Now, firstly, you might be wondering, "Why do you even need to take your own photos?" The vendor that you're using or the supplier, I'm sure they've given you some photos of your products and maybe you can just use those for your website. But having your own imagery will really set you apart from all your competitors, really step up your website and your store in a way that separates you from everyone else. Having your own flavor, feel, and style about your images can really give people an understanding of you as a brand, and it can help to separate you and hopefully draw more customers into your store.
When people are scrolling through websites and they're scrolling through your store, you don't want them to just skip past your images and ignore them because they look like everyone else's. You want your images to really stand out and you want people to be clicking on your store, checking out your products, and obviously buying your products as opposed to someone else's. Now, product photography doesn't need to be a scary, expensive, and daunting task. Yes, you can outsource your work to professional photographers like myself.
But after understanding the fundamentals and the basics, and obviously, with a little bit of practice, you're going to be able to take your own beautiful photos for your website and your brand, and you're going to save yourself a significant amount of money. I'm going to be going over these details a little bit more throughout this course, but I just want to give you now a couple of examples and reasons as to why it's really, really important for you to be taking your own photos. By having consistent photography and a consistent feel in your images, you can make two different products that you're selling on your website feel like they belong together. For example, maybe a shoe and a pepper grinder.
If you're selling both of these products, but your type of photography and the style is similar, you can make these products look like they kind of belong together. And this is also really important for your brand identity, that the theme and feel of your store flow over to your website, your social media, and everything else feels consistent. But we'll get into that a little bit later. The photos your vendor or your supplier provides you, they might be great photos, but there's a very good reason you shouldn't be using those.
Everyone else who uses the same vendor or the same supplier as you is going to be using the same images as you. You want your brand to stand out. You want your photos to jump out at people when they're scrolling through your store and you want to be noticed. You don't want to be lost amongst the crowd. When you take your own photos, you can add your own feel, flavor, and style, and really bring your brand into those photos and give customers a sense of feeling about who you are as a brand. This is really, really important as it helps to strengthen the trust between the consumer and you. I'm going to show you a couple of examples right now.
Let's jump on the computer. Lots of stores use the same images. Let's take AliExpress or eBay for example. Scrolling through the website, you can see that there are tons and tons of people using the same images for the same products. Now, at this point, it doesn't come down to how good the product is. People's minds immediately go, "Okay, everything looks the same. I'm going to just try and find the cheapest supplier." Instead of competing with everyone else for the lowest price, having your own images on your store can really bring a sense of quality and customers are going to know that.
They're going to see your products and they're going to have a higher perceived value of it because of the time and effort that has gone into your store. Taking your own images also allows you the ability to showcase your product however you want in the most amount of detail. This allows you to highlight the little intricate details and little elements that sometimes people might want to see. A lot of people, including myself, when I go to a website, I'm scrolling through and when I pick the product that I'm looking at, I really want to just quickly look at the products and understand it well.
I don't want to have to read the description, I want to know what parts it has, and if it will work for me. By taking your own photos, you can show this to your customer very quickly, and it will really enhance their shopping experience by providing them everything they could possibly want. Let's take my phone for example. Now, hopefully, your case looks much nicer than mine does. This one is pretty scratched up and destroyed.
But let's say that you were shooting a brand new version of this. For this phone case, you can see there are a couple of different lines on it just here, a little bit of a shape, things like that. But the important thing on this is the little stand for it. By taking your own photos, maybe you can show how this stand works, how the clip works, how it holds in, maybe the angles that sit out on the table, all kinds of different things like that.
And they can be really important to show to your customers to give them a good understanding of exactly how the product will be when they receive it. I'm sure you know, but there's nothing worse than receiving a product that's not what you expected or it doesn't do the job that you thought it would. With your own photos, you can focus on the lines, shapes, colors, and textures of your product. We're going to get into this a little bit more when we talk about the editing and colors as well.
Similarly to my phone case with that little kickstand, it's a really awesome way for you to be able to show off your product in ways that might not be obvious as to how it works. You want to ensure that your customers are happy, they know what they're getting, and when it arrives at their house, it's exactly what they were expecting. This way, it's much more hassle-free for you and your customers are going to be much happier. Now, here's a section I want you to try at home, your office, wherever you are.
Let's just grab a typical item that you have laying around on your desk or home, wherever you're watching this. Whether it's your keys, or your wallet, or something like that, let's grab that. Now, I want you to try and take some photos just on your phone, or if you have your camera with you, you can use that too. And just take a couple of photos of the key elements and maybe the key points or the features of that product that you have in front of you. For this section, it doesn't matter the quality of these images or what you're taking a photo of.
I just want to give you a bit of an example of what we're trying to do. For this exercise, there's no right or wrong way to do this. I want you to just turn on your customer brain and try and take some photos of the things that you think a customer would be interested in if they were shopping for that product. Now, you don't need to share these photos, put them anywhere, I obviously can't see them. These are just for you to give you an understanding of what we're talking about and just to get your brain thinking.
We're going to take some more photos as we go throughout this, but if you want to take some time to take these photos right now, you can hit pause. I'll be waiting right here for you.
