How to Boost Sales with 360 Jewelry Product Photography

Previously, we wrote an article about the benefits you could be missing if you weren’t using 360 jewelry product photography. As a follow-up article, we’d like to share with you how and where jewelers are using 360 jewelry product photography to boost their online sales.

Before we start, we need to understand how 360 product jewelry videos are created. Traditionally, 360 product videos require the following:

1. Camera and macro lens

2. Lighting system

3. Background props

4. Stabilization equipment such as a tripod and remote shutter release

5. 360-degree turntable

6. Knowledge of photography

7. Video editing software

8. Huge investment of time and resources

We actually wrote an in-depth beginner’s guide about how to record your first 360 product photography video here. As you can see, although a beginner’s guide, traditional methods of 360 product photography are still quite complicated. Can it possibly be simpler and faster?

The simple answer to this is yes! Not many jewelers are aware that they could be master jewelry product photographers and videographers using an everyday device that they use. Yes, that’s right, using just their smartphone.

Introducing the GemLightbox Turntable

The GemLightbox Turntable is the world’s first smartphone jewelry turntable, allowing anyone with a smartphone to shoot perfect 360 videos. Picup Media recently launched the GemLightbox Turntable at the Hong Kong Jewellery & Gem Fair in September.

The GemLightbox Turntable is the latest addition to Picup Media’s suite of jewelry photography solutions. To operate the GemLightbox Turntable, place it inside the GemLightbox jewelry photography system and plug in the power cord. After turning on the power, users can connect to the GemLightbox Turntable wirelessly using the GemLightbox application which is available to download on both the App Store and Google Play.

Once connected, users can adjust the rotation, speed, focus, and brightness before capturing a perfect 360 jewelry video. Any images and videos captured are then safely stored on the GemLightbox gallery, separate from your files.

Check out how simple and easy it is to use the GemLightbox Turntable in the video below.

Having the ability for anyone to shoot perfect 360 jewelry videos opens your business to endless possibilities. Below are some of the use cases for 360 jewelry product photography to boost your online sales.

On Your Website

The videos shot from your smartphone can be uploaded to your website to enhance your customer’s experience. There have been studies to prove that 360 product views increase engagement and conversion rates over still images by up to 30%. There are two methods of embedding your perfect 360 videos onto your e-commerce store

1. Uploading to an online video player and embedding it to your product page (basic)

YouTube and Vimeo are popular, free online video hosting sites you can use to upload your videos. Once uploaded, you can create an embed code that you can insert into your product page. If you are using Shopify, you can follow these instructions here and if you are using WooCommerce, follow these instructions here.

2. Uploading to a dedicated image/video hosting service (advanced)

This second method is more advanced and requires a basic understanding of code and software use. The benefit of uploading to a dedicated image/video hosting service is that your images/video files will be automatically optimized for user experience. This includes significantly decreasing load time and video interactivity. There are many dedicated image/video hosting services including Sirv, Marzipano, Webrotate360, and the list goes on… You just have to try and check which one satisfies your visual display needs and is supported by your jewelry e-commerce website.

You can combine your 360 jewelry product videos with other lifestyle videos to create a dynamic, visual representation of your products and your company. This can increase the time customers spend on your site, discovering, familiarising, and converting.

On Social Media

There’s actually no big secret to success on social media. It simply requires you to post highly engaging content consistently. Using the GemLightbox, it’s so easy to create social media content

It’s predicted that 80% of all online traffic in 2019 will be video content, and there is no simpler way to create perfect 360 jewelry product videos using your smartphone. Once captured from your smartphone, you can share it instantly with your followers on your social media platforms, such as Instagram. Watch the video below to see how easy it is to share a perfect 360-degree white background video using the GemLightbox application.

If you’re a jeweler or gemstone dealer but aren’t using Instagram, you should seriously reconsider your social media strategy. Engagement on Instagram is said to be the highest among other popular social media sites and is 10 times higher than the king of social media, Facebook. To find out how to sell on Instagram, check out our guide here.

On Social Messaging

Sales operations are becoming more informal and personalized. It is now widely accepted to conduct business over messaging apps. The reason for this is that you can instantly reply to questions and have a conversation to better understand your customers’ needs, rather than bouncing back and forth via email.

Bring the conversation to a platform the potential customer would feel more comfortable chatting on. The more comfortable the customer feels, the more likely they will purchase! Just make sure the messaging app supports image and video sharing. Many popular apps such as WhatsApp and WeChat support image and video sharing.

Studies show that sales conversions are 391% higher in the first minute of responding; combined with having the ability for anyone in the jewelry business to take studio-quality images and videos of their products in a very short period maximizes the chance of the sale.  

So there you have it guys! If you want to find out more about how you can use the GemLightbox Turntable to create perfect 360 videos to boost your online sales, feel free to get in touch here.