Why image editing is important to e-commerce business

by Delwar Hussain / Last Update: September 16, 2023

Do you have any idea how many e-commerce sites are operating worldwide in 2022?

Globally, 25 million e-commerce sites exist in 2022, and the number is growing daily. However, the largest data analytics company PipeCandy’s researchers found, 12 million e-commerce sites are standard, functional, and operable with shopping cart integration, payment gateway, and accepted bank transactions. According to digital marketing expert Marius Kiniulis, the existing e-commerce sites are 26 million on average and 9.5 million only in the USA (United States of America). The number is big enough to stun your eyes, right? How would you set your blue ocean strategy to be remarkable to your potential customers in that competitive ocean? The first blue ocean strategy for an e-commerce store has to be a professional visual representation to visitors.  To establish this strategy, quality images take the place of playing a vital role in professional visual representation. That is how image editing is important to e-commerce business.

Figure 01. Global growth of e-commerce site by year

[Source: Markinblog.com, a research company for global business, bit.ly/3BvO02u]

Physical stores have a chance to touch and feel any products, but visitors of an e-commerce store have no chance of it. The visitors of an e-commerce business can only view the product’s images, which is the primary influencer in increasing the conversion rate of any visitors. The buying decision of any visitor impactfully depends on how they react to the product’s images. The image’s window is a very fast space to attract visitors. Smart marketers should focus and build their blue ocean strategy on that first space to be remarkable and influence visitors to hit the CTA (Call to Action) button for purchasing their products.  

You have to do image processing for your e-commerce site to take a competitive advantage over market competitors. Because visitors won’t be influenced by the raw image of your products. It will become valueless how much your products are good enough if the images fail to represent them properly. Results will be very simple, you will not be able to sell enough from your e-commerce site, though your products hit the benchmark. It’s high time to understand images are the key elements of your e-commerce branding. You should have to focus on it for growing your ecommerce business.

Top 10 significant reasons why image editing is important to e-commerce business.

1. Quality Improvement:

When a user accesses an e-commerce website, the first thing they see in the picture. Visitors will be eager to pay focus on the items and invest a lot of time if the product photographs show first-rate quality. Images lose good output while they are in their raw form due to human and technological mistakes. Image modification is used in this situation. Product photographs may be improved as needed with expert image editing, such as removing backgrounds, adding shadows, correcting colors, altering the exposure, etc.

2. Nurturing Relationships:

One of several key areas on which any business focuses is developing relationships with its customers. Long-term relationships with clients will naturally increase your sales of goods. Every business needs to satisfy its consumers if it wants to develop long-term relationships with them. It is essential to show product photographs in online shops in a realistic and appealing manner. Using picture retouching, this may be done quickly and accurately.

3. Developing Distinctiveness:

There is no assurance that the products will draw customers if it looks exactly like others in their class. Thus, it is essential to make the items distinctive. With the development of image editing, you can make the desired changes and show a certain product in an incredible and original way. Each item has a unique set of qualities, and it is essential that you emphasize these qualities in your photos so that customers are captivated by your offerings.

4. Customers’ attention:

Those who visit an online store can only view the visual content. Like in a real store or showroom, they are unable to touch, test, or otherwise use it. They make their purchasing selection after looking at the website’s photos, pricing, and brief specifications and descriptions. If the image is appealing, customers inquire about further information, such as costs and specs. They make an order for the goods if they decide they want them.

5. Neglecting the Poor Visuals:

As website visitors, we frequently ignore the website’s poor visuals. Unpolished photos might cause misunderstandings. Even if a product is cost-effective and functional, the consumer may not notice much of its effects due to its low-quality appearance. Even if the consumer finds the item beneficial, there is still a good possibility they will pass it by. Instead, when a picture gets our attention, we tend to pause. Visitors have a tendency to browse through things with a drab and gloomy appearance swiftly. Customers won’t click on a single product as a result, which will eventually result in the web store ceasing to exist.

6. Influence Buying Decision:

Image expresses more than a thousand words to its audience. According to a market research company MarketingCharts, the main component of the purchasing experience is the product image and 87.6% responses turn up by the influence of quality products image. This research presents the impact of images over the potential customer of online  buyers.

7. Developing Professionalism:

An online store’s appearance may be impacted if it has a large number of poor-quality product photos. Users will be more interested in visiting a rival e-commerce site with high-quality images. They will thus get more popularity than the website with a lot of drab and depressing images. A team of experts in picture quality assurance should be responsible for determining if a product may be published on a website to improve recognition and rank.

8. Presenting the Elegancy:

Photos of the items should be gaze and enticing to boost the revenue of fancy products. Buyers of ostentatious and showy goods are mostly concerned with aesthetics. This is why it’s critical to display these items in a vibrant, clear, and sophisticated manner. People typically purchase goods of this type that appeal to them and appear better. Sometimes while purchasing upscale goods, people make rash decisions. Displaying a bright and appealing image of the merchandise is smart to grab shoppers’ attention.

9. Entrepreneurial orientation:

Photo manipulation will help you put your ideas into practice if you want to demonstrate a novel concept in the viewpoint, appearance, or backdrop of a specific product’s image. You may showcase your creative thoughts by doing color correction, exposure balance adjustments, background substitution or removal, adding a shadow, deleting undesirable elements, etc.. Visitors will instantly display interest in something original and novel whenever they see it.

10. Profitability:

Every business that posts product images on an online store has its main objective to produce and increase sales. In contrast to raw pictures, improved graphics have a better chance of attracting visitors’ attention and generating revenue. The likelihood of attracting customers increases with the image acquisition process. This helps a business to outperform rivals and make more money.

What makes a website Responsive?

Statista, a data analytics company, runs a survey on the UNITED STATE of AMERICA (USA) upon who usually buys from several online stores at least once every two weeks. Marketing Charts asked them a question, “In your opinion, what makes a great online shopping experience?”

Figure 02. Element of a great online shopping experience

[Source: Statista, a data analytics company, bit.ly/2MoMOlI ]

In a normal sense, marketer can think other things could be the main ingredient to build an e-commerce site more professional. But the result was a clear product image delivering the best buying experience to its customers in 87.6% cases.

Figure 03. Important elements of the online shopping experience

[Source: MarketingCharts, a market research company, bit.ly/3S7pWJu]

Another global market survey company, Marketing Chart conducted a survey in November 2021 and found quality images of products deliver an impactful influence to the customers during online shopping experience in 61% cases. Now the words have become clear to e-commerce key persons that image editing is important to e-commerce business.

If we try to draw a bottom line from the above discussion. Images are more powerful than written text. The buying decision is guided by quality and influencer photos in an e-commerce marketplace. Photographs or images will give a visual representation of any products. E-commerce sites need to represent their products in detail with impactful images. Processing of an image plays a vital role to make any raw images impactful with its proper details and natural color.