The world of eCommerce is all about visuals. Businesses that primarily focus on creating visually interactive product listings that can score an edge over their peers, who overlook the power of high-quality, descriptive images in engaging their consumers.
Background removal is a powerful tool to grow eCommerce sales. By removing distracting or irrelevant backgrounds, the main subject of the image is emphasized, which can attract more attention and engage potential customers. Additionally, a clean and professional image can build trust and confidence in the product and brand, which can lead to higher conversion rates and customer loyalty.
Overall, background removal can enhance the user experience, increase product visibility, and ultimately drive sales growth for eCommerce businesses. Here, we will discuss the potential of background removal in increasing your leads and concluding sales growth.
Benefits of Background Removal
Be it your store’s website, its advertisements, or any marketing initiative that you take to generate leads, product photos will be the first ones to interact with and engage your consumers. Background removal can efficiently help you achieve this goal. The following are its advantages for an eCommerce store.
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Improves Visual Presentation
Consumers are inclined toward visually appealing product descriptions. The businesses that overlook this fact end up getting fewer leads for even the in-demand product range. Those eCommerce businesses, however, which do take visual representation seriously, end up capturing a larger lead share than peers.
Consumers prefer engaging with graphics and images, it facilitates easy buying decisions. Background removal is one of the steps towards an improved visual representation. This better representation gets you more leads, and results in improved sales.
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Enhances User Experience
Your eCommerce users or consumers will cherish the experience of visiting your store only if they find the product images trustworthy and appealing, along with an easy-to-use interface. Background removal is an imminent step toward this goal. In online stores product photos and graphics are utilized to provide a rich and lasting impression.
For instance, in case you are selling a shirt, images with plain/white backgrounds will help the buyer contemplate its utility and feel. Here you can add more effects like an invisible mannequin, to improve this experience. This also establishes a positive brand reputation and gets you publicity.
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Instills Trust in Customers
Replacing the background with a white or plain one has a psychological impact on consumers. Humans trust objects that they can see, observe and analyze. If your product images consist of a distracting background, like a shimmery wall, a showcase, or any other object, the viewer’s attention gets divided. In such a scenario, the chances of your product getting ignored are high. Unable to observe your product completely, the consumer will doubt its usefulness.
Using image background removal services you can make your product images more captivating. It will help customers focus their attention on the product, and thus highlighting its features will improve the chances of sales.
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Increases Sales
Good images improve your sales prospects. Background removal is an integral part of eCommerce photo editing as it enhances your image’s quality. Attractive pictures intrigue customers to scroll through your shop for more details. They are effective in generating more leads, and bringing prospective buyers to the store wherever the images show up.
If you wish to influence customers to purchase, by uploading images that are focused on the product. Also, use infographics to help a buyer understand it. Converting the leads into sales is easier this way.
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Facilitates Photo Reusage
If you are hiring background removal services you can use the obtained product image output and use it wherever required. Efficient photo editors can create different backgrounds suiting various publishing usages. This saves you the hassle of organizing photoshoots again and again.
Techniques for Background Removal
Due to its advantages, background removal is highly in-demand. As a result, many tools and technologies have come up. Some of the widely used tools for background removal are as follows.
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The Magic Wand Tool
This tool is used to select the background in a product image and delete it at once. You can even touch up smaller or more minute details using a more precise tool afterward. Depending on the editing software, this tool may have different names. Like in GIMP, it is called the ‘Fuzzy Select’ tool. This tool creates a selection based on color similarity. For instance, if you select black to delete the black background, it will automatically omit that color from the entire image.
‘Tolerance’ and ‘Contiguous’, are two settings of the Magic Wand tool that can be modulated to make your selection more precise and save the edges of the product.
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The Eraser Tool
As the name suggests, it works like an eraser to delete selected parts of the background. It is often used by zooming in on the product image and fine-tuning the edges. Eraser is a basic tool and every editor uses it.
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The Pen Tool
It is used to create a vector path alongside the product image. It is used in the clipping path method of background removal. Also known as the path tool, it helps you draw a path and convert it into a selection. This is popular because it facilitates creating smoothly curved paths and doesn’t take individual pixels into account. The tool gives editors more freedom in terms of selection.
With the ever-increasing advancement of technology, photo editing has also been integrated with AI by many tools. For instance, Photoshop has enabled AI-based retouching features. But, just like every other AI tool, the outcome quality depends upon the prompt. Understanding how to create good prompts for AI photo editing tools will help generate high-quality outcomes.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Removing the background from product photos can be a tedious and time-consuming task, and there are certain common mistakes that people can make during the process. Some of the most common mistakes are as follows.
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Selection Errors
If the background is not selected properly, the result will not look professional. Make sure to select the object with as much precision as possible to avoid jagged edges or missing areas.
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Automated Tool Errors
While automated tools can be a great help in removing the background, they can sometimes create errors or produce unsatisfactory results. It is important to carefully review and touch up the image manually.
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Missing Out Details
Small details like hair, fur, or intricate edges can be challenging to remove, but it’s important to take the time to carefully work on these areas to ensure a clean and polished final image.
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Unsettled Color and Contrast
After removing the background, it’s important to adjust the color and contrast of the image to ensure that it looks consistent and professional.
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Wrong File Format
When saving the final image, it’s important to use a file format that preserves the transparency of the background. The most common formats for transparent backgrounds are PNG and GIF.
Though the task is time-consuming, rushing the process can result in errors and an unprofessional finish. Take your time and be patient to achieve the best results possible.
Conclusion
To sum it up, background removal is a technique that has the potential to uplift your store’s visual appeal and provide a comfortable shopping experience to buyers. The eCommerce giants like Amazon ensure that their vendors use product images with white backgrounds. Removing bright, shiny, or occupying backgrounds will be visually soothing and an enriching user experience. As an eCommerce business, it will help you gain consumers’ trust and generate more leads.
However, your background removal workflow will depend on your skills to use editing tools, and which process suits you the best. But, since it can directly impact your revenue, hiring photo background removal services will be an intelligent move rather than experimenting. It is cost-effective and allows you to focus on core competencies.