How to Build Authenticity and Trust with Product Visuals

Shoppers Crave Brands That are Real and Deliver

Our brains process images 60,000 times faster than words, making visuals a strong and impactful tool for conveying your brand’s values quickly and effectively. So, how can you ensure your product visuals resonate authentically and build trust?

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Reflect your audience

Shoppers want to see themselves or ‘people like them’ reflected in the marketing visuals of a brand. This involves prioritizing diversity, showcasing real people, and understanding your target customers' needs and preferences.

• Diversity Matters: Utilize imagery that reflects the diversity of your audience, including people from various backgrounds, ethnicities, ages, and abilities. This not only broadens your appeal but also demonstrates a commitment to inclusivity and social responsibility, fostering trust and relatability.
• Prioritize Realness: Focus on authenticity in your visual branding. Avoid overly staged stock visuals and opt for real and relatable visuals that resonate with your audience. This authenticity helps build trust by signaling transparency and genuineness, strengthening the connection between your brand and your customers.

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Embrace user-generated content 

User-generated content (UGC) can be a powerful tool in building up brand awareness and enhancing customer’s trust and faith in you. UGC features real people using your products and honest reviews. When working specifically with content creators, your brand is benefiting from the trust and credibility they have built with their own audience.

• The Credibility of Creators: By collaborating with UGC creators, you’re working with real people.Their authenticity and relatability can significantly enhance your brand's credibility and attract like-minded customers who see themselves reflected in the content.

• Authenticity Over Polish: User-generated content provides genuine, real-life perspectives that resonate with potential customers. UGC is often spontaneous, simply-produced video that shoppers find highly relatable. Viewers appreciate the authenticity versus the polished production of most brand-created visuals.

UGC is fairly new to the world of e-Commerce, but it’s already a favored tactic amongst brands, and its popularity is only growing. To learn more, you can check out how KittyKat uses UGC for brands.

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Be consistent

Consistency reinforces your brand identity, increases awareness, and creates a lasting impression. Consistency telegraphs to shoppers just what they can count on you for.

• Maintaining Visual Consistency: Ensure that all aspects of your visual identity, including logo, typography, and color palette, are used consistently across all shoots. Consistency reinforces brand recognition and trust, making your brand more memorable and recognizable.

• Maintain Quality in Visuals: Nothing confuses shoppers more than when product images, videos and animations are all over the place in terms of quality. Make sure your product images meet a consistent quality standard. Likewise for videos - stick with a style and production value that users will come to recognize and associate with your brand.

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Use video to address questions

Remember when you could just pick a product off a shelf in a store and feel its weight, rotate it, test it? Shoppers want that same reassurance before they buy online. Videos breathe life into your product, allowing viewers to visualize how the product works and fits into their lives.

• Bring Products to Life: Video demonstrations provide a dynamic way to showcase your products, addressing consumer questions and helping them visualize how the product fits into their daily routines and lifestyles.  

• Showcase Solutions: Whether it's through product demonstrations, or instructional videos, videos offer an opportunity to demonstrate the value and benefits of your product. By highlighting how your product addresses customer challenges and provides solutions, you can build trust and confidence in your brand, encouraging viewers to engage and buy.

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Make an emotional connection 

Emotion drives most purchase decisions. You may expect that consumers are all rational beings who dispassionately weigh features or pros and cons before clicking “add to cart.”  Not so. 

“Gallup's own research has found that about 70% of decisions are based on emotional factors and only 30% are based on rational factors.” (Gallup)

• Humanize Your Brand: Incorporate images of your team, offices, or behind-the-scenes operations to humanize your brand and create a personal connection with your audience. By showcasing the people and stories behind your business, you can help your customers get to know and trust you.

• Capture “Moments:”  Lifestyle imagery shows people living those moments we can all relate to: dinner parties with friends, holding a child’s hand while walking through tall grass, enjoying that first cup of coffee as the sun rises. Use relatable imagery that resonates with your target audience on a personal level. When people see themselves, their experiences, or challenges reflected in your visuals, it triggers emotions and strengthens the emotional connection with your brand.

Trust and authenticity are key in e-commerce, and visuals are your secret weapon. Keep things diverse, real, and consistent to build trust. Leverage user-generated content, and establish emotional connections, to create a sense of authenticity.

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