Three myths about product photography

The advice here is unglamorous, which is probably why it gets skipped. A few things about product photography that get repeated more often than they get checked.

Small percentage changes matter here because they apply to every order, every month. The teams that stay on top of it are the ones who put it on a calendar rather than a wish list.

“It only matters for big sites”

Consistent lighting and background make a catalogue look professional. Where this goes wrong is almost never a lack of knowledge. If it only works because one person remembers to do something, it does not work yet.

“We can deal with it after launch”

Sometimes true, usually expensive. The cost of getting this wrong is rarely visible on the day it happens.

“Our platform handles it”

One excellent photo beats six mediocre angles. Getting it slightly wrong is survivable. Ignoring it entirely is not. Check it against what you would want a competitor's site to get wrong.

How to tell if yours is fine

In e-commerce every friction point has a price attached, and the arithmetic is unusually easy to check. Three things worth confirming about product photography before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Consistent lighting and background make a catalogue look professional — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

If any of that sounds like a description of your current setup, it is fixable.