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Get Personal with Photography

To stand out online, you’ve got to be an original. To increase Web site sales and loyalty these days, you have to provide something no one else does: a unique product or collection of products, a unique price, or a cause that resonates. And you have to showcase it in a unique way. You don’t have to get crazy or reinvent the Internet. Honestly, you just have to be yourself.

What Represents YOU?

What makes you and your business unique? Your customers want to know. Share it online with them with pictures. Here are some ideas:

  • Photos of you and your staff, group and individual, include a sentence or two about each person’s expertise
  • Photos of your store, empty and full of people
  • Photos of your process (how you make things, where you buy your materials, etc)
  • Photos of happy customers with your product
  • Photos that demonstrate quality of life, like buying from environmentally friendly or worker friendly areas

Hiring a Photographer for Your Web Site Project

If you’re using only stock photography or only product images from the wholesaler … chances are you’re not representing yourself well. I have nothing against stock photography — it’s cheap and easy marketing, after all — but it’s really hard to get a consistent, well-branded look when you have lots of photographers’ images and lots of image styles on your Web site. It’s also hard to stand out when hundreds of other companies are are using the same images.

Hiring a photographer seems complicated and expensive, but it doesn’t have to be. They come in all shapes and sizes, so to speak, and there’s surely a professional photographer out there who would fit your annual budget and help you shine online. Here’s how to find a pro:

Warning: Put Down the Digital Camera

Everyone has a digital camera, but very few people are truly photographers. If you decide to have a friend with a fancy digital camera to take the shots, just know that they will probably look just like that — a friend’s amateur snapshots. Unless you’d like your online brand to be “Amateur,” I don’t recommend this shortcut.

On a personal note … I’ve recently partnered with an up-and-coming photographer to put together a tasty online project … it’s launching soon! Sign up for an email alert to be the first to know about it.

Posted by Shelly Bowen on Nov 28, 2008. Filed under Branding, Online Customer Experience / Research

 

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