Smashing Darling Blog

Introducing our second victim, uh, I mean … critique – Aelisheva

Many thanks to all of those who were kind enough to participate in last week’s critique – your comments were intelligent, constructive, and greatly appreciated. And a special thanks to those who emailed to volunteer themselves to be critiqued.

The first of those we’ll be critiquing is a store whose designs are absolutely smashing – Aelisheva.

The first thing that strikes us is Aelisheva’s great use of live models. The models are always very appealing, professional looking, and very complementary to the clothing.

As a whole, the products are very well lit, with only a few exceptions that appear a bit on the dark side. Considering that there’s a pretty wide mix of photography styles here (some shot outside, some in, some with models, some without, different types of borders and backgrounds) the items in the store still work together as a whole very well … the unique style of the products is really what holds everything together quite well in spite of all the different styles of the photos themselves.

Another thing that Aelisheva does very well is the written item descriptions. They are very thorough and often contain complete sizing information. Great job here!

As far as suggestions, there are a few areas in particular that we feel could really help this store be a total knockout and start driving sales (as well as get images on the homepage.)

1. Text info on images. No question about it, we’d love to see the date stamp, designer logo, and photographer information removed from the photos that use them (this is true for not only this store but for everyone site-wide.) This alone is unfortunately enough of a factor to keep us from being able to use an image on the homepage. If a designer is concerned about copyright or security issues, we highly recommend putting this information in the item description or in the boutique policies page. Placing this text information directly on images only serves to detract from the image itself, and in some instances can be downright distracting. Think of the huge fashion houses who spend literally millions on their photography … have you ever seen a date stamp or photo credit directly on one of their website images?

2. Multiple views. Next thing we think could be really beneficial to this store falls under the category of variety. Some of the products rely on only one or two alternate images. As always, we tell everyone the more photos the better! Different angles, closeups, detail shots … the more you show, the more comfortable a potential buyer will be with making the purchase. The photos should make them feel like they’re standing in your studio holding the piece in their hands.

3. Consistency. Another thing to consider is possibly establishing a more uniform approach to product photography across the board for this store. Obviously we would never recommend for anyone to take a cookie-cutter approach, but shooting with a similar style or feel can be a big factor in helping a store brand itself through their photos and developing its own look to help set it apart form the others.

We hope that these ideas are helpful – we are so impressed by Aelisheva’s designs, and we wish them all the best. Now, how about other ideas? What do you guys think would help take this store to new heights? Please feel free to let us know by either commenting below or emailing directly at julie[at]smashingdarling[dot]com. Can’t wait to hear from you all!

So, who’s next? Suggest someone’s store to be critiqued next week (or volunteer your own) to be critiqued by emailing me at: julie[at]smashingdarling[dot]com.

We promise to always be nice and offer ideas and suggestions that we genuinely think will help take your photography (and hopefully your sales!) to the next level.