Make product imagery answer a question
Choose and commission images based on what customers need to understand, rather than on what photographs well.
- Evidence
- Context-dependent. The reasoning is sound and the outcome genuinely depends on your business, your customers and your production. Worth testing rather than adopting wholesale.
- Difficulty
- Depends on systems. Difficulty is an initial editorial assessment of how much work an idea usually takes, not a guaranteed estimate for your systems. A change that is small in one storefront can be significant in another because of where the data lives.
The commercial problem
Product photography is usually commissioned for appearance and consistency. The questions customers actually have are about scale, finish under real light, how a configuration differs from the standard one, and what installation involves. None of those are answered by another angle on a white background.
Why it matters
For configurable and made-to-order products, imagery is often the only representation of a thing that does not exist yet. What it fails to show becomes an assumption, and assumptions surface as returns and disputes.
Where it applies
- Made-to-order and configurable products
- Materials and finishes where appearance varies
- Anything where scale is hard to judge from a product shot
- Products requiring installation or assembly
Suggested implementation
- List the questions customers ask that an image could answer, from real enquiries rather than from a workshop.
- Commission against that list, including the unglamorous shots: an edge, a joint, a size reference, a finish in daylight.
- Write alternative text that carries the same information, because the customer using a screen reader has the same question.
- Where a configuration cannot be photographed, say so plainly rather than showing a near-enough image.
Risks and constraints
- A rendering that is more flattering than the product is a misrepresentation, and for custom work it is the most common one.
- Imagery for every configuration is frequently not affordable. Prioritise by the question, not by coverage.
- Adding images without attention to file size damages performance, which affects every visitor rather than some.
What to measure
- Enquiries and returns citing appearance, scale or finish
- Whether the specific question the image answers still arrives
- Engagement with the unglamorous images relative to the hero shot
How this relates to Specify
Representation of things that cannot be photographed is one of the candidate standard areas named on the excellence strategy page.
Related ideas
Start with evidence
Or start with one of your own enquiries
The complimentary Enquiry Audit takes one real customer enquiry and shows what a structured reading of it produces. It runs on this site and costs nothing.