E-Commerce Blog

Like so many of you, we shop on-line. Whether we need new toner for our laser printer or a BBQ smoker for the home backyard, shopping online is how we find what we want to buy.

Unfortunately, so many on-line stores make it very difficult to make a purchasing decision. We'll discuss other reasons in future posts, but for now let's focus on my primary disappointment: poor product photographs.

One of the advantages to shopping off-line is the ability to see a product up close and personal. Online shopping strips us of the tactile survey of a product, but there's no reason we cannot get a complete sense of the product through photos.

For small, emerging e-commerce stores, there are a variety of ways to inexpensively increase sales through better product photographs.

Manufacturer Photos

Manufacturers, suppliers and distributors are gradually learning that providing great product photos to their retailers is a low-cost way of helping sell more products. Not enough are realizing this, though, but it seems to be getting better. I consistently find large, multi-national companies that still do not realize the impact of supplying professional photographs.

For the manufacturer, the ability to control the representation of their products should be paramount.

For retailers, check with your manufacturer or distributor. Request the highest resolution photographs available so you have plenty to work with as you re-size and crop them for your use. You can always reduce the size of a photograph and retain the detail and quality, but you can't increase the size of a photo and expect the same.

Professional Photography

I've worked with great product photographers in the past. A skilled, experienced (and the key here is experienced) product photographer can take dirt and make it look delicious. They have the equipment, skill and artistic ability to do wonders for almost any product, from toothpicks to locomotives.

The downside is the cost. Professional photographers usually charge over $100/hour (some much more than that) to shoot your products. Depending on the product you're selling, this might be well worth the investment; if you're starting out in e-commerce and trying to maintain a manageable budget, it might not.

In-house Photography

A nice euphemism for saying "do-it-yourself." Yet, for many, doing your own photographs can be a great last resort.

The key to taking photographs of products is lighting. The more light you use, the better your photos will be as your camera can capture more detail. Increased lighting also allows you to do some creative things with field of depth or the way of keeping, for example, the front of the product in focus while allowing the focus to blur with distance.

There are kits available for setting up and photographing small products, such as jewelry, toys, electronics, etc. However, we've found these kits to be much more restrictive than helpful. The lights are usually low-wattage halogen lights and the "box" into which you place the items in order to diffuse or soften the lights is small. We don't generally recommend these.

When we need to do product shots of handheld electronics, for example, we use a very simple, but effective set-up: a roll-up shade, three clamp-style lights, three fluorescent bulbs, and a tripod.

In our garage, we have a built-in workbench. From the cabinet above, I hung the roll-up shade - the type used on windows. You can buy fairly wide ones at a home improvement store. I would suggest you use as white a shade as you can get. White will blend out well in the background; you can even delete it in a photo-imaging program and replace with with your own color later. Any backdrop will reflect into shiny areas of your product, as well as tint the overall photo; white is a good neutral color. A light-medium gray can also work, but most beginners should stick with white. The shade, when pulled down, laid across the workbench and draped across the front. With enough slack in the shade, it created a very nice seamless backdrop. This means there is no line cutting through the background where the wall meets the floor or table.

You may have to play with various schemes, but the clamp lights should be set to illuminate your product from the front and the back. You can use more than three lights, but these give you a basic three-point lighting scheme. Point one light at your product, approximately 45 degrees above and about 30 degrees to either side of where you camera will be pointing. This is your key light. Take another lamp and place it at about camera level, 30 degrees on the opposite side of the camera and further back than the key or use a lower wattage bulb. This is your fill light and helps to fill in the areas the key light is missing.

The third light should be behind or above the product, preferably about 30 degrees behind the top of the product and about as far up as the key light is in front of the product. This back light will give a bit of a kicker to the product and help define its edges and depth.

I use the highest wattage daylight balanced fluorescent lights I can find at the store. I have been able to find the equivalent of a 150-watt incandescent, which is about 27 watts fluorescent. If you place them close enough to the product, you'll get a good amount of naturally diffused light.

Always try to use a tripod. Even with this amount of light, you want your photos crystal clear.

To be sure, your photos won't look anything like those of a professional photographer, but with some experimentation and patience, they can look quite acceptable. Don't settle for small or missing photos for your products. Take the initiative and get all the photos you can.

If you take your own, take photos of every angle, every detail of the product. Use as many as you can in your on-line store to give people an idea, not only of the overall look of the product, but the details.

Here's a hint that will make a big difference to some: if your product's size, relative to other items, might be hard to determine from a photo of the product alone, include something common in the photo. If your product is portable, show it being held in someone's hand.

You might consider including other objects as well, such as common furniture, to give your customer a much better idea of relative size.

And here's yet another hint worth gold: use photos of people using your products. If you sell teddy bears, include a photo of a child holding your bear. This gives the buyer a sense of relative size and helps to create an emotional connection. Who can resist a smiling child hugging a furry animal?

If you see Web sites with good product photography, let us know. We'll share your findings with others and together we might all learn a thing or two. 

Seems to us that lots of people are seeking new insights to e-commerce. Some are understandably looking for new business opportunities. They sense that creating an online business, especially from their homes, could produce the additional income to buffer the effects of the current recession.

More, it appears, already have an online presence. These established businesses are looking for ways of improving their bottom line. After months and years of floundering, they're scouring the Net for the key that could jolt their sales performance.

Both are admirable objectives. And both are downloading our free "10 Keys to E-commerce Success" guide. We've been both amazed and pleased by the number of people who are downloading this ebook I wrote.

There are many places on the Web to get similar information. Most charge you for their insights. Others present it on Web pages heavily laden with advertising. Maybe it's our loss, but we thought people would like a PDF they could print off and read at their convenience. Apparently, it's a popular choice for many.

As a result, we're beginning to get more people sign up for a free, initial consultation to discuss their e-commerce plans. That's the exciting aspect for us because we love to "talk shop" and help people discover new opportunities to succeed.

Real online e-commerce success doesn't come with cookie-cutter approaches, such as those offered by shopping cart vendors. True success is a process of education, strategy, execution and management.

We try to explain this in our free guide, and when we consult with potential new clients. Based on the response we've received, more and more are realizing the real "key to success" may well be partnering with someone with proven success in e-commerce: Novusweb.

For the past 10 years, my wife and I have operated a million dollar business from the comfort of our home. It's been a joy not having to commute to work, and we've seen our three boys grow up right before our eyes into fine young men. We've had the freedom to set our own hours and determine our fate, good or bad.

But, we didn't start out with that intention: of running a home-based business. In the beginning I considered it a stop gap while I took time to seek out the ideal job opportunity. I had just left a dot-com that lured me to San Diego (fortunate for us) but had been acquired by a company intent on moving the firm to Nashville. Nothing against Nashville - I love country music - but we enjoy living in Southern California.

Once we did make the commitment to grow our own business beyond a part-time endeavor, we set out to operate as if we were a multi-national conglomerate. We set aside a room in our house just for our office. We managed our accounting, sales, and production as professionally as we could, and set normal work hours as well. We got a business-class phone system and computer network. In short, we had all the trappings of business without the office lease and overhead.

However, being your own boss can be a real challenge. No one challenges your decisions. You're the one who writes the pay check to yourself, and in lean months there's no guarantee you'll get paid.

But Cyndi and I would not trade our experience - and success - for anything.

Which is why it saddens me when I see so many scam artists try to take advantage of people who want to enjoy some, if not all, of the benefits we've had as home-based business owners.

A quick search on Google for "home based e-commerce" or "home-based business opportunity" yields pages of results pointing to what are obviously masked "get-rich-quick-schemes." To the uninitiated, inexperienced or desperate seeker, these sites can sound quite enticing.

I'm probably not revealing any deep, dark secrets here when I point out a couple of truisms I've learned from decades of business experience:

• Hard work combined with a passion for success is the best combination.
• Finding someone to mentor you is a very smart pursuit. Find someone who has done what you're trying to do, not someone who is out to charge your "only $29" for some secret guide to riches.
• Never pay anything to anyone for a business opportunity or start-up program until you have the opportunity to speak with someone personally. I have found that speaking to people gives me great insight into their honesty and dedication. No, e-mail does not count as "speaking to someone."
• Know your strengths and your weaknesses before you start so you can appropriately leverage your skills and seek help where you need it.

In short, if you want to create a profitable home-based business, treat it as a business, not a hobby. Hobbies are for those who have passion without income. A successful business is for those who want to passionately make money.

The first thing people often ask me when they find out the business I'm in is "can I really make money online?" The answer is "of course you can, if you know how."

I know that sound a bit disingenious at first blush, but the truth is that it's almost impossible not to make some money online with e-commerce if you understand all the ins and outs. Many are looking for a "get rich quick scheme." There really is no such thing. Success online is very much like success offline: you have to plan your work and work your plan.

But creating a plan for success is not just signing up with a shopping cart provider. Just go to any online service that hosts shopping cart solutions and read postings in their forums. What you'll usually find is post after post of customers lamenting that they're not getting any sales. It's usually not the fault of the shopping cart system they're using; it's that the shopping cart provider is not providing all the training and details necessary to truly know how to profit with an online storefront.

The first thing people often ask me when they find out the business I'm in is "can I really make money online?" The answer is "of course you can, if you know how."

I know that sound a bit disingenious at first blush, but the truth is that it's almost impossible not to make some money online with e-commerce if you understand all the ins and outs. Many are looking for a "get rich quick scheme." There really is no such thing. Success online is very much like success offline: you have to plan your work and work your plan.

But creating a plan for success is not just signing up with a shopping cart provider. Just go to any online service that hosts shopping cart solutions and read postings in their forums. What you'll usually find is post after post of customers lamenting that they're not getting any sales. It's usually not the fault of the shopping cart system they're using; it's that the shopping cart provider is not providing all the training and details necessary to truly know how to profit with an online storefront.

When people do ask me the "secrets" of succeeding online, I could go on for hours explaining all we've learned from our own success in building successful e-commerce storefronts.

So, I created a free guide called the "10 Keys to E-commerce Success." Anyone can download it at no cost or obligation because it's better that people know upfront what all is involved in building a profitable online store. It's not hard to succeed, but it does take an investment of time and energy.

Fortunately, building an online store doesn't have to be expensive or risky. That's the big advantage e-commerce has over traditional retail. However, success does require learning and applying some key principles.

If you're thinking of growing an online business, I invite you to download this e-commerce success guide. And let me know what you think.

We have officially launched our new Web site design for Novusweb. We're now presenting our full E-Commerce Success Program, ESP™, for those wanting build e-commerce, branding or wholesale Web sites that work.

We're so confident we can help people succeed, that we're guaranteeing their success. Who does that? Take a look around, and if you're at all intrigued, download our Free "10 Keys to E-Commerce Success." This guide will give you sound information about what it takes to succeed online, as well as provide some insight into the scope of our program. Did I mention it's free? 

We would love to hear your comments and feedback. No need to be shy about contacting us with any questions, either. 

Best wishes.