products in a visually appealing way.
- Include more photos: Add multiple pictures of the same product from different angles. Customers like to know how the product looks like and multiple product images helps them to make better buying decisions.
- No distracting backgrounds: Product images set against solid backgrounds avoid confusion and highlight the main product in a better way, helping customers have a better idea about what the product actually looks like.
- Contextual clues: If the product you are selling is hard to scale, use a common object or ruler as part of image to help customers get an idea about the size of the product.
Lots of Photo Editing Tools to Help You
With advancement in photo editing technology, showcasing quality product images has become a lot easier. Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom, etc., are popular software that are being used to edit, retouch and quickly create visually appealing images for listings.
You do not have to be a professional photographer to revive your eBay listings and make them more appealing. Uploading clear high resolution product images will compel customers to make informed purchases, thereby boosting sales and revenue.
For More Information
If you are a professional seller on eBay, you might like to opt for professional help, as editing and retouching hordes of raw images on your own can be quite frustrating. eBay Product image editing professionals at SunTec can help you in resizing, color correcting, editing and retouching product images in cost effective and timely manner.
To learn more about our eBay Image Editing Services, please write to us at info@suntecindia.com.
