The Psychology of
Ecommerce

Do you have a digital catalog?

In physical stores, the amount of space influences prices: A lot of empty space? Managers need to raise prices to pay for this real estate.

Ironically, customers bring this logic into digital catalogs. Online products seem more expensive when surrounded by more padding, even though this space doesn't cost anything (Huang et al., 2019).

How to Apply

• Restrict Padding to Convey Good Deals. Cluttered websites sometimes convert better — and now it makes sense. Low prices are found in messy stores, and customers bring this idea into online shopping.
• Expand Padding to Boost Quality. Do your customers prioritize quality over price? Embrace the free real estate in your ecommerce store.
• Adjust Padding in Catalogs and Images. The space between rows and columns, along with the space around product images.
• Charge Precise Prices in Tight Catalogs. Prices like $18.49, $23.99, and $19.01 convert better than $18.50, $24.00, and $19.00 when catalogs have less padding (Hou & Gong, 2024).

Examples

• Walmart crams four products in each row.
• Gap shows three products.
• Balenciaga shows three products, but adds more space in the images.

• Huang, Y., Lim, K. H., Lin, Z., & Han, S. (2019). Large online product catalog space indicates high store price: Understanding customers’ overgeneralization and illogical inference. Information Systems Research, 30(3), 963-979.
• Hou, N., & Gong, H. (2024). Precision makes tightness better: the interactive effect of interstitial space and number precision on purchase intention. Marketing Letters, 1-14.

Humans seem rational.

Feel hungry? You eat something.

But this sequence can be flipped:

Eat something? You infer hunger. But was it? Maybe it was stress or boredom.

Humans often act, then justify with logic. This fallacy — rationalization — can be seen in cognitive dissonance and other pivotal theories (see Cushman, 2020 for a review).

It also happens in ecommerce.

If a customer reaches the end of your catalog, they might infer: Hmm, I reached the end without choosing a product. Guess I don't like any of them.

But were they disinterested? Or merely indecisive?

Help customers rationalize this behavior. At the end of your catalog, insert a statement to shift their rationale from dislike to indecision:

• Can't decide? Take our quiz to find the right product.
• Can't decide? Let our experts help.
• Can't decide? Build your own bundle.

This framing will justify their behavior: Hmm, I reached the end without choosing a product. Oh, it's because I can't decide. All the products are good.

• Cushman, F. (2020). Rationalization is rational. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 43, e28.

Prime customers to choose.

For example, which animal do you prefer: elephant or hippo?

In one study, people who answered this question were more likely to buy a computer (Xu & Wyer, 2008).

You can blame three stages of buying:

• Stage 1: Whether to buy
• Stage 2: Which to buy
• Stage 3: How to buy

Any choice (elephant vs. hippo) activates a “which-to-choose” mindset. Customers skip the first stage of “whether” to buy, proceeding immediately to the second stage of “which” to buy.

Stating a preference appears to induce a which-to-buy mindset, leading people to think about which of several products they would like to buy under the implicit assumption that they have already decided to buy one of them. (Xu & Wyer, 2007, p. 564)

When you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

When you make a choice, everything looks choosable.

Stronger For

• Visual Choices. Humans prefer choosing from visual graphics, especially in the early stages of a decision (e.g., browsing (Townsend & Kahn, 2014)

• Townsend, C., & Kahn, B. E. (2014). The “visual preference heuristic”: The influence of visual versus verbal depiction on assortment processing, perceived variety, and choice overload. Journal of Consumer Research, 40(5), 993-1015.
• Xu, A. J., & Wyer Jr, R. S. (2007). The effect of mind-sets on consumer decision strategies. Journal of Consumer Research, 34(4), 556-566.
• Xu, A. J., & Wyer Jr, R. S. (2008). The comparative mind-set: From animal comparisons to increased purchase intentions. Psychological Science, 19(9), 859-864.

Customers browse horizontally.

Human eyes are aligned in a horizontal line, which makes it easier to scan horizontal assortments (Deng, Kahn, Unnava, & Lee, 2016).

On Amazon, a general search—books—shows a horizontal list of books:

Vertical lists help customers find specific options. Thanks to the left-alignment, it's easier to look for specific words.

If you search for a specific book—Methods of Persuasion—Amazon shows a vertical list:

Plus, these options now appear at the top — in the exact location of the customer's gaze. Less relevant products will be hidden below, especially on mobile devices (Huang, Juaneda, Sénécal, & Léger, 2021).

Walmart follows this strategy, too. Recent searches are vertical, but trending searches (which encourage browsing) are horizontal:

• Deng, X., Kahn, B. E., Unnava, H. R., & Lee, H. (2016). A “wide” variety: Effects of horizontal versus vertical display on assortment processing, perceived variety, and choice. Journal of Marketing Research, 53(5), 682-698.
• Huang, B., Juaneda, C., Sénécal, S., & Léger, P. M. (2021). “Now You See Me”: the attention-grabbing effect of product similarity and proximity in online shopping. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 54(1), 1-10.

White interfaces are good for actions (e.g., purchases).

But there’s a problem. Look at these rectangles:

Thanks to the “gestalt” principles of similarity, your brain sees two clusters of squares.

The same effect occurs with tabs in your browser. Look at your tabs right now. What color are they? They’re usually white or grey.

But if your website has a white background, then visitors will group your website with those tabs.

And that’s bad.

If visitors click one of those tabs, they will leave your website. You need to push those tabs outside of their attention.

Perhaps designers could darken the top border of the interface. This dark bar becomes a conceptual bar that keeps their attention fixated on the website. Visitors will be less likely to click a tab (and leave your website).

Caveat: It depends on the browser. Dark tabs would need the opposite color (e.g., white border at the top).

Should you display people in product images?

Yes — if they convey quality (e.g., apparel, beauty, jewelry; see Hassanein & Head, 2005).

Otherwise, try removing people.

Across 10k+ photos on Instagram, travel destinations received fewer likes and reduced sales if they showed somebody in the photo (Lu et al., 2023).

Why It Works

• Lack of Ownership. It's their product. Not my product (Lu et al., 2023).
• Distracts From Products. Customers fixate on the person (Kalkstein et al., 2020).
• Contamination. Products seem inferior when other people touch them (Argo et al., 2006).

How to Apply

Humans have the potential to boost conversions because they generate positive emotions, but they often reduce conversions because they distract from the product.

But there's a solution: Imply the presence of a human (Poirier et al., 2024).

Add various cues:

• Nearby Traces. A blender next to sliced fruit.
• Slight Disturbances. A pillow that is slightly crumpled.
• Mid-Actions. A chair in mid-swing.
• Environmental Imprints. Footprints in the sand.
• Less Salient Humans. Cropped head or reflection in a mirror.

These examples can give you the emotional benefits of humans without the attentional drawbacks.

Stronger For

• Used Products. Seeing the previous owner can backfire (Kim, 2017).

Caveats

• Appearance Products. Show people if they are crucial to product quality.
• Service Providers. You can show home inspectors because they don't symbolize the customer.
• Guilty Pleasures. We feel justified buying cookies if we see other people eating them (Poor et al., 2013).
• Humans Grab Attention. They can still work in adverts.

• Argo, J. J., Dahl, D. W., & Morales, A. C. (2006). Consumer contamination: How consumers react to products touched by others. Journal of Marketing, 70(2), 81-94.
• Hassanein, K., & Head, M. (2005). The impact of infusing social presence in the web interface: An investigation across product types. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 10(2), 31-55.
• Kalkstein, D. A., Hackel, L. M., & Trope, Y. (2020). Person-centered cognition: The presence of people in a visual scene promotes relational reasoning. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 90, 104009.
• Kim, J. (2017). The ownership distance effect: the impact of traces left by previous owners on the evaluation of used goods. Marketing Letters, 28, 591-605.
• Lu, Z. Y., Jung, S., & Peck, J. (2023). It Looks Like" Theirs": When and Why Human Presence in the Photo Lowers Viewers’ Liking and Preference for an Experience Venue.
• Poor, M., Duhachek, A., & Krishnan, H. S. (2013). How images of other consumers influence subsequent taste perceptions. Journal of Marketing, 77(6), 124-139.
• Poirier, S. M., Cosby, S., Sénécal, S., Coursaris, C. K., Fredette, M., & Léger, P. M. (2024). The impact of social presence cues in social media product photos on consumers’ purchase intentions. Journal of Business Research, 185, 114932.

Should product images be isolated or contextual?

In other words, should they be depicted with an empty background? Or realistic scenario?

Show both. Isolated then contextual.

Customers prefer this sequence (Lee et al., 2024).

Why It Works

Customers buy in two stages:

1. Do I want to evaluate? While browsing a catalog, customers are choosing which products they want to assess in more detail. By showing the product — and only the product — isolated photos ease this decision by helping them compare products to each other.
2. Do I want to buy? Once customers visit a product, contextual photos help them imagine using this product.

For example, researchers tested images of clothing: isolated vs. headless vs. human:

Customers chose an isolated shirt when asked to indicate their preference.

But they chose a shirt with a human model when asked to indicate their buying intention (Bagatini et al., 2023).

Show isolated photos in early stages, yet contextual photos in later stages.

How to Apply

• Show Humans When Necessary. Humans can improve product assessments in clothing, jewelry, and appearance categories. If you don't need these quality assessments, remove humans from your images because they can reduce conversions. It feels like their product, not my product (Lu et al., 2023).
• Blur Details to Enlarge Sizes. Products seem bigger on blurred backgrounds because customers blame their heightened attention on the size of the product: "larger objects usually catch greater individual attention in daily life, so individuals tend to perceive more attention‐catching objects as larger" (Meng et al., 2022).

• Bagatini, F. Z., Rech, E., Pacheco, N. A., & Nicolao, L. (2023). Can you imagine yourself wearing this product? Embodied mental simulation and attractiveness in e-commerce product pictures. Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing, 17(3), 470-490.
• Lee, J. E., Shin, E., & Kincade, D. H. (2024). Presentation-order effect of product images on consumers’ mental imagery processing and purchase intentions. Journal of Product & Brand Management.
• Lu, Z. Y., Jung, S., & Peck, J. (2023). It Looks Like" Theirs": When and Why Human Presence in the Photo Lowers Viewers’ Liking and Preference for an Experience Venue.
• Meng, L., Kou, S., Duan, S., Jiang, Y., & Lü, K. (2022). How a blurry background in product presentation influences product size perception. Psychology & Marketing, 39(8), 1633-1645.

Men and women process information differently:

...females' processing often entails substantial, detailed elaboration of message content...males' processing is more likely to be driven by overall message themes (Meyers-Levy, & Maheswaran, 1991, p. 68)

Women prefer images that show more context.

Researchers tested this idea by showing a pair of jeans in two styles: (a) plain white background, or (b) a model wearing the jeans outside. Women preferred the contextual image, whereas men were unaffected (González, Meyer, & Toldos, 2021).

And the effect was additive: More context triggered more sales.

Follow-up studies suggested that men slightly prefer isolated backgrounds, but the effect was weaker.

• González, E. M., Meyer, J. H., & Toldos, M. P. (2021). What women want? How contextual product displays influence women’s online shopping behavior. Journal of Business Research, 123, 625-641.
• Lu, Z. Y., Jung, S., & Peck, J. (2023). It Looks Like" Theirs": When and Why Human Presence in the Photo Lowers Viewers’ Liking and Preference for an Experience Venue.
• Meyers-Levy, J., & Maheswaran, D. (1991). Exploring differences in males' and females' processing strategies. Journal of consumer research, 18(1), 63-70.

Touching a product is persuasive.

Do you sell socks? Remove parts of your packaging so that customers can feel the texture and softness. Touching allows customers to assess quality, while instilling a feeling of ownership (Peck & Shu, 2009).

Digital contexts are tougher, but sometimes you can boost conversions by overlaying an "add to cart" button on top of a product, encouraging users to touch the product image (Shen et al., 2016).

And other tactics exist:

Ease Touch Using:

• Touchscreens. iPads and tablets can satisfy the haptic need to touch, especially if you modify the screen protector. Customers preferred whichever screen texture — coarse or grooved — matched the product they were browsing (Racat et al., 2021; Hattula et al., 2023; Cano et al., 2017).
• Zooming. Close-up images can reveal haptic features (e.g., textures, softness).
• Orientation. Most people are right-handed, so any graspable elements of a product (e.g., handle) should be positioned toward the right (Elder & Krishna, 2012).
• 3D Cues. Swivel your product, puff the sides, or tilt the camera to make your product look three-dimensional (Kwon et al., 2024). Digital products are especially important because their monetary value is more subjective (Atasoy & Morewedge, 2018).
• Haptic Decoys. A flat painting feels touchable next to a small object (e.g., vase; Maille et al., 2020; Leng et al., 2022).
• Vicarious Hands. Customers simulate the ownership of hands: "observing a hand engaging in touch can increase the perception that the virtual hand is actually the consumer’s own hand... [it] increases the psychological ownership of the product" (Luangrath et al., 2022, p. 306-307).

• Argo, J. J., Dahl, D. W., & Morales, A. C. (2006). Consumer contamination: How consumers react to products touched by others. Journal of Marketing, 70(2), 81-94.
• Atasoy, O., & Morewedge, C. K. (2018). Digital goods are valued less than physical goods. Journal of consumer research, 44(6), 1343-1357.
• Elder, R. S., & Krishna, A. (2012). The “visual depiction effect” in advertising: Facilitating embodied mental simulation through product orientation. Journal of Consumer Research, 38(6), 988-1003.
• Kwon, S., Suda, T., & Nomura, T. (2024). 3D versus 2D: Effects of the number of dimensions of product images on perceptions of product size. Journal of Consumer Behaviour.
• Leng, X., Zhou, X., Wang, S., & Xiang, Y. (2022). Can visual language convey tactile experience? A study of the tactile compensation effect of visual language for online products. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 1034872.
• Luangrath, A. W., Peck, J., Hedgcock, W., & Xu, Y. (2022). Observing product touch: The vicarious haptic effect in digital marketing and virtual reality. Journal of Marketing Research, 59(2), 306-326.
• Peck, J., & Shu, S. B. (2009). The effect of mere touch on perceived ownership. Journal of consumer Research, 36(3), 434-447.
• Maille, V., Morrin, M., & Reynolds-McIlnay, R. (2020). On the other hand…: Enhancing promotional effectiveness with haptic cues. Journal of Marketing Research, 57(1), 100-117.
• Shen, H., Zhang, M., & Krishna, A. (2016). Computer interfaces and the “direct-touch” effect: Can iPads increase the choice of hedonic food?. Journal of Marketing Research, 53(5), 745-758.
• Silva, S. C., Rocha, T. V., De Cicco, R., Galhanone, R. F., & Mattos, L. T. M. F. (2021). Need for touch and haptic imagery: An investigation in online fashion shopping. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 59, 102378.

Should images be color or grayscale?

It depends. Ads for a charity event converted differently depending on its future date:

• In a few years? Grayscale ads converted better.
• In a few days? Color ads converted better.

And they replicated this effect with the launch of a hoverboard (Lee et al., 2017).

Why does it happen? Because we visualize future events in grayscale.

Researchers asked people to fill a blank drawing of a housewarming party with color. If this party was occurring in five years, people used more variations of grey because their mental imagery was less colorful (Lee et al., 2017). And fMRI studies confirmed this effect (Stillman et al., 2020).

Reduce Saturation For

• Future Purchases. Like a concert in a few months (vs. few days).
• Distant Receivers. Are customers buying gifts? Intensify color for close recipients like friends or family, and desaturate color for distant recipients like colleagues.
• Luxury Brands. Customers imagine luxury brands with more psychological distance, so they prefer these brands with more spatial distance — like standing further away. Same with grayscale images: A Tiffany watch seemed more luxurious in black-and-white because it felt further away (Wang et al., 2022; Chu et al., 2021).

Increase Saturation For

• Deadlines. Show your promotional expiration in a saturated red so that it feels closer in time.

Stronger For

• Active Imagination. This effect didn't manifest in brain patterns during passive viewing. It only happened when customers actively imagined these events (Stillman et al., 2020).

• Chu, X. Y., Chang, C. T., & Lee, A. Y. (2021). Values created from far and near: Influence of spatial distance on brand evaluation. Journal of Marketing, 85(6), 162-175.
• Lee, H., Fujita, K., Deng, X., & Unnava, H. R. (2017). The role of temporal distance on the color of future-directed imagery: A construal-level perspective. Journal of Consumer Research, 43(5), 707-725.
• Rathee, S., Taylor, C. R., & Gupta, A. (2024). The appeal of blurred imagery: Enhancing advertising and brand attitudes for luxury goods. Journal of Business Research, 182, 114795.
• Stillman, P., Lee, H., Deng, X., Unnava, H. R., & Fujita, K. (2020). Examining consumers’ sensory experiences with color: A consumer neuroscience approach. Psychology & Marketing, 37(7), 995-1007.
• Wang, Y., Wang, T., Mu, W., & Sun, Y. (2022). What is the glamor of black‐and‐white? The effect of color design on evaluations of luxury brand ads. Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 21(5), 973-986.

Do you show a collage of images?

Should it be clean or messy?

It depends:

• New customers prefer organized collages.
• Existing customers prefer messy collages.

Why It Works

In physics, "entropy" is the amount of disorder.

Over time, entropy only increases. Stephen Hawking said:

You may see a cup of tea fall off a table and break into pieces on the floor ... but you will never see the cup gather itself back together and jump back on the table (A Brief History of Time).

This law of entropy has been drilled into your brain: You prefer ads that depict the future in a pristine and untouched condition because your brain is conceptualizing the future with this cleanliness (Biliciler et al., 2022).

How to Apply

• Adapt Collages. Consider an email to subscribers. New subscribers haven’t “touched” your content yet. An organized collage of your content should perform better in the header of a confirmation or welcome email because they are conceptualizing your content in a pristine condition. However, a messy collage should perform better in the header of a regular campaign or remarketing ad after these people have interacted with your content.
• Insert Any Entropy. It's not just collages. An ad for modern kitchen tools converted better with a fully intact egg, whereas an ad for traditional cooking tools converted better with a broken egg:

• Biliciler, G., Raghunathan, R., & Ward, A. F. (2022). Consumers as naive physicists: how visual entropy cues shift temporal focus and influence product evaluations. Journal of Consumer Research, 48(6), 1010-1031.

People are judged on stereotypes.

For example:

• Heavy people seem friendly (e.g., jolly).
• Tall and skinny people seem competent.

Products inherit traits if they resemble these body shapes.

When participants were asked to give products (e.g., lamps, perfumes) to other people, they chose round products for heavier recipients because their brain confused this shared roundness (Vallen et al., 2019).

Therefore, products inherit certain traits:

• Round products seem friendly and emotional
• Skinny products seem competent and rational

Indeed, one study confirmed that round shampoos converted better with emotional benefits (e.g. soothing, moist), while skinny bottles converted better with rational benefits (e.g., remove dandruff; Shi et al., 2023).

Most shampoos on Target aligned with these ideas:

Same with angularity. Rationality is described as sharp in everyday language:

• Smart people are sharp
• Useful statements make a point
• Clever people cut through BS

Sensory metaphors emerge in language because they reveal the cognitive skeletons that help us imagine these abstract ideas (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980).

How to Apply

• Launch Round Brands for Emotional Customers. Or skinny, angular brands for rational customers.
• Increase Border Radiuses. Emotional brands should display round corners in their images (Zheng et al., 2024).

Pricing Applications

• Charge Round Prices for Round Products. In a pilot survey, I found that a hammer was preferred with a round price of $10 (instead of a cheaper price of $9.37).
• Charge Sharp Prices for Rational Products. A calculator was preferred at $39.72 or $40.29 (vs. $40; Wadhwa & Zhang, 2015; though see Harms et al., 2018).

• Harms, C., Genau, H. A., Meschede, C., & Beauducel, A. (2018). Does it actually feel right? A replication attempt of the rounded price effect. Royal Society open science, 5(4), 171127.
• Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). The metaphorical structure of the human conceptual system. Cognitive science, 4(2), 195-208.
• Shi, B., Mai, Y., & Mo, M. (2023). Chubby or thin? Investigation of (in) congruity between product body shapes and internal warmth/competence. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 29(1), 95.
• Vallen, B., Sridhar, K., Rubin, D., Ilyuk, V., Block, L. G., & Argo, J. J. (2019). Shape‐and trait‐congruency: Using appearance‐based cues as a basis for product recommendations. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 29(2), 271-284.
• Wadhwa, M., & Zhang, K. (2015). This number just feels right: The impact of roundedness of price numbers on product evaluations. Journal of Consumer Research, 41(5), 1172-1185.
• Zheng, C., Qian, F., Song, J., & Wang, H. (2024). Make the photo in good shape: The matching effect of photo shapes and donation appeals on donation intentions. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 77, 103657.

Most people are familiar with the beauty bias.

Beautiful people seem credible, honest, and trustworthy. Something "feels good" about them, and we attribute this impression to their personality.

So, what about ugly faces — wouldn't they seem inferior? Actually, no.

Across 10k+ Airbnb listings, hosts sold more occupancies when their photo was (a) visible, (b) high-quality, and (c) smiling. But most interesting, sales increased for beautiful and ugly faces (Peng et al., 2020).

Similar effects happened in 5miles, a peer-to-peer marketplace.

In both platforms, average-looking people sold the least.

Why It Works

• Stereotypes. Beauty and intelligence seem mutually exclusive (e.g., dumb blonde). If beauty is low, we allocate these credits to competence. Ugliness premiums might disappear when they're self-inflicted (e.g., sloppiness) because they would no longer boost competence.
• Symbolic Confusion. Want beautiful products? You prefer beautiful sellers because you confuse this facial beauty for the product. Same with ugly sellers. Need a complex service? Your brain will be seeking a complex and disfluent stimulus. In one study, customers who evaluated a complex service preferred a font that was difficult to read because it felt right (Thompson & Ince, 2013). Indeed, ugly faces were most effective for technical products (e.g., electronics)., while beautiful faces were most effective for visual products (e.g., bags).

How to Apply

• Exaggerate Facial Expression. Show any emotion — happiness, surprise, laugher. Even sadness. All of these emotions converted better than a neutral face (Zhang et al., 2024).

• Peng, L., Cui, G., Chung, Y., & Zheng, W. (2020). The faces of success: Beauty and ugliness premiums in e-commerce platforms. Journal of Marketing, 84(4), 67-85.
• Thompson, D. V., & Ince, E. C. (2013). When disfluency signals competence: The effect of processing difficulty on perceptions of service agents. Journal of Marketing Research, 50(2), 228-240.
• Zhang, N., Fan, X., He, L., Cheng, X., Zhang, L., & Liu, R. (2024). The impact of the Seller's facial image on consumer purchase behavior in peer-to-peer accommodation platforms. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 80, 103932.

Bundled items are valued differently.

Push attention toward whichever item is strongest.

For example, customers prefer focal items on the left because they view this location first (Mittelman & Andrade, 2017).

Why It Works

• Reading Directionality. Customers imagine themselves consuming each item. If they read from left to right, they start imagining the leftmost item. Hmm, not appealing? They feel lackluster emotions, discouraging them from evaluating the subsequent items.

Stronger For

• 2 Items. I suspect the position effect is weaker with 3+ items because of the central fixation bias (i.e., people would view the middle option first).
• Variety Bundles. Like size, flavor, color, etc. Customers fixate on the first item they see because they're not looking for a particular item.

• Mittelman, M., & Andrade, E. B. (2017). Product order affects consumer preferences for variety bundles. European Journal of Marketing, 51(5/6), 869-884.

What's the optimal angle for product images?

It depends. Do customers want:

• ...a powerful product?
• ...to feel powerful?

Consider movies.

Upward angles convey power.

Downward angles convey a lack of power.

Products seem powerful with upward angles. Even mundane products like white rice (Van Rompay et al., 2012).

So upward angles must be better, right?

Not necessarily. Sometimes you can boost sales by depicting products in a weaker light because it shifts power toward the customer.

For example, customers prefer downward angles of anthropomorphic products because it feels like they're looking down at this entity from a high location, which makes them feel dominant over it (Xuan, Chen, Lin, & Huang, 2023).

So which angles are better for which products?

Downward Angles:

• Easy to Use. Products will seem easier to control (e.g., self-assembly)
• Portable. Products will seem lighter or smaller (e.g., travel kits)
• Sustainable. Products will seem soft or natural (e.g., cleaning solution)

Upward Angles:

• Effective. Products will seem powerful (e.g., lotion)
• Luxury. Products will seem high status (e.g., handbag)
• Experts. Products (or people) will seem authoritative (e.g., influencer)

Consider these listings for a portable washing machine.

Most customers want portability.

In the downward angle, customers feel like they're looking down at the machine. So it feels smaller (and thus portable). Exactly what their brain is seeking.

Customers who want a powerful machine would be drawn toward the machine with an upward angle because their brain is monitoring for traits that convey power.

Why It Works

As children, we look up at adults who exert power over us.

Two concepts — UP and POWER — repeatedly fired together in our brain, binding these two ideas. Today, activating one concept will activate the other (see The Tangled Mind).

And these ideas are reinforced every day. Look down. You'll probably see objects that you can grasp, manipulate, and control.

Other Takeaways

• Works With Any Location. It occurs with products on a low or high shelf. Or the location on a webpage.
• Applies to People. Subjects look better when photographed from above, but this angle might sacrifice their perceived authority and expertise.
• Use Slight Upward Angles. Don't overdo it. Products are typically viewed from above, so downward angles will be more familiar. Keep any angles within the confines of a typical viewpoint.

• Xuan, C., Chen, R., Lin, S., & Huang, H. (2023). Looking Up or Down? The Effects of Camera Angle on Evaluations of Anthropomorphized Products in Advertisements. Journal of Advertising, 1-19.
• Van Rompay, T. J., De Vries, P. W., Bontekoe, F., & Tanja‐Dijkstra, K. (2012). Embodied product perception: Effects of verticality cues in advertising and packaging design on consumer impressions... Psychology & Marketing, 29(12), 919-928.

Most products are multi-sensory.

Consider wine. It has color, fizz, fragrance, texture, and other traits besides taste.

Well, these sensory traits are embedded in the neural wiring of your concept for wine (Barsalou, 1999). By including all sensory traits in your product imagery:

• Your wine will be activated more intensely.
• Intense activation strengthens emotions.
• Stronger emotions motivate purchases.

How to Apply

• Display Scented Objects. In Walmart’s catalog, only 27% of scented products actually show the scented object in the product image (yet these products earn higher ratings; Sharma & Estes, 2024).
• Enlarge the Trigger. Add more flowers, etc. (Lyu & Huang, 2024).
• Strengthen the Trigger. Not all triggers are equal. Cleaning products are preferred with images of sliced lemons because you can see the inside juices, so you feel a stronger sensation (Sharma & Estes, 2024). Perhaps you could bolster cinnamon sticks with ground cinnamon (which exudes a stronger aroma).

• Add Videos With Sounds. Blenders and knives seem more powerful when they emit loud sounds (Ringler et al., 2021; Løkke‐Andersen et al., 2022).
• Include Sensory Words. Words like crumble and juicy can activate the senses more than images. In sponsored videos on TikTok, each additional sensory word was associated with 11k more likes and comments (Silva et al., 2021; Cascio et al., 2023).

• Barsalou, L. W. (1999). Perceptual symbol systems. Behavioral and brain sciences, 22(4), 577-660.
• Cascio Rizzo, G. L., Berger, J., De Angelis, M., & Pozharliev, R. (2023). How sensory language shapes influencer’s impact. Journal of Consumer Research, 50(4), 810-825.
• Chen, Y. C., & Spence, C. (2010). When hearing the bark helps to identify the dog: Semantically-congruent sounds modulate the identification of masked pictures. Cognition, 114(3), 389-404.
• Hattula, J. D., Herzog, W., & Dhar, R. (2023). The impact of touchscreen devices on consumers’ choice confidence and purchase likelihood. Marketing Letters, 34(1), 35-53.
• Løkke‐Andersen, C. B., Wang, Q. J., & Giacalone, D. (2022). User experience design approaches for accommodating high “need for touch” consumers in ecommerce. Journal of sensory studies, 37(2), e12727.
• Lyu, M., & Huang, Q. (2024). Visual elements in advertising enhance odor perception and purchase intention: The role of mental imagery in multi-sensory marketing. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 78, 103752.
• Ringler, C., Sirianni, N. J., & Christenson, B. (2021). The power of consequential product sounds. Journal of Retailing, 97(2), 288-300.
• Sharma, V., & Estes, Z. (2024). Seeing is smelling: Pictures improve product evaluations by evoking olfactory imagery. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 41(2), 282-307.
• Silva, S. C., Rocha, T. V., De Cicco, R., Galhanone, R. F., & Mattos, L. T. M. F. (2021). Need for touch and haptic imagery: An investigation in online fashion shopping. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 59, 102378.

Color often implies strength.

Saturated colors are typically used for:

• Storms on maps
• Warning signs
• Large amounts in graphs

Not surprisingly, researchers noticed that product images are more saturated for products that convey strength or potency (e.g., strong, powerful, effective; Labrecque et al., 2024).

And they confirmed a causal effect: More saturation? Stronger product.

For example, students used less hand sanitizer with a vibrant color because they believed a smaller amount was needed (Labrecque et al., 2024).

How to Apply

• Adjust Any Color. Need to convey a strong product? Increase the saturation of products, packaging, or backgrounds. A gray coffee maker seemed more effective with a saturated background.

Caveats: Reduce Saturation For

• Natural. A facial cleanser seemed gentler in a dull color (Labrecque et al., 2024).
• Eco-Friendly. Dull colors seem untouched by artificial dyes (Pichierri & Pino, 2023).
• Embarrassing. Saturation grabs attention, so customers believe that more people will look at them with a highly saturated product. They prefer private or sensitive products with dull colors (e.g., condoms were preferred in gray packaging; Zhang et al., 2025).

• Labrecque, L. I., Sohn, S., Seegebarth, B., & Ashley, C. (2024). EXPRESS: Color Me Effective: the Impact of Color Saturation on Perceptions of Potency and Product Efficacy. Journal of Marketing, 00222429241296392.
• Pichierri, M., & Pino, G. (2023). Less saturated, more eco‐friendly: Color saturation and consumer perception of product sustainability. Psychology & Marketing, 40(9), 1830-1849.
• Zhang, X., Wang, J., Gong, X., & Cheng, S. (2025). Avoiding attention: The impact of embarrassment on preference for low-saturation design. Journal of Business Research, 186, 114900.

Show the inside layers of your product.

Across multiple studies, these images boosted click-through rates and willingness to pay (Kang et al., 2024).

Examples:

Why do they work?

Customers imagine these layers merging into a unit, which increases their confidence in the performance of the product. It's called simulated assemblage.

But layers aren't enough. You also need space between them:

You need spacing so that viewers can imagine the convergence.

Requirements

• Rational Products. Layered images boost performance, so your product needs a functional purpose that can benefit from this enhancement. A wireless speaker seemed functionality superior with layered images, but not aesthetically superior (Kang et al., 2024).

Stronger For

• Concrete Thinkers. A separate study validated the effect and showed that it's stronger for customers who are focused on details (Cheng & Zhang, 2023).

• Cheng, P., & Zhang, C. (2023). Show me insides: Investigating the influences of product exploded view on consumers’ mental imagery, comprehension, attitude, and purchase intention. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 70, 103168.
• Kang, S. Y., Kim, J., & Lakshmanan, A. (2024). Anatomical Depiction: How Showing a Product’s Inner Structure Shapes Product Valuations. Journal of Marketing, 0(0).

Responding to negative reviews can help in various ways.

• Hotel bookings increased by 60% (Ye, Gu, Chen, & Law, 2008)
• Ratings increased 20% (McIlroy, Shang, Ali, & Hassan, 2015)
• Review volume increased by 17% (Xie et al., 2016)

Yet less than 4 percent of businesses respond to negative reviews (Xie et al., 2016). That gives you an opportunity to stand out.

• McIlroy, S., Shang, W., Ali, N., & Hassan, A. E. (2015). Is it worth responding to reviews? studying the top free apps in google play. IEEE Software, 34(3), 64-71.
• Xie, K. L., Zhang, Z., Zhang, Z., Singh, A., & Lee, S. K. (2016). Effects of managerial response on consumer eWOM and hotel performance: Evidence from TripAdvisor. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management.
• Ye, Q., Gu, B., Chen, W., & Law, R. (2008). Measuring the value of managerial responses to online reviews-A natural experiment of two online travel agencies.