Bag on Timbuk2

The importance of displaying products in eCommerce can’t be emphasized enough, yet sadly, it’s one of the most overlooked aspects of online visual merchandising.

Customers online are separated from the one thing that the brick-and-mortar customer takes advantage of each time she walks into a store – the ability to pick the product up, feel it, open it, snap its snaps and button its buttons. How does it look? What kind of quality is it? How much functionality does it have? How will it look on me? Is it worth the money?

For many buyers and managers, the thought process of how to keep selling the product once it’s placed into inventory stops at the creation of the item #. The same goes even doubly so for products on the web. But we need to be doubly vigilant about how a product is visually represented online for the very reason a customer is removed from being able to make a physical assessment in a store. For some reason, how products look on the web is taken even less seriously than how they would on a shelf. As more and more customers do their shopping online, and the cost of renting in commercial buildings skyrockets, retail companies need to pay attention to how their products look online, and to ensure that all the visual information needed is there to help the customer make a confident, informed decision.

If you are selling a product that doesn’t rely on the emotions or senses as much as just plain necessity, maybe this doesn’t pertain as much to you. But if you are selling apparel, home goods, jewelry or other lifestyle items, you should seriously consider how your products look online. Would you pay $739 for this blurry, moldy looking bag? I know this brand. They make gorgeous bags. You wouldn’t know it from this terrible picture.

Would you pay $739 for this?

The nicer your product is, the more you invest in making sure it looks impressive. What would you, as a customer, want to see?

Here’s the basics for better online product presentation:

1. Hire a good photographer with a professional camera with access to a good studio with proper lighting. You little point-and-shoot won’t cut it here. Make sure your photographer understands product photography and how to fill a frame. Product photography should be big, informative and clear.
2. Hire a designer proficient in Photoshop retouching with knowledge of web graphic optimization. Yes, this is what I do for a living, and I might be biased, but I can guarantee you that a solid Photoshop artist can drastically change the way your products look online, and, if consistent, your entire website. That designer should have expertise in color and tonal corrections, removing backgrounds, creating shadows or reflections, removing flaws, changing colors realistically without destroying textures or shapes, and sharpening images for clarity. They must understand optimizing images for the web at many different sizes. They also must develop a scalable content management system that allows them to keep the images organized.
3. I have a solid merchandising and retail background, but if your designer does not, you need to guide him or her, or make sure you have a merchandising department who can develop standards for how your products will be shown. For instance, a tote bag for my company will have a front shot, back shot, side shot if needed, open shot, detail shots of special features, and sometimes a model shot. Zappos does an excellent job at this. How they merchandise shoes with multiple views indicates they understand how online customers shop. The goal is to help the customer “pick-up” the product and look at it from all angles, as if they were standing in a store.

Bag on Zappos

4. Invest in Zoom software (Adobe Scene 7) or hire a front-end developer who knows how to use jQuery or Javascript to get you some whiz-bang rollovers and lightbox effects for multiple views of your product. Small thumbnails are fine, but what customers want are large images where they can see every detail. So make sure your thumbnails are linked to larger images, and that those large images are high quality. If you can’t afford the Zoom or rollovers, have a section of your product page or link to another page that shows more views of the product.

Product presentation is often skimped on because it doesn’t show an immediate cost benefit like email campaigns, special offers, or home page banners. But think how you shop. Perception is everything. If your products look fantastic online, customers will believe they are. Great product presentation is at its very core good customer service and excellent salesmanship.

Timbukt2's Build Your Own Bag

I love cool new ways to show product online. I can play with this thing for hours, but I gotta work! Timbuk2 clearly has one of the most user-friendly and fun ways to design your own Timbukt2 bag. Go to their website and try it out!

ModCloth logo

I’m a designer by trade, not a marketer, but I come from a sales and merchandising past which requires knowledge about how customers think and react to certain stimuli. This helps me to integrate with the marketing team I work with and helps me design with the customer in mind.

And I am the customer. I absolutely hate (HATE!!!) malls and will only shop places that are clean, spacious, not crammed with crazy people and don’t have a scowling face manning the one open cash register with a line out the door. So I shop thrifts, Marshall’s on their slow time, or I go —more than ever— online.

This mirrors the current trend. As consumers get more comfortable spending money on the net, stores will react by creating attractive and user-friendly web stores, which is an entire blog post in itself. But along with attention being paid to creating highly shop-able web stores, we must also pay attention to the growing trend of destination web stores, where tribes, forums and communities of brand-fans thrive. We need to learn how to make web stores more organic.

Be the Buyer at ModCloth!

A strategy I like is from my latest favorite online clothing and accessory store, Modcloth. Modcloth allows you to set up a detailed profile, RSS subscribe, join on Facebook and Twitter, and leave reviews, which is pretty standard fare (if you don’t think so, it’s time to wake up, Rip Van Winkle!). But its “Be the Buyer” program is unique in that it encourages customers to vote on the merchandise Modcloth should carry. Modcloth will then email the voters about the availability of the product they chose to be placed into production. The static customer is now a dynamic participant. Modcloth has invited their customers to be part of their community.

Name It and Win It!

Another program they have is the Name it and Win it contest. Customers contribute names to Modcloth’s newest additions. The Modcloth brand is young, fun, indie and creative. Much like J.Peterman, copy and product names are used in a lyrical narrative that spurs the imagination and creates excitement about the brand. Modcloth invites its customers to be a part of their brand, not just a static observer, by actively creating cool names for the products they may purchase one day. How many companies invite direct participation in such a fun way?

(Don’t even get me started on their Flickr community where customers post pictures of their wicked cool ModCloth threads! Weee!)

Lots of online marketing strategies start out with a few successful formulas but then fear to deviate becomes a habit. But what worked today may not be sustainable tomorrow. While email blasts, free shipping and deep discounts work now, everyone in retail is doing them, and customers will always expect them. It might even cheapen your brand. What made you so different in the first place? Why should your customers be excited by you? (What makes you think you’re so special, huh?) If customers are going to continue to buy merchandise in the fourth dimension of the internet where they can’t pick it up, touch it, or smell it, we need to think of how to give them other ways to connect to it. Going tribal is one way. Modcloth is doing just that.