Mastering Ecommerce Branding With Product Photography
Ecommerce brand building is no easy task. Clearly communicating your unique selling proposition and keeping your brand voice consistent takes time and thought. Organizing those thoughts and ideas and putting them on paper (or digital) is the first step to building a growing and lasting brand.
Communicate Your Message
Not only is an overall brand guide essential to define elements of your brand, such as fonts or colors, but a product photography style guide should also be a priority when selling online. A product photography style guide will help you drill down to the product-level and communicate what’s important about each product and will carry your brand message through to every product page. It should emphasize your brand voice and help you stay consistent as you add new products and categories to your site, which is key in ecommerce branding.
Having both brand stakeholders (creative directors, brand managers, or ecomm managers) and content creators involved in creating the style guide will ensure no details are missed.
Gabby St. Amand, Director of Studio Operations at Hyperblack, explains, “While a brand may have a specific look they are going for, experienced content creators will know the best and most efficient way to help implement their vision. Collaboration is key!”
What are the key components to a product photography style guide?
Lighting & Background
Product Styling
Product Views
Reference Images
Model Direction
Delivery Specs
Lighting & Background
First off, think about the overall look and feel of your product images. How can they match your brand voice and website? What kind of lighting or background will show off your product best? In most cases it makes sense to keep lighting and background color consistent throughout your website. This helps give your customer a cohesive feel throughout the site and with your brand.
Keep your background fairly basic for your product photos so you don’t compete with the product–whites, grays, and tans work well. Lighting can range from soft to more dramatic–again think about what makes sense for your brand aesthetic and your product. Light that is too dramatic may have shadows that cover product features but lighting that is too soft may not define your product as well.
This lighting and background page in the brand’s style guide, provides both reference images and a good description of the look and feel of the imagery.
If you’re unsure what works for your brand, don’t hesitate to ask for a test shoot from your product photography studio. You should feel confident about the overall direction of your photography before your first shoot.
Styling
Product styling can make a big impact on the overall look and feel of your product photography and is a key component in building your ecommerce brand. Styling can show your customer how to wear or use your product. Everything from styling a shirt unbuttoned to adding water droplets to waterproof fabric.
Think of the big picture first: do you want to convey a casual, laid-back vibe or maybe a very straight and clean look will match your aesthetic better? Once you define the big picture, then start to dial into the details by category. Be as specific as possible to ensure each type of product is styled the way you’d like it and to ensure each shoot is styled consistently.
In this style guide, the brand goes into detail for each product category describing the shape and styling elements that are important to them.
Product Views
Defining the views you’d like by category is a critical piece in building your ecommerce brand. This is where you show your customers the features and angles of your product. Without the ability to hold and touch the product in an ecommerce store, the customer needs content that delivers a similar experience and instills confidence in what they’re buying. In an ideal world, you’ll want to show all angles of your product but if you’re limited by budget, time, or website functionality you can cut out angles that don’t feature anything special–like a blank back view.
Don’t overlook detail views or contextual views. Detail views give you an opportunity to highlight important features of your product, like specialty buttons, hidden pockets, or premium fabrics and materials. Contextual views, like on-model shots or lifestyle shots, help amplify your ecommerce branding, allowing customers to envision themselves with your product and can show scale for things like accessories and jewelry.
The style guide above calls for the most important elements of the bag to be shot; a front view, back view, interior view and on-model view to show scale of the bag.
Reference Images
As you’re building out your brand’s style guide by category and thinking about your product views, styling, and lighting/background direction, you’ll want to provide sample images that your photo team can use as visual references.
If you’re building this out for the first time, this may be inspo shots taken from other sites but as you shoot it’s a good idea to replace those inspo shots with your own ecomm photography. Pick your “gold standards” from each category so the team can replicate them at each shoot. St. Amand notes that “Having both clear visual references, along with an explanation of any important details to look out for, is one of the most important parts of executing a successful product photography shoot.” Remember that you’re working with visual people, speaking to them in their language will more clearly communicate your preferences.
Models
If your product photography includes models, this opens up a whole new section to be defined. It’s important to describe the look you want your models to convey–-their poses, expressions, and overall attitude. You’ll also want to include hair and makeup references if you’ll be showing their faces. The models are the face of your brand so it’s important these things are thought out with all important stakeholders at your company and communicated to the photographer so they can direct the model correctly.
Providing do’s and don’ts and good vs. bad reference images help define your message and give your content creators a greater understanding.
Delivery Specs
Finally, it’s a good idea to include delivery specifications so that you receive assets ready to go online. You don’t want extra work between delivery and upload. Specify your file naming, cropping, and image dimensions to ensure consistent delivery every time. If you’re unsure the requirements you need for your site, ask your dev team the ideal dimensions and resolution. Maintain a consistent file naming structure that will make it easy for you to find images in your product catalog.
Continue To Build & Grow
As you put together your product photography style guide, put as much information as you have now and continue to work on it as you grow and refine your ecommerce branding. Think of your product photography style guide as a living document that evolves with your brand. “As a brand grows and expands, it's extremely important to keep your style guide up to date,” St. Amand explains, “Any time there is a change in direction or a new category is added to a catalog of products, the style guide should be updated to reflect those changes – keeping all hands well-informed to help build your ecommerce brand!”
Putting time and effort into building out a thorough style guide and maintaining it will pay off by avoiding misaligned branding or costly reshoots. With a clear guide, your content creators will strengthen your brand voice and make production efficient and easy.
Looking for a team to help strengthen your brand voice? Reach out to Hyperblack!
