5 Photography Tips to Boost Your Etsy Sales
You’ve made a useful, unique, and beautiful product. You put it on Etsy for others to enjoy, expecting to see significant sales. But those sales aren’t as high as you thought they would be. Why not?
Well, the problem isn’t that your product is lacking. It’s that there are millions of sellers on Etsy, all of them competing to be taken notice of and clicked on. Many Etsy stores nowadays are more professional and polished than ever before. But most small business owners don’t have those kinds of resources. So what can you do to stand out in a sea of independent sellers?
One crucial factor is the images you use to show off your product. Because your customer can’t see your product in person, the pictures you upload are all they have to go off of. If those pictures are lackluster, they might skip out on a purchase they might otherwise make. This means that things like good lighting and attention to detail can make or break a sale!
Top 5 Photography Tips to Increase Etsy Sales
If you’re not a skilled photographer, don’t worry. With BeFunky, you can make any basic photo look professional in minutes. All you need is a good understanding of the basics, and we’ll take care of the rest. So here are five valuable photography and editing tips to help you get those Etsy sales off the ground:
1. Capture Every Angle
Because a customer isn’t able to hold your merchandise in their hands and examine it, they need other ways to be able to judge the quality of your products. Checking out the reviews are a great way to do this, but if you’re a newer seller, you may not have many reviews. This is where your visuals come in. Rather than taking a bunch of pictures from your product’s “best” angle, make sure you capture the front, back, sides, and any other relevant perspectives.
You can add up to 10 photos per product on Etsy, but if you don’t want your buyer to have to click through so many slides, you can always use the BeFunky Collage Maker to show off multiple angles in one image. That way, it’s almost like they’re able to turn your product over in their hands.
It’s difficult to trust online sellers, especially when the market is so saturated with cheap goods. Showing your product from all sides is one of the best ways to convince a potential customer that your items are as high-quality as you say they are.
2. Use the Best Possible Lighting
As a small business owner, you’re probably working from home. Your kitchen, bedroom, or office lighting alone can’t capture all the amazing color and detail of your handmade items. More likely than not, it will wash out your products and result in unclear, dull photos.
But none of this means you need to buy any fancy studio lights. It just means you need to wait for the right time to photograph your product! Natural light is your best friend: The sun will do all the work for you. Photograph your Etsy products near windows or even outside for beautiful results.
To use natural light to your advantage, take pictures earlier in the morning or towards sunset, or pick a cloudy day. Bright direct sunlight can be too harsh, wash out your colors, and create unflattering shadows. You should avoid using the flash on your camera for the same reason!
If you’re finding that your photos are still a little too dark or dull, or the colors don’t quite look like they do in person, you can use the BeFunky Photo Editor to edit your images’ brightness, exposure, saturation, and more. You can even use our A.I. Image Enhancer for instant retouching, and adjust the strength for the most accurate picture.
3. Get Up Close and Personal
You’ve worked hard to create a unique product with beautiful craftsmanship. It would be a shame if a potential customer wasn’t able to see all the hard work you put into it. To get a proper sense of all the details and to show off the quality of your work, try getting your camera closer to your product and using the macro setting if it has one. This way, your customer can almost feel the texture and weight of your product.
The premise behind this tip is the same as shooting your product from different angles. If you use photos that feel real and don’t shy away from showing all the detail, a customer is more likely to trust that it’s a high-quality product. Because zooming in or cropping often results in a deterioration of your photograph’s quality, macro shots work better than cropping a bigger image. To bring out your product’s texture in these close-ups, try increasing the contrast just a little in the BeFunky Photo Editor.
4. Set the Scene
Basic product photos, where you lay your items out on a bare surface and photograph them, are professional and necessary. But clicking only through these kinds of images can get boring. If you want your products to stand out on Etsy, consider taking a few photos where your items are being used for their intended purpose. If you’re selling aprons, take a picture of you or a friend cooking. If it’s jewelry, show it off on a wrist or a finger. Lay your handcrafted pillows on a couch with cozy warm lighting to attract a customer’s attention. One of the benefits of selling online instead of in-person is that you can set the stage and show what your product would really look like in a home!
If you don’t want to create a full scene, you can always add decor to your product photos to give them more personality. Try a patterned tablecloth and swaths of flowers, or simply place your raw materials behind the finished product. Try using BeFunky to replace your background with something unique, like a starry sky.
5. Shoot for Scale
One downside to buying and selling on Etsy is that it can be difficult to tell what size an item is from the photos. You can put the dimensions in the description, but these are still difficult to grasp without any point of comparison.
It’s much easier for someone to purchase your product if they can look through the images and immediately tell what size it is. This is another reason why you should show your products in context. Include a hand in the shot. Be your own model for your wearable products. Show what your painting looks like hung up in a living room. If you offer similar products in different sizes, include pictures where you compare them to each other. This way, your customer will never wish they were in a brick-and-mortar store—you gave them all the information they needed to make a confident purchase.
Refine Your Etsy Product Photography
Selling your own work can be daunting, especially in a marketplace that’s as large and varied as Etsy. When sales are slow, it can feel like there’s no way to get them back on the upswing. But some things take time, and giving your storefront a facelift with clean, unique photographs will help speed up the process.
You don’t need to be a professional photographer or editor to create beautiful images that showcase your handmade product. If your photos aren’t turning out the way you want them to, there’s nothing wrong with editing them, as long as you aren’t changing the look of the product itself. Want to improve the lighting, make your colors more accurate, change the background, and fix the cropping? These edits are all simple to achieve with the BeFunky. Just check out the Photo Editor today to get started.
