How important are product photographs?

The single most important element on the page, and the one most often delegated. Photographs are what a customer uses to decide, and a bad set cannot be rescued by good copy.

In more detail

Two shots do most of the work: the product at real scale beside something familiar, and the product in use. Both reduce returns as well as increasing sales, which makes them the cheapest investment on the page.

What to do about it

Most design decisions on a store are really navigation decisions, and navigation is what decides whether somebody finds the thing they came for.

A product page has one job. Everything on it that is not helping somebody decide is in the way.

Consistency beats cleverness. A customer learns your store once, and every screen that behaves differently costs them.

The mobile app angle

The same screen designed several ways is the point: a catalogue of four hundred lines needs a different home screen from one of forty.