Ecom Tip: ALWAYS Provide Product Images in Scale!

Aleksandar Nikoloski | Oct 28, 2021

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Hey, how’s it going? Alex here from Build Grow Scale. I’m a Revenue Optimization™ expert and I help ecommerce businesses grow and scale through optimizing their store. And in this training, we’re gonna talk about why you should provide your visitors and your customers with product images in scale. OK? Let’s get into it.

Now, before I get started with this video, as a quick side note, I already recorded a video a couple weeks ago with the five product image types that you must have on your product pages if you want to have a lot more money. And in that video, I talk about this topic as well. However, in this video, we’re gonna go a little bit deeper. But anyway, make sure you check out that video as well—I’ll put the link in the description below. And with that being said, let’s get started!

Let me ask you … Have you ever shopped online looking for some product to buy and you had no idea what the product size was (like the relative size of the product you’re looking to buy)? Have you ever done that before? I certainly have, and it gets me super frustrated when I can’t do that. The reason for that is because that specific store or that specific product page did not have product images in scale. When I say “in scale,” I mean product images of the product in context, next to other products from the environment, or other products that we know the relative size of so that we can conclude what the relative size is of the product that we’re trying to buy. For example, let’s say you’re trying to buy a sports water bottle, and you only see the product cutout image. It will be very difficult to determine the size of that bottle. When I say “product cutout image,” I mean only the bottle on a white background. Nothing around it or behind it or whatever, right? It’s like a floating product in white space. That’s what I mean by cutout image. And it’s very hard to decide what the actual size of this bottle is. I mean, you can see the dimensions of the bottle in the picture, but that doesn’t really help. People are generally not that good at visualizing dimensions. How big something is, how long the size, the weight … It’s very hard to visualize three ounces, or six inches. So, that’s why we need to have product images in scale.

The main reason for using them, again, is so that we can determine the relative size of the product that we’re trying to buy.

Alright, let me show you a few examples to demonstrate what I’m talking about. Now, if you look at my screen here and look at this BreathRox tube, it looks pretty big, pretty big in size. And if you look at the dimensions here, net weight 0.34 ounces/10 grams, that’s very hard to visualize, and most people won’t even see this. But, looking at this image, most people will determine, or will “attempt to” determine, the size of the product based on the images. And they generally don’t want to read product descriptions with long product specifications. Like, look at this: Who wants to read this? Anyway, this is a wall of text, right? People generally try to rely on product images and it’s very hard to visualize, it’s very hard to determine this because there’s no product image and scale. Why is this not shown on a table or next to a water bottle or something so you get the relative size of the product? Now, I’m assuming this bottle is huge, and in fact, on this specific brand, the majority of the complaints for this product were that the bottle is too small. People were expecting a huge bottle based on the image here, but when it came, it was like a tiny little miniature bottle.

However, if an image like this was shown on the product pages with a person holding the tube/bottle in hand, those objections and complaints from people complaining that it’s too small would not have been there. Now you can see that this is actually pretty tiny. It’s almost like those little mint candies or whatever they’re called, right? So, it’s pretty small. This is what I mean by a product image that shows the product in scale. Imagine ordering this box, thinking it’s almost as big as a tall can, and then you get this. It will be pretty disappointing. 

In fact, one of our students that’s selling supplements … The supplement box—this is very common with supplement stores by the way—looks really big because it’s only a cutout image. And then you receive it and it’s a small little box, almost like some mini makeup box that my girlfriend uses. And that can get pretty disappointing. That doesn’t mean that there’s less product in it, in this specific student’s product, it’s just that the serving size was very, very small because that supplement was very potent. But that’s beside the point. If you’re expecting something big, and you receive something small, it will definitely cause buyer’s remorse and a little disappointment, right? So that’s why they’re super, super important.

Or, for example, this Bose speaker … I know these can get pretty big, like as big as this, but there’s no image to show me how big this thing is. I can try to find descriptions here, but that’s not what most people are trying to do. They don’t want to read, they just want to go through the images and immediately determine, “Oh, OK, this is big enough” or “It’s too big.”

On the other hand, on JBL, as you can see, we have a phone next to the speaker, so it is in context and it shows me the relative size of this speaker. It’s not the “best” image in context, but it’s still better than nothing.

OK, so very, very crucial: Always, always show at least one product image in scale like this. And you can even use lifestyle photos too. For example, somebody pulling the speaker out of a backpack or something, and that will serve as both a lifestyle photo and as a product-in-scale image. So you can kill two birds with one stone there. 

So anyway, let’s recap really quick (that’s it for this video, it’s pretty simple, pretty to the point). What do we know so far? When it comes to online stores, it’s very hard for people to determine the actual relative size of the products, right? It’s not like going to a store, to Best Buy, and picking up the product, the speaker, where you can see how big it is. But when it comes to online, you can’t do that, so you absolutely must have at least one product image that shows the product in scale so people get an idea for the relative size of the product.

Because we are very, very bad at visualizing dimensions like length, like height, like volume, like three ounces (what does that even mean anyway?) or 20 ounces. Especially with supplements where, typically, when you buy a protein tube and there’s like a pound of stuff in it, but most of the tube is empty. It’s very difficult to visualize how big a specific product is, so always, always provide product images in scale.

That’s it for this video. If you like this video, make sure that you like and subscribe because we post videos like this almost every day now. And if you have any questions, also post them in the comments down below. And if you want our help, just go to workwithbgs.com, fill out a small application for a free strategy call. and we’ll get on the phone to see how we can help.

Until next time, have a good one and I’ll see you soon.

Bye.