22 October 2026
In the shop the customer touches, online they can only look. Here is how to take product photos that sell on the product page: background, light, angles and, above all, consistency.
In a physical shop the product speaks for itself. The customer picks it up, turns it over, feels the weight, checks the stitching, tries it on. Online they can do none of that. They can only look. And what they look at is your photos. That is why I always say that in an online shop the product photo is not decoration: it is the shop assistant, the fitting room and the counter all at once. If the photo fails, it does not matter how beautiful your website is.
In short: to sell online, your product photos need a clean background that never changes, soft natural side light, the product filling most of the frame, several views (front, detail, scale or worn) and a size of at least 1,500 pixels. What sells most is not a spectacular photo but a consistent catalogue where every photo looks like it comes from the same shop.
I have already written about Instagram photos that sell for a small shop, and that is a different game: on social media you want to stop the thumb, move people, tell a story. The product page on your website has another job, far humbler and far more important: making the customer understand exactly what will arrive at their door. Real colour, real size, real texture. If the jumper looks burgundy in the photo and arrives maroon, you have a return and a customer who never comes back.
The background is the first thing that gives away a careless shop. A kitchen table, a sofa with cushions, the corner of the stockroom. For the main photo of each product, choose a neutral background (white, light grey, pale wood, linen) and never change it. Amazon, for example, requires a pure white background for the main image of every product, and not on a whim: that way the eye only sees what is for sale.
You do not have to be Amazon, but you do have to be consistent. If you sell handmade ceramics, a raw linen background can be your signature. What cannot happen is mug number one on white, number two on a pine table and number three on the bonnet of a car.
The best light for photographing products is free: a large window, in daylight, without direct sun. Place the product side-on to the window and, on the opposite side, a white card or a sheet of paper to bounce the light and soften the shadows. Turn off the ceiling lights, which mix colours and turn everything yellow. And forget the phone flash, which flattens and burns.
Google, in its product image rules for Merchant Center, asks for the product to fill between 75% and 90% of the image, and recommends photos of 1,500 by 1,500 pixels or more. It also bans watermarks, promotional text such as "free shipping" and logos added on top of the photo. Even if you never advertise on Google Shopping, it is a good yardstick: these are the rules of someone who has seen millions of product pages.
Translated to your shop: the product centred, large, not cut off at the edges, with no text on top and enough resolution for the customer to zoom in and see the weave of the fabric. And every photo in the same ratio, square or 4:5, so your online shop grid does not look like a flea market.
The Baymard Institute, which has spent years studying how real users shop online, found that 42% of people try to work out the size of a product by looking at the photos. Even so, according to its analysis, 37% of websites show no "in scale" image with something or someone as a reference, and 23% show no photo of the product on a person. That is where sales slip away without you noticing. For each product, think of this minimum set:
I have learnt this in nearly thirty years of window displays and shops: a tidy table, with everything at the same height and in the same colour range, sells more than a table with one spectacular piece surrounded by chaos. Online it is the same. A catalogue where every photo has the same light, background, framing and size builds trust, even if no photo is magazine-worthy. The other way round, one gorgeous studio shot next to four phone photos with flash makes everything look improvised.
My practical advice: write yourself a one-page "photo guide". Where the phone goes, at what distance, which background, which views and in what order. That way, when new stock arrives or someone else takes the photos, everything will still look like it comes from the same shop.
Before uploading the photos, three things nobody sees and everybody appreciates. Give each file a name that says what it is ("blue-glaze-ceramic-mug.jpg", not "IMG_4521.jpg"), because Google reads that name. Write the alt text of each image describing the product, which helps people using screen readers and search engines too. And compress: an 8 MB photo makes your product page take forever on a phone. Formats such as WebP weigh very little without losing quality. If you want to know more about what holds an online shop back, I covered it in the post on SEO and conversion mistakes.
Yes. A recent phone, side window light, a neutral background and a tripod or something to hold it steady give you more than enough for an online shop. What matters is repeating the same setup every time so the catalogue stays consistent.
In Merchant Center, Google recommends images of 1,500 by 1,500 pixels or more, with the product filling 75% to 90% of the frame. Always use the same ratio (square or 4:5) and compress the file, for example as WebP, so the page loads quickly.
At least four: the main front view, another from the back or side, a detail and one that shows the size (worn by a person or next to a familiar object). According to the Baymard Institute, 42% of shoppers try to work out size from the photos.
Who's writing
Juan Carlos Barrón
Web designer, event organiser, visual merchandiser, window dresser and retail consultant with 28 years in stores such as Zara, Chanel, Lladró and Galeries Lafayette. Now, from the beautiful Calle Balborraz, at number 14, in Zamora, to the world: in Spanish, English and French.
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