Christmas season is the biggest time of the year, and you know what that means for online shops. It means chaos. Traffic explodes, sales spikes, record breaking revenue, and the highest purchase rate per minute. This happens each and every year, making it a peak selling and most profitable time for eCommerce stores.

Everywhere, retailers take a myopic focus on Christmas sales, Christmas sales, Christmas sales, Christmas sales. That’s utterly expected. After all, it’s the only lucrative period of the year to supercharge sales. Every retail store does the same thing—hot deals, coupons, deep discounts, delivery offers, hard-hitting email campaigns, major countdowns, and other countless frenzied activities of the season.

Why not step up your ecommerce game by doing something other ecommerce websites aren’t doing? With effective product photography techniques, online retailers can attract shoppers in droves and increase their conversion rates during this festive period.

It’s pretty obvious that eCommerce is huge and millions of people are turning to online stores for their Christmas shopping.  In 2014 in the UK, a whopping 40% of Christmas shopping was completed online. In the USA alone, Walmart had the highest sales on their website while other online stores raked in over 2 Billion dollars.  IMRG e-Retail Sales Index reported that GBP 21.6bn was spent on e-commerce stores eight weeks before Christmas. Clearly, sales went through the roof--I don’t see why this year should be different.

So, is your online store ready for the Christmas shopping mania? To start off, you need to optimize your product photography so as to supercharge your Christmas sales. Here are few photography tips to better your product photos and online store.

Stage Your Products

This can be done using in-context photo. In this case your product photos feature other objects/things such as nature, people, other products, or a textured background. The idea here is to give the viewer more context of what your product does. Staging your products also helps reveal the scale of your products as well as convey a given tone, quality, or attitude which can influence how the viewer perceives the product.

For instance, if you sell wearable stuff, take a picture of a model wearing it (can be either a real person or a ghost mannequin). This will help your customers visualize how it will feel and look. Note: If you choose to stage your product, ensure the other objects don’t distract the customer from the main product.

Light Your Product

Natural lighting creates perfectly-lit images. Product photography means nothing without light and so you’ll want to combine natural light with the right photography lighting equipment to add control and beautifully light your products. The sun’s light is soft, reliable and easy to work with. A north-facing window is ideal in this case. You can also use constant lighting and flashes but ensure there are no ugly, harsh shadows from these options.

Take Multiple Photos from Different Angles         
For eCommerce stores, customers can’t touch or feel your products and so multiple photos make the customer’s expectations of the product more realistic. This also helps to eliminate any uncertainty or questions.

Start off your series of images with a hero image which basically represents the product displayed on your “shop” page. This image should show clearly much of the product. This is why most hero images are often a front-on shot.

After the hero image, your product shots should involve different angles (top, side, bottom etc.) and close-up shots of special textures or little details so as to help the viewer picture the product more clearly in their minds.

Careful Selection of a Background 
A simple white background will allow your products to do the talking. Consistency is important for best product photography. A white background image will not clash with any other color and will also draw more attention to your product as well as create a clean and professional look for your store.

But hey, everything doesn’t have to be white. Lifestyle shots are also interesting and can be used for your most popular products as they make products look more appealing to customers. Try out a few more options to find out which one works best. Glossy or black backgrounds are not recommended and you can instead use marble, wood or metal.

So, what background should a professional photographer use? You ask. Well, it depends. Whether you prefer all-white for a simple, clean and straightforward background or one with patterns to complement your product, as long as your products are selling, it’s fine to stick to what works best for you.

Edit your Product Images

No matter how good you are as a professional photographer, your images will need a little clean-up. After your product shots, open your photo editing program (I prefer the Photoshop image editing) and do some small adjustments. You can retouch, crop, remove background image and even do exposure. In the end, you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Decorate your online shop

Be festive. It’s only during Christmas when tinsel and flashy lights aren’t considered tacky. ECommerce stores should join in the fun by using superb graphic designs and image editing techniques to decorate their online stores during the Christmas season. Festive colours and elements such as the falling white snow effect, little Santa hats etc. can be used to revamp logo or web pages so as to captivate site visitors.

Conclusion

I could go on and on about how to take product photos. And since product photography is a daunting task that takes time and practice to perfect, trust me, as you get your groove and understand what works best for you, it will get a lot easier.