Client name withheld under NDA.
Ceramics are hard to buy online. A plate that looks cream on one screen looks grey on another, a glaze that shimmers in person can look flat in a photo, and a bowl shown with nothing next to it can arrive half the size the customer expected. Singapore shoppers searching for tableware singapore, about 170 searches a month, compare small independent stores with big homeware chains, and the store with the clearest photos usually wins the sale. Searches for ecommerce photography singapore are small, around 30 a month, because most store owners do not realise how much of their returns problem is really a photography problem.
This store sold handmade and small-batch ceramic tableware, plus linen and serving pieces, with about 300 products online. Most listings had two photos taken by the owner at home, under a mix of daylight and lamp light, so the same glaze looked different from one product to the next. There were no photos showing size. Product pages converted 1.5% of visitors and the add-to-cart rate was 5.2%. Worst of all, 4.6% of orders came back with the return reason marked "not as pictured", usually because the colour or size was not what the customer expected.
We went through the catalogue with the owner and wrote a shot list for each of the 296 products still on sale. Every item got a white-background main image, a front and top view, a scale shot in hand or on a laid table, and a close-up of the glaze or texture. The 40 best-selling pieces were also marked for a 360-degree spin, and around 60 were grouped into lifestyle table settings.
Handmade ceramics vary from piece to piece, and shoppers worry about getting a dud. A fixed list per product meant every listing answered the same questions in the same order: what colour is it, how big is it, and what does the surface really look like.
Before the main shoot, we photographed the 12 glazes the store used most, under controlled studio lighting with a colour reference card, and compared the results with the physical pieces side by side with the owner. We adjusted the lighting until glossy glazes showed their shine without hot spots and matte glazes kept their texture.
Colour accuracy is the biggest cause of returns for ceramics. Settling the lighting on the glazes first meant every later image, across all 296 products, would show colour the same way. Getting this wrong once would have repeated the problem across the whole catalogue.
Over nine studio days we shot white-background images, front and top views, scale shots with a hand, a standard fork or a stack of plates, glaze close-ups and 360-degree spins of the 40 best-sellers. Three more days went on lifestyle table settings, styled with linen, cutlery and flowers so the pieces stayed the focus.
Scale is the second biggest cause of returns. A bowl in a hand, or a plate next to a standard fork, tells a shopper its size faster than a measurement ever does. Spins let shoppers check the shape and the foot of a piece, which matters to people who buy handmade work.
Every image was edited to one standard: the same white background, the same soft shadow, colour matched to the reference card and the product centred at the same size in the frame. Natural variations in the glaze were kept, not retouched away, and each listing noted that handmade pieces vary slightly. We exported sets sized for the store, marketplaces and social.
When every product sits on the same background at the same scale, a category page looks like a curated shop rather than a jumble sale. Keeping the real variations visible, and saying so, set honest expectations, which is what brought the returns down.
We uploaded new images to all 296 listings in a set order: main image, scale shot, detail, lifestyle, then the spin where there was one. We added the dimensions under the scale shot, set up tracking for add-to-cart rate, conversion and return reasons, and followed all three for three months after delivery.
The first three images do most of the selling on a phone. Putting the scale shot second answered the size question before a shopper had to hunt for the dimensions, and tracking return reasons showed exactly which problem the new photos had fixed.
Three months after delivery, product pages converted 1.9% of visitors instead of 1.5%, and the add-to-cart rate rose from 5.2% to 6.9%. With product page visits roughly steady, about 72,000 a month against 70,000 before, monthly orders grew from about 1,050 to 1,368. The biggest change was in returns: orders sent back as "not as pictured" fell from 4.6% to 1.7%. The owner also stopped answering the same two chat questions every day, what colour is it really and how big is it, because the photos now answered both. Each product now has an average of 6.4 images instead of 2.1, all edited to the same standard.
Orders = product page visits x conversion rate: about 70,000 x 1.5% = 1,050 before; about 72,000 x 1.9% = 1,368 after.
Shot lists, glaze lighting tests and the first studio days.
Remaining studio days, editing and new images on all 296 listings.
Conversion reached 1.9% and not-as-pictured returns fell to 1.7% of orders.
If you sell ceramics, textiles or anything where colour matters, test your lighting on your trickiest finishes first. Getting the glazes right before the main shoot is what made 296 products look consistent.
Dimensions in the description are easy to miss. A scale shot in second position answered the size question on a phone screen, and size complaints were a large share of the returns that disappeared.
It is tempting to retouch every piece to perfection. Showing the real variation, and saying so, set honest expectations, which did more for returns than any amount of retouching.
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