With over 85,000 products listed on Dering Hall, it’s important to make sure your products stand out. Great product photography is one of the best ways to get your products noticed and ultimately purchased on Dering Hall. Here are eight useful tips for making the most of your presence on Dering Hall, including advice on choosing the right photos to represent each item you upload to the site.  

1. Choose the Best Quality Images

If possible, use professionally shot photos for your profile. Even lighting is important as well, so that users don’t confuse shadows for different colors on the product. Try to shoot against a white background, especially since primary product images will be silhouetted against white. A good example is a glass or lucite product—if it’s shot against a colored background, when silhouetted, the product may appear to be that color. Remember, since this is a website, the photo of the product is the product, in a way!

2. Use Primary and Secondary Images

On Dering Hall, you can upload multiple images of a product. In addition to a product shot against a white background, we recommend using a secondary shot that shows the product in a design environment. With secondary images, you can also show different colors, finishes, and angles of your product. If you want to show your primary image against a specific background, feel free to upload it again as a secondary image.

If you have images of your products in a room, feel free to upload them as secondary images. This is helpful so users can get a sense of size, and is particularly useful for fabrics, so users can see the repeat of the pattern. Room shots are also helpful for editorial—we’re always looking for beautiful imagery to use in our stories, so these are useful in terms of editorial promotion. 

3. Make Sure Your Images Are The Correct Size

Images do not need to be as large as they would need to be for print publication, but be sure that they’re not very small. We require that your product photos be at least 960x720 pixels, and we have a 50MB maximum file size. Images do not need to be square. Also, we will automatically rename file names with an SEO-friendly name; no need to work out a naming convention for your files.

4. Make Sure The Entire Product is Shown in the Primary Image

It’s fine to use detailed shots in secondary images so that users can see all the elements of your products, but include a full image for the primary. If not, it’s much harder to use in editorial. 

5. Avoid Excessive Decoration on Products

Accessories and decorations on products are distracting and may prevent products from being used in editorial. Examples include vases on tables, computers on desks, etc. These are fine in secondary images but are not recommended for the primary. 

6. Make Sure There Aren’t Any People or Unnecessary Distractions In Your Photos

Again, these can be distracting. For your primary image, don’t include images of people in chairs, etc, or next to products. They’re of course fine for secondary images. 

7. Avoid Extreme Angles

These can be confusing. As users scroll through products, they may not understand what they’re looking at. Try to keep the primary image direct and straight on. For secondary images, it’s fine to show various angles. For instance, try to shoot a table directly for the primary image, and for secondary images, feel free to shoot it from overhead so that users can see the tabletop finishes and from underneath so they have a better view of the base. 

8. Avoid Watermarking

For primary images, we can’t accept images that have watermarks over products. We also can’t use watermarked images of room shots for editorial.