5 Easy Ways to Increase Your Ecommerce Conversions with Lifestyle Imagery

Emotions drive people. They impact thoughts and actions. They shape decisions and indecisions.

As an Amazon seller, you see this fact in action all the time. You’ve watched your conversion rates soar, after conducting Amazon listing optimization to create benefit-oriented copy that makes customers feel valued and informed. Every feature bullet, description section, and photo can be a conduit of emotional connection, but none are as powerful (or as underutilized) as lifestyle images. 

What are lifestyle photos?

They’re not photos of your product on a white background or an image with graphics. Lifestyle photos are photos of your product in action, being used, displayed, or enjoyed. Though Amazon categorizes lifestyle photos as supplementary images, don’t let that descriptor fool you. Lifestyle photos are integral to your Amazon selling success by embodying a multitude of conversion-boosting benefits. 

Lifestyle photos’ unique potentials are many:

1. They supplement emotional and visual connections which are lacking in e-commerce spheres.
2. They tell the story of your product and brand through easy-to-process visual cues.
3. They give context to your products, thus helping customers understand your products more clearly.
4. They help customers visualize what it would be like to own your product and how it would improve their life. 

If customers feel ill-informed, they will be less likely to purchase your product. Incorporating lifestyle product photography into your Amazon strategy can give customers the clarity they need to click “add to cart.”

Lifestyle photos show that in e-commerce, seeing is, in fact, believing—in your product and in your brand.

How to Use Lifestyle Photos in Amazon Listing Optimization

After seeing countless Marketing by Emma clients enjoy the benefits of well-composed lifestyle images, we compiled some tips on how to successfully sell on Amazon through optimizing your lifestyle photos. Discover how to perfectly target your lifestyle photos to your customers and boost your Amazon conversions.

1. Take Professional-Grade Photos

While you don’t have to hire a professional photographer to take your lifestyle photos, they should look like you did.

Why?

Your products are the face of your brand. Since Amazon shoppers do not have the ability to interact with your products in person, they have to rely photographs to gauge your products’ (and your brand’s) quality. High quality photos speak to a high quality brand. Low quality photos, well...you get the picture.

In addition, “67% of consumers say the quality of a product image is ‘very important’ in selecting and purchasing a product.” This means your photos’ profession appearance reflects not only on your brand, but the product itself.

To make your products Amazon best sellers, your lifestyle photos must embody quality. 

If you're on a budget or want to experiment with taking your own Amazon photography follow this guide. Otherwise, invest in pro service to ensure your Amazon listing optimization is dressed to impress. Once you have some great looking glossies, you’re on the right track to making the face of your brand conversion-spiking.

2. Speak to Your Target Audience

Imagine you’re searching Amazon for baby products. Which do you expect see? Light-filled photos of soft textures and pastel colors or shadowed photos of gritty textures and rich colors? If you’re like most people, you’d probably feel more comfortable with the former and instantly repelled by the latter. 

You should assume that your customers are like most people. And so, catering your lifestyle photos to your audience is integral to your photos’ success. If the photos miss the mark, they’re not making emotional connections and reaching their full conversion potential. 

Speak directly to your audience by following these tips:

• Photograph people in your target demographic. 
• Show your product in its atmosphere. (Ex: camping gear = in nature)
• However, also include photos of its unexpected applications and atmospheres. (Ex: a portable toy shown in a car or plane).
• Integrate aspects of your brand (Ex: a plant in the background for an environmentally-friendly brand).
• Emphasize your products unique features. 
• Give customers a size comparison, even if its subtle (Ex: your product in hand, by an apple, etc).

3. Keep It Simple

If your lifestyle photos are overcrowded with other accessories or background “noise,” they lack the clarity customers crave. No one likes wading through information, and this includes visual information. So please your customers’ love of ease by keeping your products the focus and minimizing distractions.

4. Play By Amazon’s Rules

While Amazon has fewer rules for lifestyle photos in comparison to main image product photos, there are still rules of which every seller needs to be aware. For example, if your product is in the children’s wear category, you can’t have a picture of a child wearing your clothing. You also can’t include other brand’s products in your photos, or any crude images.

So before you post, make sure to check Amazon’s rules and regulations. This will save you headaches later on. 

5. Kick It Up a Notch With Copy!

If each picture says a thousand words, then your lifestyle photos are saying quite a bit. But are they communicating the messages you want them to, or are you leaving their interpretation up to your customers?

Make sure that everyone who looks at your Amazon listing photos gets the info you want them to by incorporating persuasively-written text. Adding text to your images allows you to control the message, excite your customers, and is a proven way to maximize every pixel of your Amazon real estate. (Not sure how to do this? Let us help!)

A Note on EBC/A+ Content

The significance of lifestyle photos in EBC/A+ Content, and Premium A+ Content cannot be understated. If you choose to register your brand and improve your Amazon ranking through EBC content, having quality, targeted lifestyle photos becomes even more important. 

These photos are the backbone of EBC listings, integrating pivotal context and emotional appeal throughout your entire description. The increased inclusion of lifestyle photos is one of the main reasons A+ content generates greater traffic and conversions. 

Keep Us In the Picture

So there you have it: our tips for selling on Amazon and creating powerful product photography for Amazon. Stay tuned for more photography-related posts in future, and in the meantime, feel free to contact us if you have any questions.

We'd love to help you figure out the missing ingredient that'll take your content and conversions to the next level!