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When your ecommerce business is in its first few years, you may not be bringing in enough revenue yet to invest in professional product photography.

Hiring even an entry-level product photographer can cost as much as $125 per image with more experienced photographers charging up to $1,000 plus per image. Buying your own professional DSLR camera can come with a hefty price tag as well. Quality, semi-professional DSLR cameras range from $500 to $3000, not including the cost of additional lenses.

If your budget is tight, these costs can be hard to swallow. However, not being able to afford the equipment, or not being able to hire a professional, doesn’t mean you’re out of luck when it comes to showcasing your products effectively.

Your smartphone has the capability needed to take quality product photography photos (if you know how to take advantage of the built-in features on your phone’s camera).

In this post, we’ll cover tips and tricks for taking high-quality product photos without the use of expensive or professional equipment.

Make Sure Your Smartphone Camera is Semi-New

If your smartphone was made within the last three to four years, its camera will be able to take great product photos. However, if you’re in the market for a new smartphone and want to make sure the camera is the best it can be for your product images, there are some smartphones whose cameras stand above the rest. Let’s take a look at those.

Best Smartphone Cameras

If you’re willing to pay for the best smartphone camera available, then you should start with the following options.

Google Pixel 3

With a price tag between $500 and $800, this smartphone came out in March of 2019 and has already had buzz around its powerful built-in camera. The camera is most heralded for its night-shooting capabilities which means it is an excellent option if you want to shoot at night or in low light settings.

Huawei P20 Pro

This smartphone was released a year earlier than the Google Pixel 3 (March of 2018), but its camera is a close rival. Similar to the Google Pixel 3, this smartphone is able to take high-quality photos in low light. It boasts three built-in camera lenses and costs $600 to $700.

iPhone XS

The latest version of the iPhone includes the best camera from Apple yet. It’s especially adept at capturing the most realistic and natural colors in photographs, and stabilizing images for minimal blur. Released in fall 2018, it comes with a price tag of $1,000 which makes it one of the most expensive smartphones on the market. For iPhone product photography, you can’t get much better than the XS.

Inexpensive Smartphones With Quality Built-In Cameras

If your priority is to save money on your product photography, then the following options offer good quality smartphone cameras with a significantly lower price tag.

LG G6

Compared to its top competitor the Samsung Galaxy S8, this smartphone camera is much better at taking sharp, focused, and balanced photos. The difference is especially noticeable with bright colors. This phone came out in 2017 and now costs only about $300.

Nokia 7.1

This smartphone’s camera outperformed all other smartphones in its class, making it a great choice for a quality, built-in camera at a low cost. Released in 2018, it now costs about $350.

iPhone 8

Though the iPhone has been through two iterations since the iPhone 8 was released in 2017, there haven’t been significant upgrades to the camera. That means purchasing this slightly older model of iPhone gets you roughly the same camera quality as the latest iPhone XS. At a cost of around $600, this smartphone is $400 less than the XS but still more expensive than many Android phones.

Improve Your Smartphone Photography Quality With a Camera App

No matter what kind of smartphone you have, it’s good to know of the helpful apps that can improve your product photos with a few quick taps. Let’s look at some popular options for doing just that.

Best Photo Apps for Android

Open Camera

Open Camera is designed to help you make full use out of your camera’s functionality, even if it seems to be lacking. It offers additional support for focus, white balance, ISO, and zoom, as well as offering additional grids to center your photos. It’s free to download but has limited editing capabilities.

VSCO

VSCO is a popular (free) camera app for Android that allows you to take photos on your smartphone in the raw format instead of JPEG. You can control shutter speed, white balance, ISO, and focus. In addition, it comes with a mobile editing function and will allow you to add filters and tweak your images in post-production.

Best Photography Apps for iPhone

ProCamera

ProCamera turns your iPhone camera into a DSLR approximate. You can use it to shoot in different formats including raw, TIFF, and HEIF, and you can adjust manual settings like white balance, ISO, and shutter speed. It also comes with an on-screen histogram which can help you be a technical judge of whether or not you have too much exposure in your image as you make edits in post. It costs $5.99 to download.

Camera+ 2

Like VSCO, Camera+ 2 allows you manual control over your smartphone camera settings including white balance, shutter speed, ISO, and focus. It also comes with a few presets for special images like action shots, as well as a built-in editing function so you can get your photos looking just right. It is $2.99 to download.

Gather Other Equipment You’ll Need for Smartphone Product Photography

Unfortunately, even with the highest quality smartphone camera, you can’t just set your product on a table and click. To make up for the slightly lower quality camera than a professional DSLR, you should take the time to build a workable at-home product photography studio.

The good news: it’s not as difficult or expensive as it sounds. You can easily DIY many parts of an at-home product photography studio with household items.

DIY White Backdrop for Product Photography

The simplest way to get a crisp white backdrop for your product photography is to use a clean white sheet. Just attach the top of the sheet to your wall, leaving enough extra fabric at the bottom to run under your product.

Another easy way to achieve a white backdrop without spending much money, is to use a roll of white paper. Rolls can be found at your local craft store or purchased on Amazon. Like the sheet, tape the top of the paper to a wall and leave enough length at the bottom.

DIY Lighting for Product Photography

The least expensive way to get soft, bright light for your product photography is to set up your shoot near a well-lit window. Then, use a clean white shower curtain taped over the window to diffuse the light evenly. In addition, you can enhance or redirect less-than-ideal natural lighting using a reflector made from aluminum foil.

Smartphone Tripod

A tripod for your smartphone is crucial for quality product photography. A tripod keeps your phone camera in the same place for multiple shots to ensure that each image is framed identically. In addition, it drastically reduces the chance for blurred images, since it maintains a completely still position. Most smartphone tripods are relatively inexpensive — ranging from $15 to $40.

Make the Most of Your Smartphone Camera Functionality

Most smartphones include a way to manually adjust the camera settings. However, sometimes these settings can be hard to find or understand. The following tips will help you make the most of your smartphone camera functionality.

Tips for Using Manual Settings With Android

• Look for a “manual mode” or “professional mode” in the mode menu in your camera app.
• If you don’t see the manual mode, swipe up from the bottom of your screen in the camera app. The manual settings may be hidden there.
• Experiment with adjusting the metering, ISO, shutter speed, and white balance to see what works best for your studio light.

Tips for Using Manual Settings With iPhone

• Turn on the grid function in camera settings to frame your photos correctly.
• To change focus, hold down your finger on the screen where you want to focus until the “AE/AF LOCK” symbol appears (which means your focus settings are locked in place).
• To adjust exposure, tap on the screen once for the tiny sun symbol to appear. Drag the sun up to increase exposure and down to decrease exposure.

Make It Work

You don’t have to spend a fortune to get great product photos when you have a top-notch camera right in your pocket. No matter what style you choose, hopefully, these tips have given you the confidence to take amazing product images with your smartphone.

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We recently spoke to two successful dropshipping entrepreneurs. One who started up in the last couple of years, and one who’s been at it for more than a decade.

Their businesses are very different. One sells crickets to lizard owners, the other sells custom promotional gifts to consumers and businesses — but they share three common traits.

1. Dedication to building content for SEO
2. Monitoring and upgrading suppliers
3. Willingness to multitask and wear many hats

Jeff Neal: The Critter Depot

The Critter Depot sells live crickets to reptile owners, who feed them to their pets. Jeff Neal, the owner of the business, says he pulls in about $15,000 a month in sales.

Neal told us he’d been wanting to start an ecommerce business for years. He was looking for an underexploited niche but hadn’t found the right opportunity. He considered selling thermal scopes, meat thermometers, and women’s shoes. Then, he heard the call of crickets.

“The effort required to get first page organic rankings was pretty easy,” Neal says.

Easy, but not quick. Neal says it took about two years for his site to rise up the rankings.

During that time, The Critter Depot was just a side project. He found a supplier and fulfilled some orders, but he didn’t do much more. “I might go months without touching the site,” Neal remembers.

He wrote some articles for his site, but they weren’t that extensive and didn’t help his rankings much. What did help was when Neal started focusing on publicity and getting backlinks.

He began contacting reporters looking to write about unique personal finance stories. “I’m a millennial who sells crickets,” Neal says. “It’s pretty unique.”

Neal subscribes to a service called Help A Reporter Out. It’s a service for journalists who are looking to interview people for articles and blog posts. When Neal sees a request that relates to his experience, he responds and makes himself available for email or phone interviews.

Neal’s story has appeared on the websites of US News & World Report, USA Today, Reader’s Digest, and others. And critically, so do links to The Critter Depot. The link authority of those venerable sites is a quality signal to Google. Each story helps Neal’s site inch further up the rankings, and higher rankings lead to higher sales.

Now Neal puts in 20 to 30 hours of work per week on The Critter Depot. He wakes up at 4 a.m. to answer customer emails and make sure orders are on track. He has held onto his full-time job, so once that’s over, he comes home and spends another hour on the site in the evening.

“I’m really trying to branch it out and make it more informative,” Neal says. “The benefit of the internet is all information — that needs to be the focus of the website.”

Towards that end, Neal hired a zoologist to write in-depth care guides like this one: How to Care for Your Beloved Bearded Dragon.

Neal also says that his increased sales have helped him find better suppliers and better margins. Once he was delivering a consistent number of orders, the bigger commercial growers were willing to fulfill for him. He’s not only getting more orders; he’s profiting more on every one.

He’s bullish about the long-term prospects of the site because the pet industry itself is growing so much. Neal notes that big food brands are expanding into pet food and supplies.

“Maybe someday I can flip it for seven figures,” says Neal.

Michael Lerner: Promos On-Time

Rather than searching for a business idea the way Jeff Neal did, Michael Lerner started his business in an industry he already knew well — selling custom promotional items and personalized gifts.

“I had no idea about the web,” he says.

Lerner launched Promos On-Time in 2006. Back then, with ecommerce in its infancy, Michael didn’t have access to off-the-shelf software or software services like today’s ecommerce entrepreneurs do. 

His startup costs included a few thousand dollars for customer relationship management software, and another $3,000 to $4,000 on a web developer. “Within a week we were getting orders,” Lerner says.

Lerner’s experience in the industry helped him establish relationships with suppliers. “I was able to get favorable pricing, rebates, and other incentives.”

Lerner says the company did $500,000 in revenue in the first year, with their only promotional expense being a small amount of search advertising.

As the ecommerce industry has grown, startup businesses have many more resources than Lerner did. Sales CRMs, web development, and dropshipping can be acquired at the click of a button. But with ease, comes more competition.

“The space is 50 times more crowded than when I got into it,” he says.

Lerner keeps up with the competition by keeping on top of his suppliers.

“Constant monitoring,” he calls it. Lerner says to keep a close eye on suppliers as they grow. “The ones who have grown are the ones you have to watch the most. Inevitably they don’t keep up with inventory or quality.”

He has also identified niches like National Volunteer Week, and Teacher Appreciation Week. “We try to cater to those because there’s not as much competition,” he says. That includes original content to help rank for these terms on Google.

On a typical day, Lerner says he’ll work on many different tasks — from adding products to the site, to editing copy for fresh content, posting to Facebook and Instagram, publishing product copy, analyzing metrics … “You’ve got to wear a lot of hats,” he says.

Lerner also devotes 30 minutes a day looking at other websites to get ideas for what he should be doing on his own.

Starting and Succeeding With Your Own Ecommerce Business

As you plan and grow your ecommerce business, consider the key elements of Neal and Lerner’s success.

Neal offered some simple advice for anyone thinking about starting an ecommerce business: “Learn SEO.”

Why These Entrepreneurs Invest in Search Engine Optimization

Both Neal and Lerner devote considerable attention to identifying and selling products that consumers are searching for online. In Neal’s case, he didn’t even start his business until he found a term that he knew would rank in results. And even then, it took two years of effort to start ranking.

The simple benefit of ranking high in search engines is a consistent, motivated customer base that you don’t have to pay to reach. While offline businesses invest in expensive marketing efforts like trade shows and television advertising, you won’t need to, and you can keep prices lower than your competitors.

Search is one of the main reasons Neal is paying a zoologist to write original guides for the pet owners he markets to. It’s why Lerner targets unique gift-giving events like Volunteer Week rather than try to compete with massive competitors on search terms like “graduation gifts.”

Link building, keyword research, and technical SEO are three key elements of SEO that every prospective ecommerce entrepreneur should understand. (You should also know how your hosting service affects your Google rankings.)

Attracting and Monitoring Supplier Relationships

No dropshipping business can succeed without reliable suppliers who offer competitive wholesale prices. The dropshipping entrepreneur may face a “chicken and egg” problem like Jeff Neal’s. Until he achieved a high volume of orders, the best suppliers wouldn’t do business with him. You may have to accept low or even negative margins as you build your customer base.

Once you have that base, and you get the supplier you want, don’t think that your work is done. As Lerner points out, suppliers who are in demand may see their popularity as a chance to skimp on customer service and product quality. Slip-ups by a supplier can decimate the customer base you built so patiently.

Be Ready to Work!

Dropshipping entrepreneurs don’t have to create or package products, but the time they save ends up being devoted to administrative and marketing tasks.

Both Neal and Lerner have the work ethic and flexibility to dive into many different facets of owning a business. Lerner told us that some of his bigger competitors have more than 100 people responsible for the tasks he handles himself. Some of Lerner’s roles include:

• Site Merchandiser
• Web Content Editor
• Social Media Manager
• Copywriter
• Webmaster
• Data Analyst
• Industry Competition Consultant

Likewise, Neal is up before sunrise every morning to keep Critter Depot on track. He has a full-time job and piles 20 to 30 hours of ecommerce entrepreneurship on top of that.

The trade-off? Unlike the people filling these roles at ecommerce behemoths, entrepreneurs like Lerner and Neal can decide when and how to do these tasks. They have the freedom to experiment and innovate, and if they’re successful, enjoy a full ownership stake that would be far more valuable than their corporate perks.

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To do any job right, you need the right tools, whether you’re building an adult treehouse or optimizing your conversion rates (we’d rather be doing the former too).

But conversion rate optimization (CRO) matters to your marketing ROI. For every $92 spent acquiring customers, only $1 is invested in converting them. So, a substantial chunk of the budget is dedicated to generating leads, while only a small part is used to actually turn those leads into customers. That’s a massive budget discrepancy, which probably explains why only 22% of businesses are satisfied with their conversion rates.

Maximize your CRO budget with CRO tools that will get you the most bang for your buck. Here are a few we recommend for ecommerce marketing strategies and websites.

Usability Testing Tools

If your customers can’t easily read and understand the written and visual elements of your website, product pages, and checkout, they won’t convert. Usability tests examine the basics of your website. Here are some online tools to test the overall usability of these marketing elements.

Readable

Use Readable to increase the readability of your landing page copy, blog posts, or email copy. The service tests your copy for unnecessary words, technical jargon, and passive voice. These bad writing practices stand as verbal barriers between your audience and your content. Readable.io will grade score your copy and indicating trouble areas. You can score your entire website or a single PDF.

GRT Calculator

The Golden Ratio is the mathematically perfect measure of proportion, which gives viewers the most pleasing experience. Since your page layout and text blocks are also visual, you can apply the Golden Ratio to it too. The Golden Ratio Typography (GRT) Calculator is a mouthful, but this tool will have your copy layout matching golden ratio standards in no time. Input your current font type, size, and the GRT Calculator will output the optimal line height and column width to make your copy easier to read.

Five Second Tests

With the free Five Second Test tool, you can create small focus groups of users to see if your website pages are quickly communicating the right messages. Upload a screenshot of the page(s) you want to test, and the service will show them to participants for 5 seconds. Then it will give them a short survey, asking questions like these:

• What’s the purpose of the page?
• What are the main elements you recall?
• Who do you think the intended audience is?
• Did the design/brand appear trustworthy?
• What was your impression of the design?

Five seconds is about the limit for making a first impression with online visitors. Five-second impressions give you valuable feedback to test against your expectations and to make usability adjustments that increase conversions.

Optimize With A/B Testing Tools

Split or A/B testing is a must if you’re going to move the needle on your conversion rate. The main goal of A/B testing is to minimize your marketing guesswork. But just running two versions of a landing page and measuring which converted the best isn’t the end of CRO. Both landing page options could still be sub-optimal versions—it’s just that one is less bad at converting. So, you have to dig deeper. Here are some A/B tools that help you throw out the guesswork and get down to increasing conversions where it matters.

Unbounce

If you’re looking for an entire A/B testing solution, Unbounce will give you plenty of tools and options for testing your marketing strategies. The platform comes with page builder tools for branding and designing your own landing pages, pop-ups, and sticky bars. You can create A/B variants of these assets and make small adjustments to headings, button placements, and forms. Run the tests, then interpret your results. All-in-one platforms like Unbounce are perfect for businesses that don’t have developer resources. With these A/B testing services, you build and test your assets on the platform’s website.

A/B Test Calculator

Even if your A/B test shows your email respondents are converting better with one email over another, that doesn’t mean the results are statistically relevant. The difference could just be random chance. Use the A/B Test Calculator to see if your results are worth doubling down on.

Headline Analyzer

Your page title or blog header tag is the first thing the majority of shoppers will see. So, your headlines need to meet customer expectations. Use the CoSchedule Headline Analyzer to increase the conversion power of your headlines. The analyzer looks at the overall structure, grammar, and readability of your headline. And it even scores the emotional connotations of your titles, suggesting revisions if they fail to excite, delight, or intrigue.

CTA Button Generator

Your call-to-action button is the key to conversion. It literally holds the conversion act up like a flashing neon sign for your customers to see—“Buy Now”, “Subscribe”, and “Get Started.” What your CTA button says, what it looks like, and where it’s placed changes its effectiveness. So, study call-to-action button best practices, then use the CTA Button Generator to customize your A/B versions.

Dive Deep With Data Analytics Tools

Analytics tools underpin your CRO by showing you insights into customer behavior, where traffic is coming from, and what channels are working. Data-driven insights help you find CRO opportunities. The better your data, the more accurate your CRO strategy.

Paid analytics platforms like Glew.io generate detailed reports — and they build them on their own servers, not yours. This way, you won’t slow down your page load times with heavy data processing. Here are some other analytics tool options.

Google Analytics

Use Google Analytics to get conversion metrics like cost per conversion, a total number of sessions, or time-on-page. With Google Analytics, you can drill down into device types to see what browsers or mobile devices aren’t converting well. There’s likely a patch or update that could increase your overall conversion rate for older versions with bugs. You can also create custom reports that locate conversions based on the source of your traffic. From there, you can allocate more resources to those areas or optimize your messaging.

KiSSmetrics

Kissmetrics is a customer engagement platform that analyzes customer data with the goal of increasing conversions. With Kissmetrics you can see all of your customer behavior analytics, audience segmentation, and email campaigns in one place.

Kissmetrics tracks people, not just page views. Google Analytics can also track individual customers. However, it takes some skill and advanced knowledge to pull it off. Although Kissmetrics doesn’t have an A/B testing feature, it can easily integrate with third-party split testing services like Unbounce or Optimizely.

Crazy Egg

If you’re looking for an affordable and effective analytics solution, Crazy Egg is a good option. Crazy Egg is a paid marketing and analytics platform that aims to reduce shopping cart abandonment, maximize registrations, and increase subscriptions. Crazy Egg offers visual reports and heat maps that show where customers are coming from, what they view and use on your site, and suggestions for optimizing conversions. The platform also anonymously tracks individual site visitors so you can dissect their every move. As a bonus, Crazy Egg also has A/B testing features, an easy-to-use page editor, and analytics reports to track results.

Uncover Customer Attitudes With Surveys

Maximizing your conversion rate requires an in-depth understanding of your customers’ attitudes toward your brand and your products. Here are some survey tools that’ll shine some light on your customers’ feelings.

SurveyMonkey

Create customized surveys to send to a variety of audience segments with SurveyMonkey. With a service like Survey Monkey, you can run your own market research and get instant feedback from customers. And you don’t need a developer. Build surveys and track results right on SurveyMonkey’s platform. Create surveys that look at broad metrics like a Net Promoter Score or ask questions about website design.

Google Forms

Google Forms features unlimited surveys and responses. There are many themes to choose from, and you can customize the survey forms, adding images and videos. Google Forms is the only free survey software with skip logic, which is a feature that changes what question or page a respondent sees next based on how they answer the current question.

Skip logic (aka conditional branching) keeps you from overwhelming respondents with irrelevant questions by skipping unneeded sections of your survey for them. This increases the accuracy of your surveys and cuts down on dropout rates.

Improve the Customer Experience With Site Speed Tools

Over half of your store’s visitors will leave your site if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load. Slow page load speeds can kill your bottom line. Make sure you’re meeting customer expectations by testing your site with these speed tools.

GTMetrix

Use GTMetrix website tester and reports to not only find your loads times but identify your biggest speed problems. A GTMetrix test will grade your site and rank your issues from most to least impactful. Plus, the service gives you suggestions on how to fix the problems. Some of the issues are easy for the average store owner to resolve themselves, while others may require developer services. But you’ll at least know where to start when trying to increase your conversion rate.

Pingdom

Pingdom is a monitoring service that keeps critical conversion points like signups, logins, or checkouts working fast. Their free website speed test will grade your page load time and give you optimization suggestions. For a fee, Pingdom will monitor your site 24/7 and notify you of any problems.

The paid service also comes with reporting features that show you speed rates over time, letting you find problem areas quickly and identify the root causes. Use Pingdom to smooth out your website interactions and keep a consistent experience—a prerequisite to converting customers.

Get an All-in-One Service Instead

All of these tools are indispensable to converting more visitors to customers. But instead of buying individual tools, save money and time by investing in a hosting service that comes standard with CRO tools for page load speed monitoring, analytics, and cart abandonment solutions.

Check out our fully managed WooCommerce hosting plans to get started today.

Need a new way to convert visitors, especially those with purchase intent?

Visitor engagement with an online store usually indicates some sort of purchase intent, and the longer and more in-depth the interaction, the more likely it is for the interaction to end in a sale.

Rewarding positive purchase intent is a great way to increase your client’s chance of turning a browser into a buyer.

Here’s an Example

Let’s say a user is visiting your client’s custom toothbrush website for the first time, and you’d like to offer them a discount only after they interact with the website. After all, you don’t want to give every existing customer a discount if they’re already buying from you, and you also probably want to make the discount more exclusive by giving it only to those visitors that engage deeply with the website.

Here’s the Flow

Tools for This Project

Let’s Get Started

Create a Form for the Question You’ll Ask

We’ll be asking the website visitor to answer a question, but in order to do that, we’ll need to create a form to handle the input. In this example, we’ll be asking the prospect for their favorite color. To do that, we’ll use a Ninja Form.

Head over to Ninja Forms and add a new Blank Form. The blank form should look something like this in the Ninja Forms designer.

We’ll need a list of colors for a person to choose from, so select Radio List from the available field types.

Next, we’ll edit the items and titles.

In order to provide our users with a promotion upon completion of the form/question, we’ll want to update the Success Message under the Emails & Actions tab. Finally, publish your new form.

Next, we’ll need to create a message popup that will engage the site visitor (but not an existing customer).

Ahoy does a great job with messaging and integrates directly with Ninja Forms. First, we’ll create a new message within the Ahoy plugin, and enter a title and message headline.

Next, let’s make sure that after a visitor interacts with the message to completion, they don’t see the message anymore. Under “How often should users see this message?,” select “Only once (after user closes the message).”

For this example, we’ll also set the time delay to 0s so that the popup shows immediately on the first visit.

Now it’s time to connect the message to Ninja Forms.

1. We’ll select Ninja Forms as the type of call to action.
2. Enter some text that’s relevant to the question we’re asking (in this case, Choose your favorite color!).
3. Change the auto-close time to 50 (this is how long the window will stay around after the form is submitted).
4. Select the Ninja Form we created in the dropdown for which form do you want to use.

The last thing we need to do is make sure the form only displays if Ahoy detects that the visitor is not an existing customer that has already completed a purchase. To do this, we’ll set the condition to Is Not Customer Has Purchased.

Now it’s time to see our handy work in action!

Message Flow in Production

As you can see, the Ahoy popup will appear by default in the lower right of the page. I’ve themed my popup to match the colors of the site.

First, we ask the user to choose their favorite color. When the user clicks the “Choose your favorite color!” button, they’re presented with the Ninja Form to select their favorite color.

Finally, upon successful completion, they’ll receive a promo code (it will disappear after 50 seconds). Pro tip: Since you’re using Ninja Forms to power the form, you can also opt to have the offer emailed directly to the customer if they provide their email address.

This recipe can be further modified to provide different messaging and offers based on the context of the user’s interaction with the store and their purchase intent.

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In addition to the conversion strategies we’ve outlined here, a great hosting plan can be instrumental to growing your business. Fortunately, Hostdedi has you covered.

Our managed WooCommerce hosting plan is ideal for growing businesses and specially designed to convert more sales.

To learn more about fully managed WooCommerce hosting from Hostdedi, check out our plans to get started today.

This guide will introduce you to the world of social media marketing: what it is, how to use it, and what strategies will help you grow your brand.

Consider this a foot in the door into the world of social media marketing. By the time you’re done, you should have an idea of basic strategies you can incorporate, and what your next step should be.

What is Social Media Marketing?

Social Media Marketing, also known as SMM, is based on a simple idea: use social media to grow your brand.

SMM also refers to sponsored social media advertising. That includes Facebook Business and Instagram Business. With sponsored ads on these platforms, you can reach your target demographic directly.

Maybe you’re wondering, “Why bother with social media when there are other avenues to reach your customers?”

There are two main benefits of SMM: outreach and specificity.

• Social media makes it easier to reach your audience directly, especially as the number of social media users grows. For example, nearly one-quarter of the world’s population is on Facebook, and 81% of millennials check Twitter every day.
• SMM is also highly specific. Thanks to targeting options, you can market directly to your key demographics and audience. Most major social platforms let you select the exact age range and geographic location of people who are shown your ads.

SMM also helps create a level playing field for businesses. As long as you have an account and a clear idea of your audience, you can leverage social media to reach them directly.

Does it work? Of course. 73% of marketers say that SMM has been effective for their businesses. If you want to avoid ending up in the other 27%, you’ll have to know how to approach SMM.

Common Social Media Marketing Tips and Strategies

SMM isn’t like traditional advertising. It’s more active than passive.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t expect similar results if you know how to work social media platforms. Let’s go over some foundational strategies that work.

Start With the Content First

No matter what you do on social media, it all comes back to telling an engaging story. That starts with your content.

Focusing on the strength and quality of the content you share is vital. But if we take this goal as a given, there are still some other characteristics of your content marketing you’ll have to consider:

• Choosing the right content for your target demographics. Different demographics tend to consume content in different ways. For example, 71% of Instagram users are under the age of 35 while those under 25 are more interested in Snapchat.
• Getting a step ahead of your audience with a content calendar. Content marketers who plan their content in advance can take advantage of special holidays and events. Consider using tools like Buffer and Hootsuite to schedule posts in advance. You can use these tools to make sure you launch your most important posts at the ideal times with every platform.
• Encouraging social sharing. WooCommerce features social share tools that make it easy for your customers to spread your message.

Don’t forget your social media profile, either.

You’ll want to remember that every time a user visits your social media profile, they’re interested in your story. What’s going on in your world?

Consider the Instagram profile of Lush Cosmetics which currently has over 4 million followers.

There you see a few elements that tell an interesting story:

• A hook. “Get naked” is a fun play on words for a cosmetic brand, and it immediately draws in your attention.
• Sharing. Lush encourages people to use the #LushLife hashtag. What is a Lush Life? Users can find out by browsing the hashtag, further immersing them in the Lush Cosmetics brand.
• A link. The story continues with a link. In this case, it’s Lush’s link to its LushUSA website.

Short, simple, effective. It doesn’t take very long to make your brand bio an engaging place to visit. It only takes a compelling story.

Reach out to Customers and Engage With Them

If you’re using social media marketing for ecommerce, this tip is specifically for you.

Social media is particularly effective at establishing trust with your customers. A survey found that 49% of people rely on social media influencers when looking for product recommendations. It also showed 71% of people who’ve had a positive experience on social media are more likely to recommend your brand to someone they know.

Success on social media is built on word-of-mouth style marketing. If you can create a good experience for one customer on social media, you can potentially earn a recommendation that goes out to hundreds (even thousands) of their followers.

You don’t necessarily have to bend over backward, either. The numbers suggest that you’ll see a significant increase in customer engagement simply by reaching out. One study found that customer advocacy increased by 25% when a company answered a complaint via social media. Customers also tend to spend as much as 20% more on brands that interact with them on social media.

Remember: social media is a two-way street. It’s not simply a megaphone. The more you encourage interaction amongst your customers and followers, the more likely it is that you’ll humanize your brand.

Get Specific With Your Analytics

As you attract new followers, you’ll have to remember one important quote: What gets measured gets managed.

The good news here is that many of the platforms offer robust analytics when you use them. The key here is to watch out for your KPIs (key performance indicators). What are the variables that you want to improve? Maybe metrics like:

• Engagement rate. It’s not enough to earn impressions; those impressions should motivate people to do something. Divide your engagements (follows, shares, etc.) by your overall impressions to better understand how often your social media content motivates your audience.
• User demographics. Are you hitting your target market, or does your content need adjusting? Look at the age groups of your content views to ensure that you’re hitting the mark.

But what demographics should you be shooting for? And how do the demographics of the different media trend? Before you start, it’s important to know which platforms tend to perform best with which audiences.

The Differences Between the Top Social Media Platforms

Chris Lott’s photograph of the differences between the top social media platforms is funny, but it also explains a lot.

It’s funny, but there’s an underlying point here. The top social media platforms tend to have different audiences and styles. The sort of content you’ll want to share on Twitter is likely different than the content you share on Facebook.

Let’s look more closely at these differences.

Demographics of Instagram

• 59% of all users on the Internet between ages 18 and 29 already use Instagram, according to Pew Research.
• Researchers also found that Instagram is generally more popular with women than men (39% of women respondents versus 30% of men).
• Both higher and lower income users tend to use Instagram, making it equally effective at marketing bargain brands as luxury outlets.

Demographics of Facebook

• Facebook’s demographics are so wide (with 1.47 billion daily average users) that most demographic trends tend to be only slightly different than the general population.
• Visuals like images tend to generate the majority of Facebook’s advertising performance.
• Facebook tends to reach the older range of social media demographics with 62% of Internet users aged 65 and above on Facebook.

Demographics of Twitter

Demographics of Snapchat

Matching Your Content to a Specific Platform

In addition to the demographics of the individual platform’s users, make sure that you pay attention to the particular types of content that perform well with the medium.

Depending on your business and target market, you may find that your brand emphasizes one platform over another. But make sure you’re careful about which you select. Make sure that your goals align with the platform’s demographics and unique outreach abilities.

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Multi-channel marketing has become a dominant model of ecommerce because it lets you meet your audience where they live. But when sales are coming from multiple platforms, it’s hard to know which marketing channels are best at driving conversion. Attribution modeling lets you create a system for assigning conversion value to your sales channels. Normally, this would be complicated, but Google Analytics makes attribution modeling simple.

What Is Attribution Modeling?

Attribution modeling is about assigning a value to each touchpoint in a conversion path. With attribution modeling, you can see how much a channel adds to your bottom line.

Why Attribution Modeling Is Important for Ecommerce

Since many online retailers employ a multi-channel marketing model, attribution modeling has become a critical part of ecommerce. You can learn how customers are finding your site, what their interests are, and how they interact with your site. Once you have a thorough understanding of your customers’ conversion paths, you can better optimize your conversion funnel to boost sales and generate more revenue.

What Is an Attribution Model in Google Analytics?

As defined by Google Analytics, an attribution model is “the rule, or set of rules, that determines how credit for sales and conversions is assigned to touchpoints in conversion paths.” So while attribution modeling is the process of assigning value to touchpoints in conversion paths, an attribution model is the way that value is assigned. In short, attribution modeling is the “what” and an attribution model is the “how.” The attribution models in Google Analytics fall into one of two categories: default attribution models and custom attribution models.

Default Attribution Models

Default Google attribution models are essentially the template models you don’t have to set up manually. Currently, there are seven default attribution models, so whether you’re looking for a single- or multi-channel attribution model, Google Analytics has you covered.

When choosing an attribution model for your ecommerce business, keep in mind how your customers engage with your brand. For instance, if the conversion process takes place over a 9-month period, the attribution model you’d use would be different than if conversion typically takes place over just a few days. Choose the attribution model that’s most consistent with the patterns you see in your conversion data.

Last Interaction Attribution Model

With the last interaction model, the total value of a conversion is attributed to the last touchpoint of a customer’s conversion path. Typically, this model is most appropriate when your marketing and ad materials target your customers at or just before the moment of purchase. In other words, when the time it takes to convert is very short and there are few touchpoints in the conversion path.First Interaction Attribution Model

A first interaction model is the exact opposite of the last interaction model. In this model, the total value of a conversion is assigned to the first touchpoint in a conversion path. The idea is that the first touchpoint would be the audience’s first exposure to the brand. For this reason, first interaction attribution can be an appropriate model for new or niche ecommerce businesses trying to increase brand awareness.

Linear Attribution Model

The linear model of attribution gives equal credit or value to each channel in a conversion path. More often than not, linear attribution is used when there are numerous channels and touchpoints over a long period of time.

Time Decay Attribution Model

With the time decay attribution model, channel value varies according to where a channel occurs in a conversion path. Channels receive less value if they occur early in a conversion path while channel value increases as they get closer to the point of conversion. A prime example would be a temporary promotion; people are more motivated to make purchases when there’s a discount. In turn, the ad campaign that promoted the sale is more valuable for conversion than previous touchpoints.

Position Based Attribution Model

As a hybrid/combination of the first and last interaction attribution models, position based attribution is when the first and last interactions in a conversion path are attributed the most value. For instance, you might divide 80% of a conversion between the first and last interactions, then distribute the remaining 20% between the touchpoints that occur in between. An ecommerce business that values first contact and subsequent presale brand interactions could be a good candidate for this model.

Last Non-Direct Click Model (What Google Analytics Uses by Default)

With a last non-direct click model, the total value of a conversion is assigned to the last interaction that wasn’t direct traffic, meaning a user navigated directly to the ecommerce store instead of going through social media or another channel. This is actually the default model used in most Google Analytics reports by default.

Last Google Ads Click Model

As you might have guessed, the last Google Ads click model assigns the full value of conversion to the last paid ad the customer clicked before buying. Though its applications are narrower than many other attribution models, it’s useful for finding out which of your paid ads are converting the most customers.

Custom Attribution Models

You may find yourself in a situation where none of the default attribution models work for you. That’s where custom Google Analytics attribution models come in. With a custom attribution model, you can take any of the default attribution models and customize it with your own rules. This gives you more control over how conversion value is assigned to your marketing channels.

Data Driven Attribution Model

By default, the data driven model is the baseline attribution model when you begin creating a custom model using the Model Comparison Tool. With the data driven attribution model, there are no rules for assigning value to your customer touchpoints. Instead, the model simply plugs your actual data into its algorithm. The data driven model is unique because it takes into account data from outside your conversion paths, meaning instances where channel interactions did not result in a sale.

The data driven attribution model is most often used when you want to analyze data from multiple sources to determine whether the data is statistically significant.

Google Analytics Attribution Model Comparison Tool Walkthrough

The Attribution Model Comparison Tool in Google Analytics has two important functions. First, you can compare different attribution models and how they affect the value of each marketing channel. You can also use the Model Comparison Tool to create custom attribution models for your business.

So let’s take a look at how to access the Attribution Model Comparison Tool and use some of its core functions.

Requirements

There are three prerequisites to using the Model Comparison Tool. They mostly entail making sure your tags are installed appropriately and that other Google marketing tools you’re using are integrated with Google Analytics.

• Goals or transactions need to be reported in Google Analytics. If you don’t have either goals or transactions set up, there won’t be data available to use for attribution modeling. Ideally, you’ll have both configured.
• You should be using tags for inbound marketing. For this piece, you’ll need to use Google Tag Manager.
• Google AdWords needs to be linked to Google Analytics. The one exception to this would be if you’re not using AdWords or running pay-per-click ad campaigns.

How to Use the Attribution Model Comparison Tool in Google Analytics

From the sidebar in Google Analytics, navigate to Conversions > Attribution > Model Comparison Tool.

When you’ve reached the Model Comparison Tool, what you’ll see is very similar to the screenshot above. There are a number of different things you can do from this dashboard, but let’s start with some of the options you see along the top.

Using the conversion options, you can toggle between your ecommerce conversions, goal conversions, or both. This option is useful for eliminating report data that may not be relevant to you in the moment. Additionally, you can choose the option to only see conversions that came from Google Ads.

The Lookback Window is a setting you can use to set how far back the report should go. You can either use the slide — which will update the number of conversions in real time — or you can manually input a specific number of days prior to a conversion.

There’s an option to choose which type of attribution to use for the reporting. You can choose one (or many) of the seven default reporting options, or you can click Create new custom model to begin creating a custom attribution model.

If you choose two of the default attribution models, the Model Comparison Tool will show conversion data for both. In the screenshot above, you can see an example where Last Interaction and First Interaction attribution models are compared.

Just above the table, you can see options for Primary Dimension. In effect, this is a setting you can use to change which attribute you want to use for reporting. For instance, you can use default channel groupings, custom channel groups, marketing funnel groupings, or one of the other options available. You can even add a secondary dimension.

The Model Comparison Tool gives you the ability to implement conversion segments, too. You have the option to use the default segments or you can create your own segment by clicking Create New Conversion Segment.

Configuring a custom segment is pretty straightforward. For example, you could create a custom segment called First Interaction: Facebook. The purpose of this custom segment would be to expand on the default first interaction attribution model by identifying instances when a Facebook event was the first interaction in a conversion path.

To do so, we selected First Interaction as the attribution model template. Then we began customizing the model by selecting Source as the attribute that the Model Comparison Tool will capture. By selecting Containing and using Facebook as the filter term, we set up the segment to identify when the word “Facebook” appeared in the referring URL or platform name. In other words, “Containing” and “Facebook” filter terms ensure that all Facebook interactions are accounted for in the model.

You can create additional conversion path options using the process described above, or you can simply click Save Segment to save and apply the custom segment.

Why Use the Google Attribution Model Comparison Tool?

As we wrap up our overview of Google Analytics attribution modeling, let’s go over some use cases for the Model Comparison Tool.

The most obvious use case for the Google Analytics Model Comparison Tool would be when you’re unsure of which attribution model to use. In this case, you would use the tool as its name implies which is as a way to compare the different attribution models in Google Analytics. By using the tool to compare attribution models, you’ll be able to see how each attribution model best assigns conversion value to your marketing channels. In turn, you can determine which model assigns value in a way that makes the most sense for your ecommerce business. Similarly, you could use the Model Comparison Tool to compare the attribution model you currently use to other attribution models.

Though the primary purpose of the tool is for comparing attribution models, being able to customize your own attribution model is another prime use case. In a situation where the default attribution models aren’t right for your business, you can use the Model Comparison Tool to modify any of the default models. So instead of having to use a model that’s ineffective for your business, you adapt the default models to your needs.

Attribution modeling is important for most businesses, but it’s especially important for ecommerce. When you have numerous marketing channels that are funneling leads and customers to your online store, you need a way to measure the value that individual channels bring to your business. Not only will the Model Comparison Tool show you which channels are most valuable, it will also show which ones aren’t converting enough leads to warrant the expense of maintaining those channels.

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Facebook is one of the most-trafficked websites on the planet.

Only Google and YouTube see more. With 1.56 billion daily users, Facebook’s user base is impressive, and 31% of the global population are active on the platform at least monthly.

No matter how many customers you have, and no matter how many customers you continue to convert, there’s not a single retailer in the world with the global reach of Facebook.

What if you could tap into even a small fraction of Facebook’s massive user base? What if you could boost sales and in turn, generate more revenue for your online store by bringing your retail business to Facebook’s vast audience?

We’re here to tell you that you can. Here’s how to sell products on Facebook in four easy steps.

How Does Facebook for WooCommerce Work?

It starts with the Facebook tracking pixel. Adding this small but powerful item to your WooCommerce store gives Facebook Business Manager access to your product catalog, and tracks customer data. Once the two platforms are connected, you’ll add your products, put together your catalog, and set up your Facebook shop. Don’t worry — it’s easier than it sounds.

When your store runs on WooCommerce, Facebook integration brings consistency and cohesiveness to your retail experience. Plus, Facebook Business Manager makes this a very simple, painless process; the “work” of the integration is automated. In the end, you are selling products both on your ecommerce site and on your Facebook shop.

Benefits of Combining Facebook and Ecommerce

For ecommerce retailers, there are several benefits to integrating a WooCommerce store with Facebook (beyond adding a new revenue channel).

Wider Reach

Integrating with Facebook is an opportunity to leverage the vast user base. Even if you convert just a fraction of Facebook’s total usership, it can result in substantially higher revenue for your business.

Stronger Customer Relationships

Integrating with Facebook can help you to build stronger customer relationships. Facebook is a platform that is designed, first and foremost, for building relationships. So bringing ecommerce to Facebook is the best of both worlds both for you and your customers.

Better Audience Data

The ability to collect useful, actionable data on the audience makes Facebook a valuable tool for business owners. Imagine having that level of insight about your customers’ shopping behaviors.

How to Sell Products on Facebook

Now that we’ve gone over Facebook integration with WooCommerce, let’s move on to the most important question: How do you integrate Facebook with your WooCommerce store?

Step 1: Install the Facebook Pixel for WooCommerce

Many services offer a tracking pixel, but the most popular one is the Facebook pixel.

The Facebook pixel is very easy to install. Instead of copying and pasting lines of code, Facebook Business Manager generates a WordPress plugin embedded with your unique Facebook pixel.

Connect to WooCommerce

First, use this link to access your own Facebook Business Manager account. The link will take you to the page for connecting your Facebook account to WooCommerce.

Then from the dashboard, click Connect Account either in the upper right-hand or bottom right-hand corner of the window (yes, it appears twice).

Next, choose whether you want to set up Pixel & Website Events or a Catalog. You can set up one or both, then click Next.

From there, you’ll be asked to select a Facebook pixel. An advertising account can only have one Facebook pixel, so if you’ve already created one, you’ll only have one option to select. Then click Continue.

If you haven’t yet created a pixel for your Facebook business account, you’ll need to create it. Facebook provides its own tutorial, but the process is:

1. Go to Business Settings in your Facebook Business Manager account. 
2. Select your business and click Data Sources.
3. Select “Pixels” and click the + Add button. 
4. Name your pixel, provide the URL of the website where your tracking pixel will be used (optional), and click Create.

Once you’ve selected your tracking pixel, you’ll see an option for advanced audience matching. By default, advanced audience matching is turned on, and we recommend leaving it that way. When you’re ready, click Continue.

Next, Facebook will have you download the Facebook pixel extension which you’ll install on your WordPress site as a plugin called Facebook for WooCommerce. Facebook Business Manager even walks you through the process of installing the plugin.

From your WordPress dashboard, click the Plugins tab in the sidebar.

Click the Upload Plugin button, then click Choose File and navigate to the plugin you downloaded from Facebook Business Manager. Then click Install Now.

When you return to Facebook Business Manager, it will verify that it is able to connect to the extension you installed on WordPress. If it doesn’t show as active, return to the Plugins tab in WordPress and confirm the plugin shows as activated. Once it shows as “Active” in Facebook Business Manager, click Continue.

At that point, the process of installing the Facebook pixel on your WooCommerce site is complete. The next step in integrating Facebook with WooCommerce is to begin testing that the pixel is working.

Step 2: Test Your Store

The next step is to do some testing. This is important because if the tracking pixel isn’t tracking correctly, this integration process won’t work the way it should.

After the final step to installing the Facebook pixel, click the Test Events in Events Manager button. You’ll be taken to a page in Facebook Business Manager that asks for the URL to your ecommerce store. Type your “URL” and click Open Window.

This will take you to your ecommerce store. The idea is for you to interact with your store — e.g., navigate between pages, browse your product catalog, submit your contact info in a form, add products to your shopping cart — so Facebook Business Manager can make sure the pixel is tracking these interactions.

Once you’ve tested your site, return to Facebook Business Manager to see whether the pixel is having any trouble tracking engagement. Any tracking events the pixel had trouble tracking will be indicated with an orange icon. If you click to expand the error, it’ll actually show you what you can do to fix it.

Example: As you can see in the screenshot above, adding one of Secret Aardvark’s products to the shopping cart produces an error. According to the explanation for the error, this is happening because Secret Aardvark’s product catalog hasn’t yet been paired with the Facebook pixel (creating a product catalog was one of the two options available at the start of Step 1). So if you were the owner of Secret Aardvark, you could fix this error by pairing your Facebook pixel with your product catalog.

Step 3: Create a Catalog

By this point, you’ve installed the Facebook pixel and tested the pixel to make sure it’s working. The next step is to import your product catalog into Facebook by creating a catalog in Facebook Business Manager.

In Facebook Business Manager, navigate to Settings > Catalogs, then click Create New Catalog.

Under the Product Data Sources tab, click the blue Add Products button.

Since the Facebook tracking pixel is already installed, select the third option called Connect Facebook Pixels. Then click Next.

Adding Metadata to Your Products

As you add products to your catalog, Facebook Business Manager scans them for metadata. Metadata is hidden information associated with the products on your ecommerce store. Though it’s invisible to users and visitors to your store, Facebook Business Manager can scan the metadata to get descriptions, photos, categories, and other key details about your products. Then this metadata is used to populate your catalog automatically, saving you from having to input all those products manually.

There are three main ways to add metadata to products on your ecommerce store. You can either use Open Graph, Schema.org, or a WordPress plugin.

Using either Open Graph and Schema.org requires adding your metadata to the header of your site or to every product page. If you’re not comfortable going that route, a WordPress plugin like Yoast can do much of the heavy lifting for you. But ultimately, any of these would work so choose the one that’s most comfortable for you.

Organizing Your Catalog

When your product metadata is in place, Facebook Business Manager will import products from your ecommerce store for you. From there, we recommend creating product sets to introduce some organization to your catalog. You’ll use product sets to control what products appear in your shop and when they appear, which make for better customer experience.

From your product catalog, locate the + Create Product Set button and click it.

In the Create Product Set window, give the set a name. Then you can start customizing rules for the product set. In the screenshot above, you can see that this “Sauces” product set collects all the hot sauces in Secret Aardvark’s catalog. To achieve this, Secret Aardvark selected Product Type >> is any of these >> “sauces” which encompasses 19 different products. Most importantly, Secret Aardvark can now create a Facebook Ads campaign specifically for hot sauces.

Once you’re done customizing the rules, click Create to finalize your product set.

Step 4: Set up Your Facebook/Instagram Shop

Now you’re ready to set up a shop on Facebook and Instagram. In effect, this step is really what brings your ecommerce to your social media accounts. It’s worth noting, though, that only users in the U.S. can buy from your Facebook shop.

Before you get started, there are a few things you’ll need:

• A Stripe account
• The federal tax ID number for your business
• The address for your business
• A bank account

Since Facebook also owns Instagram, Facebook Business Manager gives you the ability to set up a shop on Facebook, Instagram, or both. We’ll be covering the process for setting up a Facebook shop although the process is largely the same for Instagram.

The first step in creating your Facebook shop is to provide the basic information for your business, including the currency you use, a physical business address (which is necessary even if your retail store is ecommerce only), and a business email. Then click Next.

From there, continue to follow the prompts and connect your bank and Stripe accounts to complete the process. Once you’re finished, your followers will be able to access your Facebook shop under the Shop tab of the Facebook page for your ecommerce business.

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Ready to set up a home photography studio?

If you’ve ever:

1. Tried to coordinate schedules with a photographer
2. Been disappointed by lackluster photos from a manufacturer

It’s time to consider setting up a home photography studio.

Building your home photography studio saves money while letting you take high-quality photos when it’s convenient.

A home studio also gives you creative freedom to pick and choose backgrounds, adjust product placement, and play around with editing.

Before you click over to Amazon or head to a camera store, let’s look at a few things you need to consider as you build your own home photography studio.

General photography studio equipment:

• Camera and tripod
• Lights, light stands, light modifiers or reflectors
• A backdrop and backdrop holder
• Software for editing your photos (and a computer that can run the software)
• External hard drive for saving photos
• Other computer peripherals and accessories
• Cleaning supplies for your equipment

There are also a few other things to consider when pulling together your photography studio setup:

• Do you need to book models?
• What photo props will you need?
• Will you have any on-site location expenses?
• Will you need to invest in any education on how to use your camera, the gear, the editing software?

The price tag on these items varies, which gives you the flexibility to create a home photography studio that fits your needs, vision, and budget.

Let’s take a look at what you’ll need to create a functioning, DIY photography studio for taking product photos.

Budget for Your Vision

When planning your budget around your photography studio setup, it’s important to define how you expect your product photos to drive sales for your ecommerce business. Having a clear vision can help you determine what equipment you’ll need to make that vision a reality.

After you’ve done your research and figured out what you’ll need to take the photos you want, the next step is to pull together a budget. This way you can get an idea of how much operating cash you need right away and how much things really cost, which will help you plan for expenses and prioritize your investments in equipment.

As a rule of thumb, it’s a good idea to make a list of essential items (like your camera, studio space, lighting equipment, etc.) to invest in now, and then save the extra accessories for later.

Choose Your Space

Figuring out what area you’ll use to house your photography studio will influence the equipment you need. To make sure you have the right space, go back to that vision you have for your product photos.

A few questions that may help guide you in the right direction include:

1. What size does your space need to be?
2. Are you photographing your products on models or are you using a tabletop, clothes rack, something else?
3. Is the lighting in your space acceptable?
4. What style of photos do you want?

Be realistic about your options, and consider multiple possibilities (such as a spare room in your house, the basement, or garage.) Or if you have the funds to do so, perhaps it makes sense to invest in a stand-alone structure explicitly built to serve as a home photography studio. If you want to experiment with outdoor product photography, it may be best to build a portable studio that you can easily break down and take with you.

Choosing a photography studio space is an essential initial step because it will help you understand what’s feasible and what types of equipment you need to optimize your shots.

Choose Your Lighting

Choosing the right lighting is up there with using the correct camera settings and editing software. Lighting makes the difference between stylish photos and dull ones. The lighting effect you want will influence the equipment you need.

If you aren’t sure what type of lighting you’re after or what’s practical in your space, do some research to understand the difference between types of lighting. Natural light creates a much different photo effect than studio lighting. Both types have their own pros and cons, and it’ll be up to you to decide what you want for your work.

Natural light can be challenging to shoot in because it’s constantly changing, which can result in your photos looking a bit different from each other. Studio lighting, on the other hand, makes it easier to control the effect without having to adjust the exposure and other settings.

The product you sell may also influence the type of lighting you want or need. If you’re able, test different types of lighting with your product in different scenarios — like your product with a model in natural light versus your product with a plain background in studio light.

Testing different angles, lighting, and image compositions will help you determine what lighting setup will work best for what you’re trying to achieve.

Select Your Backdrops

Different backdrops will impact the look and feel of your photos, just as lighting does.

What style of photography are you envisioning? Does your product call for a simpler background with neutral colors, or would a pop of color or a busy background make your product stand out?

Get creative with your backdrops and try shooting with various product, background, and composition combinations. The types of backdrops you can choose from are not in short supply. You can choose from seamless paper backgrounds to fabric backgrounds like muslin and vinyl. Floor drops are also an option if you’re looking to play around with angles a bit more.

Backdrops range in price but if you’re trying to minimize costs, creating your own backdrops may be the ideal solution. For example, if you’re looking for a stark white background, a simple white bed sheet or a large roll of white paper may do the trick.

The product determines your backdrop and the feeling you’re trying to create for a customer.

Gather Your Gear

Once you have an idea of what you’ll need based on the types of photos you want, you can start shopping for gear.

We recommend you do ample research on everything you’ll need before investing in any particular piece, so you know you’re staying within your budget and buying exactly what you need. From your camera to the lighting fixtures, it’s important to understand the purpose of each piece of equipment and how it fits into your vision before you whip out your credit card.

There are tons of free resources online that can help you determine exactly what products you’ll need to create the photos you want. Start with one item at a time, and learn all you can about which will be best for you and your vision.

It may be helpful to look at multiple resources or ask fellow business owners who take their own photos what they’ve done and what they wish they’d bought (or didn’t buy) initially.

If you aren’t sure where to begin on your gear search, local, independent camera stores are a terrific resource. Their employees are very knowledgeable, and many are photographers themselves. They can help guide you and explain the nuances between camera models, flash functions, and editing software. Often local stores also rent equipment, so you can get the look you want for much, much less.

Keep your checklist handy, but remember, you might not need everything on the list — especially at first. Over time, as you become more familiar with taking product photos and building up your home photography studio, you can add gear. One of the perks of having your own photography studio is the ability to be flexible with your photos based on what you can afford at the time.

Do What’s Best for Your Business

Remember, a home photography studio is an investment you’re making in a business that allows you creative freedom and agility to launch new products quickly. It’ll require some up-front work and a bit of an investment, but it’ll help you stay flexible and introduce new products as the business grows.

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Looking for a way to easily create an amazing landing page that converts? To explore this question, we laid out nine critical elements to make a landing page successful.

Keep reading to learn how to build a landing page that converts.

Let’s get started.

9 Key Elements Every Landing Page that Converts Needs to Have

There are nine key elements you need to have on every single landing page that you create.

1. A Headline They Care About

If you are building a landing page and do not include a headline, you are missing out. The headline is the first message that people read.

Now, a headline is not a product that you are selling.

A headline is an enticing string of text originally found on an ad that is intended to attract a specific audience, hopefully, enough to keep reading and eventually take some sort of action. The key word here is enticing.

They read it and – boom – they are ready to read more! You might say something like “Stop paying for landing page software.” They then click or navigate to your intended location (the landing page) and the headline should be “Stop paying for landing page software.”

When people read the same text in the headline on the landing page, people make the connection and know that they are in the right place.

It is the eye-catching or reinforced message that you used to bring people from various locations to the landing page.

Seattle’s iconic Space Needle recently underwent a remodel to remove structural objects that got in the way of visitors’ Instagram shots. Now, tourists looking to buy tickets are greeted by this headline that emphasizes the new look—and the amazing views that have always made the Space Needle a top attraction.

What holds people back from finally getting organized? Evernote, the note-taking and organization app, understand that’s it’s simply the fear of how hard the task will be. Their headline tackled that fear head-on. This is exactly the message that people trying to get organized will want to hear. It confirms that their goal will be met, and alleviates their biggest concern about getting it done.

2. The Problem(s) They Have

Next, hit the audience with the problem you are solving for them. It doesn’t have to be one problem; it could be two or even three problems you are solving.

Now, many of you will jump to selling or talking about your solution (your product). If you haven’t qualified the problems you are trying to solve, you haven’t built the relationship yet to a place where you can present a solution.

First – articulate the problem.

We all know what bad project management does to a person. The popular project management platform Basecamp shows us, with this cheeky illustration of a panicked office worker. Anyone swamped under relentless demands by modern business life will immediately relate.

Nauto, a driver safety system, uses statistics to confirm to potential customers how big of a problem distracted driving is. You can imagine a fleet manager realizing that, based on these stats, the problem is actually much worse than they thought. And the statistics hit both the emotions and the practical sides of the brain by mentioning fatalities and overall cost.

3. The Benefit(s) You Can Provide

This is where you can start talking about their pain points, which are the real reason why they navigated to this page in the first place. First, talk about the pain, and then you can talk about the gain.

No pain, no gain right?

Barefoot Buttons specializes in a pretty niche product — customized buttons that get added on to guitar pedals and similar musical accessories to “increase comfort and accuracy”. But if you’re in their target audience and you’re fed up with your current effects pedals, they put their product front and center to show you what an alternative could look like. Then, they reiterate why you’ll love it with a short introductory sentence.

Aloompa provides technology for events professionals—think big gatherings like marathons and state fairs. Their homepage clearly defines the products that they offer—mobile app, web embeds, location intelligence, and live stream. A direct access point to the offerings of their business cuts out the guesswork for a customer base that’s typically working on tight deadlines.

Next, show them a different route that they can begin to take… with your solution. It’s time to talk about your product(s).

4. The Solution You Have

Finally! Introduce them to the reason that you brought them to the landing page in the first place. Make sure you highlight exactly how the solution you are providing ties to the pain points you just mentioned.

The Hidden Grounds, a coffee bean retailer, does a good job of reminding people how disastrous it is to run out of coffee. Then, they connect that thought to the solution—their subscription.

The web automation solution Zapier sells is more of a tool than a product. The simple, direct message on their landing page explains very clearly what that tool can do. For their audience of busy, tech-savvy professionals, the direct approach is very effective.

But leads aren’t going to just take your word for it. They need social proof that your solution works and works well.

5. Provide Social Proof

One of the most common forms of social proof is testimonials. Testimonials are highlights of why your product is amazing written by other people similar to your target audience.

With social proof, people plainly see, “Hey, listen to all of these other people say how awesome this product is.” Pull reviews from your site, or if you are listed on Amazon, you can pull from there. Find ways to illustrate to your audience that people just like them are in love with your product.

GameTextures.com sells digital design assets to video game designers so they can build new games faster. This case study highlights stunning customer designs and shows how they made them—with patterns sold by GameTextures.

You can always say a customer is happy but isn’t it better to show a customer who’s happy? Hubspot puts their ecstatic customers front and center on a case studies page that isn’t just academic—the page includes a very clear call to action.

Once you cover social proof, show the audience how you are credible.

6. Provide Credibility

When people are wondering whether you are credible, they will wonder, “Why should I trust you for this solution?”

If this same solution, or something very similar, is offered by ten different retailers or online stores, the potential customer will hesitate. They will wonder why they should choose your product instead of the others.

Give them clear and compelling reasons why you and your product stand out.

How do you get customers to trust you? By latching onto feelings of trust they already have. Hootsuite gives potential customers a powerful message by highlighting the big companies who use their product. Further down their homepage, they also note a recommendation from Forrester, a respected market research company.

Magnatiles are a hot commodity for kids these days, and the company does a good job of reminding you on their homepage. Features like a store locator highlighting all of the stores near you that carry their products, and a call out section for their featured stories in publications like Business Insider make it clear their toys are highly sought after.

7. Pricing

Yes, hit them up-front with pricing. Don’t make the audience dig through your site to find the pricing for your product, because most likely they will instead navigate to another landing page for a competitor that has their information more clearly displayed.

Make it easy for them to eliminate all potential barriers to purchase so that they can be ready to purchase your product immediately.

If the product is expensive, hiding the pricing until the end of the transaction will only frustrate them. You want to be as helpful as possible.

If you have multiple options for pricing, make sure to list that on the landing page as well.

The popular email marketing platform Mailchimp lets you estimate the cost of their product based on the number of subscribers you have.

Bearded Colonel specializes in high-end shaving equipment, but they address pricing concerns right on their homepage tagline: “Top of the line razors. Delivered for a fair price.” This language is reiterated throughout the site, highlighted in the footer and in their features section on the homepage.

8. Call to Action (also known as a CTA)

The call to action is the specific behavior that you are driving the lead to take after reading the landing page.

Only include one call to action on the landing page for the best results.

Yes, it is tempting to try and sell more than one product, sell add-ons, or build your email list.

But it isn’t effective for landing pages to have more than one CTA.

When you are building your landing page, decide this up front. Let this CTA direct the content for your entire page, as this will also be the way you determine how well your landing page performs.

Include the call to action several places on the landing page, so that at any point during their journey on your page, they can decide to purchase without hesitation.

It’s tempting to click around Adoboloco’s site just to see all the beautiful hot sauce bottles. But the company makes their offer clear on the homepage.

“Build A Primo 3 Pack” pushes users towards ordering a 3 pack of hot sauce bottles, where many might have just ordered 1 or 2. For a product with moderate shipping weight and cost, this call to action likely pushes their average order value much higher than a call to action like “Shop Now” or “Find Your Bottle.”

Winc, a wine subscription service, wants to build a relationship with customers rather than compel a one-time impulse buy. So their CTAs, while very bold, are light on the sales pitch. Instead, they draw you into an experience.

9. Include Objection Mitigators

Objection mitigators are the questions that the audience already has running through their head by the time that they have hit this point on the landing page. These are the primary reasons they may end up leaving the page without purchasing your solution or product.

You want to step into that conversation and address these up front so that they can make an informed decision without having to search elsewhere.

Talk to your sales team to find out what the top questions being asked are, and include them on your landing page. These may also be located on your FAQ page.

BetterBody Foods specializes in health food—their target customers care deeply about what’s going in their bodies. BetterBody makes sure to address those concerns clearly on their homepage, covering common food concerns like GMOs, Gluten, Dairy, Soy, and more through the rest of the page.

On their pricing page—typically fertile ground for conversions—the data platform MonsterInsights emphasizes their money-back guarantee. You’d figure anyone on a pricing page is sensitive to cost, and the guarantee helps overcome that objection. Other potential objections are addressed in the FAQs further down the page.

Building a Landing Page that Converts

As you build your next landing page, make sure you have all nine elements present to convert as many leads to sales as possible.

1. A headline they care about
2. The problem(s) they have
3. The benefit(s) you can provide
4. The solution(s) you have
5. Social proof from a similar audience
6. Provide credibility
7. Pricing for your product(s)
8. One CTA placed throughout the page
9. Objection mitigators to close the sale

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No matter how well your ecommerce store functions or how in demand your product is, unprofessional product images will undoubtedly undermine your credibility.

Humans are visual beings. In fact, a majority of the information we retain is strictly visual which means that when your customers make the decision to buy (or not buy) from you, it’s probably based more on your product photography than you’d think.

Images that are slightly blurred, have noticeable flaws, or display odd coloration, can make your ecommerce store seem amateur and your products seem cheap. On the flipside, product images that are consistently high quality help you achieve a site-wide standard of professionalism that will set your store apart from the rest.

So if you’re not a professional photographer, how can you ensure that your product images are always top notch?

Through basic post-production editing using Adobe Photoshop.

In this post, we’ll walk you through five photo editing tips for how to make photos look professional in Photoshop.

How to Retouch Photos in Photoshop

Knowing the basics of how to retouch photos is key for flawless product photography, especially if you’re using models. Retouching can even out skin tone and eliminate blemishes.

There are many different ways to retouch in Photoshop. Here’s one technique that’s ideal for beginners and includes how to use the spot healing brush for touch-ups. Just keep in mind that images will need to be shot in camera raw (not JPEG). Raw files can be converted to JPEGs after editing, but you can’t convert a JPEG file into a true raw file.

1. Open your image in camera raw. Camera raw is a plug-in for Adobe Photoshop that allows you to edit the raw, uncompressed image. Once your image is in camera raw, reduce the contrast to make the image appear slightly “flatter” and easier to retouch.
2. Now, open your edited image in Photoshop by clicking the “Open Object” button at the bottom of your screen.
3. Select the “Spot Healing Brush Tool” from the left side menu and use it to brush over small blemishes and discolorations on the model’s face or body.
4. To further smooth out skin tone, click “Select” and choose “Skin Tones.” Check the “Detect Face” box and increase the “Fuzziness” of the image. This blurs out the face just slightly for a smoother appearance.
5. Choose the “Brush Tool” in color black and run it over the areas of the face that should not be blurred like lips, eyes, and eyebrows. This way, your image still looks natural.
6. Finally, adjust the saturation of the image to invite more color and contrast back in to the image.

How to Color Correct in Photoshop

Color correcting, or adjusting the white balance, in a photo means that you are changing the colors in a photo to best represent how the subject and environment looked in real life.

Here’s how to color correct in Photoshop:

Click on the “Curves Adjustment Layer” at the bottom of your screen and choose “Curves” from the pop-up menu.

You should see three small eyedroppers, one in white, one in gray, and one in black. In theory, these eyedroppers are used to make white colors whiter, gray colors grayer, and black colors blacker. It’s easiest to color correct your entire image by just using the gray eyedropper (in the middle).

Use the gray eyedropper to sample anywhere in your image where the color is gray. This should adjust the color for your entire image, and bring it closer to the real-life color.

There are more advanced techniques for achieving optimal color in your images. If you want to learn more about this topic, Tutvid offers a video tutorial.

How to Remove a Background in Photoshop for a Transparent or Pure White Background

Understanding how to edit your photos so that they have a pure white background is crucial for product photography. That’s because you’ll likely be placing your images on a white webpage.

Even if you take photos with your products against a white backdrop, you still want to edit to ensure that it’s pure white. Most of the time, white cloth backdrops are not the same pure white as a white webpage. The slight discoloration will show up as a dingy, off-white rectangular border around your image.

The best way to achieve a seamless flow between your image and your store’s white background is to swap the image background for a transparent background or, if desired, replace it with a pure white background.

1. With your image ready to go in Photoshop, open the “Layers Palette.” Your entire original photo is your first layer, but ultimately, the only part that will remain visible is the subject of the photo. It can be helpful to rename this layer by the subject (the product name) of the photo.
2. Create a second layer and drag it underneath the first layer. Fill it with a bright color to make it easy to see where the original background is removed.
3. Click back to your first layer and select “Background Eraser Tool” from the left side menu.
4. If the background is a single color, check the “Once” sample box at the top of the window. This tells the tool that there is only one specific color it should aim to remove while leaving the colors and tones of your product untouched.
5. Experiment with the “Tolerance” settings to find a balance that works for your image. The Tolerance determines how broad the eraser tool is when removing background.
6. Left click on the background and hold and drag the tool around the background, including those bordering the subject of the photo. The background of your original image should be transforming into the bright color of your second layer.
7. When most of the background has been erased, select the “Eraser” tool from the left side menu and use it to clean up any small missed spots. It’s helpful to zoom in to get a closer look at this stage.
8. Finally, you can either change the color of the second layer to white (or the color of your ecommerce store background if it’s not white), or deselect the second layer entirely which gives you a transparent background.

How to Resize Photos for Web Use

The images you take with your camera must be resized for web use and are usually made significantly smaller.

Your customers don’t want to scroll through a huge photo that takes up their entire monitor. Additionally, large photos can decrease your store loading speed. That’s bad news for sales, because 40 percent of people will abandon a website if it takes more than just three seconds to load.

Here’s how to resize photos for web use:

1. Select the “Image” tab at the top of your Photoshop window. Then, select “Image Size” from the dropdown menu.
2. Check the “Bicubic Sharper” box at the very bottom of the pop-up window. This ensures that your image remains sharp even when you reduce its size.
3. Look for the “Pixel Dimensions” box. A good rule of thumb is to change the pixels of either the height or width of your image to 700, and the other dimension will adjust automatically to maintain the same ratio. This makes your image an appropriate size for web viewing, though for product pages, you may even want to go smaller.

How to Sharpen Images Using the “Unsharp Mask” Tool in Photoshop

Sharpening your image is the very last thing you should do in your editing process.

1. Zoom in on your image to 100 percent and select the “Filter” tab at the top of your screen.
2. Select “Sharpen” and then “Unsharp Mask.”
3. You should see three options to adjust: “Amount,” “Radius,” and “Threshold.” The “Amount” affects how much of your image you want to sharpen. “Radius” affects how sharp you want your image. “Threshold” affects how many individual pixels are sharpened. You can experiment with adjusting all three to see how they look on your image.
4. Test how the final result looks by zooming back out to 50 percent.

Good Editing Increases the Professionalism of Your Ecommerce Store

Even the most experienced photographers edit their photos to make them look even better. The difference between an amateur photo and a professional photo often lies in the editing process. Hopefully, these five photo editing tips will be all you need to learn how to edit your product photography images effectively, starting today.

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