Outsourcing e-commerce photo editing – what should you know?

After or before starting your e-commerce store, one of the most important questions is who would take your product photos. If you hire a professional photographer then it’s good. But you may want to shoot photos by yourself if you don’t have much cash. The question here is whether you’d outsource e-commerce photo editing to someone else?

Nowadays, even phone cameras like iPhone’s and Oppo’s camera do a great job. The photos are big enough to put on your e-commerce store and sharp enough for your customers to see the edges of your products.

What you should know about e-commerce store owners psychology on product photos?

You’re not alone if you think that your product photos should look better than your competitors. But if your competitors have a great in-house photo editing team or outsource their photo editing task to companies like us then you’re already behind them.

Does this mean that you’ll sell less?

This is where the tension among e-commerce store owners start. But, you don’t need to worry.

Orlego says that 68% of your potential customers make buying decisions after seeing your product photos. 60% after reading the description and 58% after reading the reviews.

You don’t need to go worried as long as you see that your customers are liking your product photos.

When should you NOT outsource your photo editing job?

When you set up your e-commerce store, you have two options for the photo editing task.

    To hire some agency to edit your photos or outsource your photo editing job
    To do the photo editing job by yourself

The question is which one should you do?

Well, there are answers.

1. When you have only so many photos

If you’re starting very small then you should do the photo editing job by yourself.

Let’s say that you have only 10 photos and you’re not planning to have 10 more photos next month or anytime soon. In the case, you should do the photo editing job by yourself because outsourcing it will be a costly affair.

I charge $4.99 per photo for photos up to 50. Editing 10 photos will cost you $49.

3.jpg

Yes, $49 is not much but you already have so many other expenses like setting up a store, paying the merch, and running ads. First, see whether you’re getting traction.

What’s the point of adding $49 to your expenses?

2. When you have good and reliable in-house photo editing team

Guess what? Most of the e-commerce store (even those which are making millions) use their in-house photo editing team.

I’ve met so-so many e-commerce company CEOs who say that their in-house photo editing team is the best?

How can you be sure that your in-house photo editing team is doing a good job?

I wrote at the beginning of this guide that 68% of people say the product photos affect their buying decisions. If you see that your conversion rate is high (the number of the purchase divided by the number of unique visitors saw the product) you don’t need to bother.

A typical conversion rate for an e-commerce store is 2-3%. If you’re getting this then you’re doing good. If you’re not then something is wrong. And the issue is not necessarily to be with the photos.

In this case, it’s best to ask someone else to review your site. Some of the photo editing agencies like us do the review at free of cost. Contact them and let them do their job.

3. When you don’t have any budget

This one is self-explanatory. You may not need to hire a photo editing agency if you’re running short on cash.

Yes, if you don’t have good photos then your sales will dip. But, you need to make a profit out of those minimal sales and then hire an agency when you have some cash.

When should you outsource your photo editing job?

1. When you have so many photos

If you’re a fashion and apparel excommunicated store, you may be having 100+ photos every month. As a CEO or creative director, your job is to focus on the growth of your company rather than editing photos.

It’s a good time to hire an agency rather than editing the photos by yourself.

2. To save time

Editing photos is a boring task for the majority of people. It’s not boring for the photo editing agencies because of they breath Photoshop.

Editing one e-commerce photo requires 10 mins if you’re an intermediate user and 5 mins if you’re a pro. Don’t even calculate the time if you’re a newbie because most of your time will waste in searching the right tutorials that’ll enable you to edit your photos.

Many of our clients are from the fashion and apparel industry. They all have 200+ photos every week and we edit those for them. Some of them have also 200+ brick and mortar store across the US.

Just think about the time they’ve wasted if they decided to edit the photos by themselves

But I already have an in-house photo editing team. Then why should I worry about the time?

Photo editing agencies use many tools to edit one batch of the photo. We keep ourselves updated with the latest apps and tools in the market which can help us to edit the photos in minimal time.

2.jpg

For example, making the background light gray takes 2-3 mins in Photoshop for a medium complex photo. There’re tools we know that does this job in 1-click. Guess what? We just saved 2-3 mins.

Photo editing agencies also spend several thousand dollars to purchase the license of these tools.

My agency uses around 27 tools for photo editing. Yes, Photoshop and Lightroom are the most used among them.

3. If you want to save your a*s

Photo editing is a daunting task. Imagine that you’re planning to launch a product next week and photos are not even edited. If this has already happened to you then you’re not uncommon. If this has never happened to you then you’re uncommon.

We see this kind of issue every week. Many of our clients come to us and say that they’ve messed up. New 100 products are launching next week and 500+ photos are not even edited. We ask them to calm down and send all the photos to us. They send the photos using Dropbox or Google Drive and we use our additional workforce to deliver the project on time.

Guess what? He spent his weekend happily after that.

1.jpg

4. When you start making profit

It’s a rule in business that you need to keep on making your product better. Product photos on your e-commerce store is a kind of product that your customers see. Making the. Better is the thing you always want to do.

Once you have a profit, you’ll have enough money to hire a photo editing agency. Photo editing agency doesn’t charge much. One of the services we provide is e-commerce product photo editing and we charge only $1.99 per photo for 100+ photos. The cost per photo is higher for lesser photos.