Your product photography is lying to your customers (and it's costing you sales)
By Danielle Thompson · September 22, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
Your product photography is lying to your customers (and it's costing you sales)
Online, shoppers get one sense: sight. No touch, no smell, no sense of scale.
So what do most brands do with that one shot? Sterile white background, maybe a callout slapped on top, job done.
Except it isn't done. You've just handed your customer a guessing game.
At WAKE we test this constantly across our Amazon accounts, and the pattern holds every time: images that do more than "show the product" convert better.
A few things we push every client on:
→ Bring the missing senses into the frame. Orange-scented product? Style the shot with orange peel. Vanilla? Show the pod. Give the brain a shortcut to what it can't smell or taste through a screen.
→ Humanise it. Product-only shots feel clinical. Where budget allows, we put people into the shot, real customers, stock, even just a pair of hands using the product. The customer needs to see someone who feels like them.
→ Make that "someone" representative. Different ages, backgrounds, body types, abilities. The goal is as many people as possible feeling seen. Not one client has ever pushed back on this.
→ Show scale, properly. I once bought a washing basket online. Great hero shot, no lifestyle shot, nothing to give me a sense of scale. It arrived and held about four pairs of socks. I guessed, and I guessed wrong.
→ Start with your top sellers, or your highest-return SKUs, you don't need to overhaul the whole catalog on day one.
→ Test it. Don't assume any of this wins by default. Measure it and let the data decide.
Sight is the only sense you get online. Use all of it, or you're leaving conversions on the table.
#AmazonMarketing #Ecommerce #ContentStrategy #ProductPhotography