Photography is something that many jewelers angst about all the time. Jewelry photography can be a complete nightmare to do yourself or expensive when you hire a professional. Jewelry photography will make or break the e-commerce sales on your website.
However, today we actually don't care about jewelry photography. Instead we want to talk about other photography on your website, specifically, photos of YOU!
That's right, you... Your smiling face should be somewhere on your website, as well as the rest of your employees'. This personal touch will appeal much more to the local customers that you're hoping will actually walk into your store.
Your photo, and other staff photos, shouldn't be reserved just for your "Meet Our Staff" page either. Sure, that's where they also belong, but why not have photos of you and your staff sprinkled around the website. We're not talking about posed, mall studio type photos either; it's more natural to take candid shots and use those on your site.
As a local retail jewelry store, we feel it's important for you to portray a natural image on your website. Many jewelers use photos of the inside and outside of their store to show what it looks like, but that's pretty boring, and doesn't scream WE'RE GREAT. Instead it screams NO ON SHOPS HERE.
Instead, send your employees out to the sales floor and take a few candid photos the next time a few customers come in. Be careful of photo release laws so avoid taking photos of the customer's face, and especially avoid taking photos when children are in the store.
These candid photos will portray an image of liveliness, rather than just an empty store. Restaurants use this technique in their ads all the time by taking photos of their dining rooms when customers are there eating. On the other hand, banquet halls will frequently use empty room photos in their ads so you can see how big they are.
The photos of your store and employees that you choose for your site have the power to make or break your conversion rates.
Over the years many of our clients have told us they do not want to be in a photo on their own site. Excuses range from "it's a bad hair day," or "I slouch too much," or "I don't like my smile." You probably have a few of your own excuses you could throw in there too. In place of using a real employee photo a few jewelers have actually wanted to buy stock photography.
When it comes to photos of people on your website, stock photography won't convert website visitors as easily as your own amateur, non-posed photo. Thanks to our friends over at marketingexperiments.com we can even share some real conversion statistics with you. About a year ago they tested stock photography against a real photo of the recognized owner of a business.
There was a 34.7% greater response rate on the when the photo of the recognized business owner was used.
A lot of other statistical analysis and testing could be applied to your website photography. But for starters, and the bottom line Golden Nugget for today is to use real photos of you and your staff on your website; and don't limit them to the Staff page.
Notes: Here's the research results we used for this Nugget: http://www.marketingexperiments.com/blog/general/stock-images-tested.html
