Product imagery is the most powerful component of ecommerce sales.
Paired with price, imagery is the first impression of a product to the end consumer. You can’t create a product listing without it, but beyond simple product shots, brands need lifestyle imagery to round out product details and inspire a shopper to make a purchase.
A lifestyle image is a product shown in situ. For example: a dining chair paired with a table in a dining room; a lounge chair in a living space next to a sofa; a table lamp on a nightstand next to a bed. It shows what the product could look like “in real life,” not just as a floating silhouette among hundreds of other items in a category.
Sometimes called environmental or marketing imagery, lifestyle images are especially important in home furnishings to help shoppers envision a product’s potential in their own home.
What Lifestyle Imagery Means to Your Ecommerce Business
Lifestyle imagery doesn’t just fill a hole on the product page. It also helps:
- Tell the story of your brand. Lifestyle imagery signals a perceived value of your company and products by showcasing its unique style and taste. It’s a piece of your brand identity that can speak the same language as the customer you are trying to reach.
- Optimize for search. Images are SEO-friendly, providing another way to find “green velvet chair” via search. It can also help shoppers discover products through visual search platforms like Google Lens, Pinterest and Instagram.
- Provide additional product details. Lifestyle imagery helps show scale, colors and finishes and design features that can be harder to capture in silhouette images.
Environmental imagery is a marketing tool, showing customers the look that can be achieved with your products.
To Create Strong Lifestyle Imagery, Brands Need a Point of View
All lifestyle images are not created equal. To develop the most impactful lifestyle imagery for your brand, you will need to define parameters about what you want your brand (and therefore imagery) to convey.
If you have a brand strategy, style guidelines or positioning document, this is a great place to start. See how your brand characterizations translate to more visual mediums. If you describe your brand as modern or accessible, how does that show up in a lifestyle image?
You can also consider creating mood boards of inspirational images that point to styles and themes that feel right for your own brand.
Finally, see what your end consumers are tagging you in and what their style is like. They might bring a fresh quality or two that you want to incorporate into your owned imagery.
How to Create Strong Lifestyle Imagery for Your Brand
Once you’ve nailed the style and look you want to achieve, there is a mix of art and science you’ll want to follow for creating a product’s lifestyle imagery:
- Show the product in an appropriate setting. In other words, show a vanity light above a bathroom counter rather than a blank wall. Show a lounge chair in an indoor living space, not outdoors. You may already have brand imagery that is more creative or abstract, but lifestyle imagery for ecommerce is meant to show a product in a “real-life” setting.
- Keep the product front and center. While lifestyle imagery typically showcases an entire room, make sure the product is a clear focal point in the scene.
- Create a clean and uncluttered space. There’s “real life” and there’s too real life. While lifestyle imagery should be shot in a realistic setting, it’s also important to show a space that’s neat and tidy to not distract viewers away from the product or the aspirational element.
- If possible, show multiple settings. Most products can be used in more than one space or room, so show shoppers the possibilities. You might show an outdoor table in both an indoor and outdoor environment. Or a pendant lamp hanging over a dining table as well as in an entryway.
There are also a few things you’ll want to avoid:
- Watermarking images. Even though it’s tempting to brand your images with something that makes it clear where it came from, don’t watermark your imagery. It takes away from the inspiration factor and makes them less usable for retailers who may include them in marketing materials.
- Using people or models. Your brand may use models in catalog imagery or your own marketing campaigns, but including them in lifestyle imagery for your ecommerce channels isn’t necessarily a good idea. Similar to number 1, it makes your imagery less useful to retailers (who may not use people in their imagery) and adds an extra element that can distract from the product being showcased.
- Showcasing large, empty rooms or abstract spaces. Again, your brand imagery may use studio settings, conceptual backdrops or other highly creative displays to show product. But this doesn’t translate to ecommerce, where shoppers are using imagery to visualize a product in their own home and make a purchase decision.
Examples of Great Home Furnishings Lifestyle Images
If all of that sounds easier said than done, here are a few examples of lifestyle imagery for home furnishings that hit the mark:
This image from Sonneman and Lumens showcases a modern, inspirational aesthetic that design enthusiasts would gravitate toward; but it’s not so conceptual that it doesn’t feel like a real space. The bright and natural light is inviting, and there’s a clear focus on the light fixture, which is the product being showcased.
From Hubbardton Forge, this kitchen shot puts the pendants front and center, lighting them in a way that is warm and welcoming. The kitchen itself is clean and clearly styled, but the added accessories are subtly in the background to enhance, rather than distract from, the room’s overall look.
Finally, this home office image from BDI nails the aspiration factor—who wouldn’t want to work in a space with all of that space, organization and natural light? The furniture pieces remain the focus, despite the other pieces in the room. Tasteful accessories make the space feel lived-in, but not cluttered.
Inspired yet? Creating best-in-class imagery for every product in your catalog may seem overwhelming—so start with your top 25 to 50 online SKUs. These are the products that mean the most to your online sales and will drive the greatest impact by having a built-out catalog of lifestyle imagery.
Compelling imagery is a key part of your brand’s content assets that will set you up for success in ecommerce. So define your style, find an approach for creating great imagery, and start seeing the impact that a catalog of lifestyle images has on your online sales.
