Company

 this week, you might notice something similar on the homepage. And you would be right - 

 just got featured to be one of the top four apps that were selected by a jury.

Staff picks are the first four apps that a Shopify merchant sees when they look for any app for their ecommerce store. It is a curated collection of apps that are featured for a week, potentially seen by many merchants around the World.

To be selected, Atlasmic reflected those key responsibilities:

Atlasmic solves a niche problem for merchants (Live Chat, Marketing and Sales)

The app met Shopify’s public app requirements

Atlasmic has a good track record of offering excellent customer support

Being featured as a Staff Pick means holding a huge responsibility for the quality we provide. It is a true honour to onboard more sellers on our platform and make sure they have a seamless experience integrating Atlasmic into their flow. It not only adds to our mission to provide better customer service for ecommerce stores worldwide, but it is also an achievement for a company.

The answer is simple. Without your impact, this could not be achieved all alone. The trust we got from you, early insights, feedback sessions helped to grow Atlasmic as it is today. From the experience standpoint, the Staff Pick listing should not affect your experience with Atlasmic and the customer support reply times should stay the same.

When we started Atlasmic, the main mission was to help prepare businesses to strive in a modern, high difficulty competitors background, and prepare them for an excellent customer service monolith. This journey is already amazing, new challenges have led us to faster technology integration, many companies trusted Atlasmic from day one, we expanded our blog to be quite an interesting one! We can’t wait to announce the new features we already have on our testing servers (sneak peek - did you ever wonder how cool it would be to let customers solve their order tracking questions in one click?). Let’s stay connected!

On a mission to continue to provide a seamless customer experience.

Atlasmic - Shopify Staff Pick of the Week 21 | Atlasmic Blog

Atlasmic - Shopify Staff Pick of the Week 21

Marketing

In the ever-evolving landscape of digital marketing, the emergence of conversational marketing has revolutionized how businesses interact with their customers. Unlike traditional methods, this strategy emphasizes real-time, one-on-one interactions between marketers and customers, primarily through live chat services. The aim is to foster a more personal connection with customers, enhancing their experience and satisfaction.

The Scientific Insight: Humor's Role in Engagement and Conversion

A groundbreaking study titled "Should Your Chatbot Joke? Driving Conversion Through the Humour of a Chatbot Greeting" by Vaida Lekaviciute, Vilte Auruskeviciene, and James Reardon, explores the impactful role of humor in chatbot interactions. While the study focuses on chatbots, its findings are remarkably relevant to conversational marketing in a broader sense. The researchers discovered that incorporating humor into chatbot greetings significantly enhances customer engagement, emotional attachment, and conversion-to-lead rates. This is a revelation for businesses utilizing live chat services, as the principles of engaging customers effectively through humor can be similarly applied.

Read the full research here for deeper insights in the 

Applying Research Insights to Live Chat Services

While the research primarily delves into chatbots, its implications for live chat services in conversational marketing are undeniable. Here’s how:

: Just like with chatbots, using humor in live chat interactions can significantly increase customer engagement. A light-hearted, humorous approach can make conversations more memorable and enjoyable, encouraging customers to spend more time interacting with your brand.

: The study shows that humor can foster emotional attachments. In live chat scenarios, humor can create a friendly and relatable image of your brand, thus deepening the customer’s emotional connection with your business.

: Importantly, the research highlights that humor can lead to higher conversion-to-lead rates. By applying this in live chat interactions, businesses can potentially see increased customer acquisition and sales.

As we move forward, the integration of humor in conversational marketing, particularly in live chat services, presents a unique opportunity for businesses to stand out. It’s not just about responding to customer queries; it's about creating a delightful experience that resonates emotionally with customers. This approach can lead to stronger customer relationships, higher engagement, and increased conversions.

The fusion of conversational marketing with strategic humor, as suggested by the research of Lekaviciute, Auruskeviciene, and Reardon, offers a new horizon for customer interactions. Businesses should consider these insights to enhance their live chat services, making every customer conversation not just informative but also engaging and memorable.

Embrace the power of humor in your conversational marketing strategy and transform how you connect with your customers.

Learn how a witty opening line can convert anonymous visitors into potential clients.

Power of Humor in Conversational Marketing

The COB and the EOD are two abbreviations used in trading and business to indicate two certain events. Whilst their meanings are different, some people confuse them quite often. COB stands for the 

. In this article, we will explain their meaning and when to use which.

The COB meaning is, as we distinguished it - Close of Business. This term was popularized by stock traders and trading since it indicates the close of business (work ceases for the day) with stock exchanges, usually at 4 PM (UTC).

The time of COB usually refers to the time at which the work or service ends. So, for example, if you work from 9 AM to 5 PM, your COB is 5 PM.

If we talk about trading, the trader is allowed to place orders that will be executed in the following business session (the next business day). The same applies to any other industry. If you place an order after the close of business, you need to wait until the business reopens, for it to be completed.

The EOD meaning is the end of the day, which means that the business day has ended. This term came into use for collaboration among London's financial institutions but is widely known all over the world.

The EOD also refers to market or futures contracts expiring at the end of the business session (normally that's 5 PM). The current official time now counts as 24 hours.

It is also comparable to COB (Close of Business), which means the end of a working day (17:00 hours). Due to this comparison, there can be a lot of confusion as to where some misunderstandings and confusion can come from. Since, in business, time is considered the most valuable resource, poor time management or missed deadlines due to miscommunication and the confusion of terms are considered hugely malicious. If you're late, you can lose business which harms your business. It is in your best interest to meet deadlines and not miss them due to the confusion of certain abbreviations.

In the shortest way possible - you should use COB if the event you're trying to determine/notify about is happening at the end of a business day. Or if you want something delivered before the end of business, for example.

You should use EOD when an event occurs at the end of the trading session or when a contract expires at that time.

There is one more thing that needs to be mentioned - COB doesn't have a fixed time of the day since it can vary from country to country. On the other hand, EOD always occurs at 5 PM London Time (UTC). End-of-Day is more of a British abbreviation, whilst Close-of-Business is more of an American term. But, if the sender of the request isn't from the UK or London, the EOD meaning refers to the sender's end of day and can vary from country to country.

PRO TIP: If you're having trouble understanding what time is 

they're referring to, exactly, you can ask for additional clarification.

You might also wonder why we mention London so often? Well, that's because this is the place of the Universal Time Zone, and since it was the first place to adopt such a practice of labeling times, it's used as a standard.

If you ever need to differentiate between them or use both in your speech - remember that COB ends a particular business while EOD is the end of all trading sessions.

How are COB and EOD important to E-Commerce?

For online shops, the COB is a very important factor in their work since it's used to determine when they should send out package delivery. This is a major concern for every online shop owner since, if they fail to meet another's deadline and delay the goods, profits can drop.

As you can see, close to half of your customers will consider shipping times essential and crucial to their shopping experience.

For instance, if a person makes an order at 4 pm before COB and the online shop just delays it by one hour, the customer might receive the goods much later, since the business will be only to dispatch it the next day. This means that they'll be disappointed and likely - less willing to make another purchase anytime soon.

For business owners, EOD is also important because of international and financial transactions. If you wish to make any kind of business arrangement with other individuals or enterprises, you need to know their EOD to be sure your deals go through and that the supply chain isn’t disrupted.

To conclude, COB and EOD are abbreviations used in business to inform others that a certain event happened or an order was placed, or to also inform of a deadline. COB refers to the closing of business for the day, while EOD stands for End of Day. Close-of-business is usually used in the business world while EOD is more of an abbreviation of traders.

However, there are times when both abbreviations are used to mean the same thing - the end of a working day or trading sessions. The most important thing is to always clarify what the time that is being referred to means, especially if you're talking to a British or American person who uses these abbreviations, but even more so if you're dealing with someone from abroad.

Learn about two abbreviations that are often used in business.

COB vs EOD: Key Differences and When to Use Them

Business Growth

before? Well if you aren’t fully aware of what that is, be aware that it’s only the more appropriate and broader term, used to define passive income. In the world of today, generating passive (i.e. residual) income is one of the hottest topics for individuals of all ages and social statuses. In this blog, we’ll be sharing six ideas for generating residual income so that everyone has an awareness of the variety of methods that can be used to make money.

First of all - a little bit about what classifies as residual income

Investopedia and most glossaries would define 

as one that isn’t dependent on the manual work that a person has to do. In short and simple terms, it’s money that you can make whilst doing absolutely nothing. The concept is alluring and thus people are investing more and more time and money to find ways for generating residual income.

Residual income isn’t dependent on the amount of work you put in. It’s money that’s being made without your personal involvement.

A widespread financial goal for modern entrepreneurs is often to live off of passive income and retire early. Realistically speaking, for most people, residual income could comprise 20-30% of their total income (passive + active). If you’re lucky enough, you can make even more cash each week or month and gradually reduce your dependency from a 9 to 5 job, and focus on your true passions like a hobby, your family, charitable work, etc.

It’s sort of like a modern version of what was once 

. Currently, people are envisioning early retirement and comfortably living off of residual income sources.

The easiest way to invest is to put 30% of your monthly or weekly salary into the S&P 500 ETF. Since its creation in the early 1980s, the fund has generated 3.7 thousand percent returns and is considered to be the benchmark for how an investment opportunity should work.

Ignoring the abnormal dips during the pandemic and at the start of 2019, an investment into the S&P over five years would’ve made you a 110+% return on your investment. That’s upwards of 22% per annum which is an astounding figure. This is a deal that you just can’t look past and it’s not like the S&P has only just emerged. It’s the cornerstone of a portfolio for huge investment titans like Warren Buffet and many more. But, this form of investment might only be the 2nd best way to make 

through investment in the stock market. The top option is usually investing in dividend stocks. Over time, these generate so much passive income and gain (regardless of how the stock is performing) that the investment is totally worth it.

For example, you invest $5,000 into Coca-Cola stock. Let’s round out and say you get 90 stocks for that amount. Each of these stocks will earn a dividend share. The dividend yield is 3.51% for Coca-Cola. After ten years, your investment would double in value without any additional reinvestment mostly through dividends, as you’d earn approximately $180 the first year, but double that amount after just a few years. If you’d were to reinvest capital gains or buy additional shares, besides seeing the rising stock value, you’d make so much money through dividends over time that it’s really worth the while.

It’s usually said that if you rent out a house that you’ve just bought, the market rent price (monthly) should allow you to break even after 20-25 years, depending on the market itself. However, if you’re renting out through services like airbnb or similar ones and prioritise short-term rent, you could potentially reduce the period it takes to break even or even make a profit from your investment in much less time.

More and more people purchase apartments and convert them into airbnb rentals as a limited-time investment opportunity. This is usually done when someone buys up very expensive apartments in prestigious locations. For example, you can purchase a flat in places like West Village NYC, Notting Hill or Chelsea in London, Montmartre in Paris, amongst others. Besides generating 

in the four or even five figures monthly, these properties could also make you great returns after you sell them in 10 years.

For example, if you were to look at the main measurement for housing prices in the US - S&P Case-Shiller Home Price Index for New York, you can see that the general perceived and sale value of real estate properties throughout New York City have increased by ~17%. Each year, including recessions, real-estate prices in the NYC area have grown by 3.5%, so this is a golden opportunity to invest in real-estate and earn money without doing anything.

The S&P Home Price Index for New York shows just how stable and how amazing the housing market has been in the past decade, especially after the first waves of the COVID pandemic.

Even if you have as little as $100 to spare, P2P loans are a great way to make some extra-cash both short and long-term. Whether you invest cash or crypto, peer-to-peer lending solutions have been on the rise in this past decade.

Regular, cash-backed loans are very easy to get into. Depending on your location, the legal requirements and formalities might be a bit different, but this is usually how it goes.

You set up an account in a P2P lending platform.

You deposit cash from your bank into your account on the platform.

You scout through the available loan applications and crowdfund or single handedly finance a loan.

You know all of the interest rates before funding and/or loaning.

The customer pays back the loan in instalments and you get your initial investment back + interest.

A quick overview on how P2P lending works.

Usually, making significant gains requires tremendous investment or patience through a long-term strategy. But if you were to start with just $500 and contribute additional $300 each month, lending it out for a 14% interest rate, after three years your investment would be worth $13.8k+, whilst your additional cash contributions were only around $10.8k. Over 10 years, this could have doubled your initial investment through mere capital gains.

However, it might seem that the best way to make money in this field is by moving away from cash into crypto. These loans offer much higher interest rates whilst being short-term. Furthermore, you can loan out your assets for 2 years, earn hefty interest and once the value has risen high enough, sell off your assets for a profit.

If you have some cash saved up, use it for down payment or payments on some new, mid to premium level cars. Look for nice optional extras and an attractive interior design. For example, let’s say you buy one Toyota Prius and two BMW 5 series saloons. You end up spending $4,000 per month on their leases (just an example).

Turo is a great app for renting unique vehicles or renting out cars whilst avoiding major car rental companies.

A new Prius rents out for around $70 per day whilst a 5 series BMW could go for $200-400 per day. Even if you rent out your cars for 14 days in a month (less than a half), you’d be generating their leases plus a ~$1,000 extra (20% return). And if you can source unique cars, rent them out in popular locations and provide decent-enough marketing, you can have a source of 

After your cars become higher-mileage or just outdated, sell them for their remainder value and lease out new cars. It’s really simple.

Did you know that in the U.S. alone, people spend close to 20 billion dollars annually just on tool rental? If you have tools or household items that could be valuable to others, look for ways to make money whilst you’re not using them. What’s good to rent out?

Lawnmowers, power tools, pretty much anything you can use in construction or car repair, coolers, tents, lights, sound equipment, etc. If an item is of large value, and people need it for a day or two, buying it is just not worth it. From the point of view of a customer, it’s better to just rent it out for a one or two day period and spend $50 or 200$ instead of $1,000 or $5,000 for example.

You can list your items on Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist or your local ad or dedicated rent websites. There’s usually very little involvement from the owner necessary. Place the ad, renew it each week or so and just take calls and bring out the tool or the equipment to your yard or to the door. Take half of the money (or the deposit) after they pick it up and half of it after they return it. Sign a contract if the tool is of high value.

For the final idea, let’s list something that is widely known yet far from wholly implemented. Many of you are aware of the concept of dropshipping and how easy it is to make money through it. However, a lot of people are still hesitant to spend even $300 or $500 to launch an almost fully automated dropshipping store.

Dropshipping is very easy to understand. You act as a middleman between a manufacturer or the low-margin seller and a customer. You source out products for a low price, let’s say $20. You market them and brand them, selling for $50 each. The customer pays you $50, you pay the $20 to the manufacturer and they ship it directly to the buyer. Keep the profit whilst maintaining no stock

The more you sell, the better off your business is. However, the largest concern for dropshipping business is having good customer support. Well, you can automate it with dedicated plugins. 

 can be easily integrated with Shopify, allowing you to automate upwards of 60% of customer enquiries.

Once your shop is up and running, you should promote it on social media (mainly Facebook, Instagram and TikTok) to generate leads and paying customers. Without any significant involvement you can generate 

 anywhere from $200 upwards of five figures each month.

So, here are the six most accessible ways to generate residual or passive income for yourself. Don’t be hesitant to try out new things and to explore new possibilities with free capital. Even $200 is enough these days to start your business. Don’t be afraid to take financial commitments and get things like a lease or loan for vehicles or real-estate. If you can rent it out, these rental properties or automobiles can return their value and then some. Also, look into what you can do from your home, like renting out tools or starting a dropshipping store.

Hope this helped and we’ll see you soon with our next blogposts!

Discover income ideas that don't require your involvement.

What Is Residual Income? 6 Residual Income Ideas

Ecommerce

Stats and common sense should tell you straight away - good visuals and good product photos are the gateways to making more sales. If you want to sell, you have to take and post quality visuals of your products. But how can one take and produce high-quality photos for their online store? Well, you’re in luck, if you’re looking for the answer because, in this article, we will be focusing on tips, tricks, and techniques of 

First - try to understand what makes a great product photo?

Before you try and publish anything, either spend some time scouting the web, or prepare some mock-up shots and do a focus group test.

Each product and each brand is different, hence, there isn’t one single way to make right or great photos for your products. However, there are some general tips, tricks, and ideas which you can employ, in order to show off your goods from the best angles and accentuate the strengths without showing off the weaknesses.

If you haven’t got the time or desire to focus on 

, you can just scout some local pros and have them do the job. However, if you’re just starting dropshipping or ecommerce, it’s much better to get maybe even a basic understanding to know these things. They might help you realize a vision or showcase the product from an angle that best represents your own brand and its ideas.

For example, have you noticed how the burgers in McDonald’s ad boards look significantly better than what you’re served? That’s not just clever lighting and careful attention to detail. Sometimes, to make food look good, the ad people don’t use real food at all. They might even replace meat or bread with plastic lookalikes to have a more aesthetically pleasing visual. There are also other tricks that advertisers use.

Yes, sometimes you have to really think outside of the box to make good photos which encourage sales. You have to try different things with your target audiences and see what kinds of pictures they will respond to, best.

Nowadays, having the newest iPhone or an Android phone with a good enough camera could do the trick. These new phones can produce photos with very high resolution which means that you can get away without needing to buy a dedicated camera.

Some studio lights or take photos in a space with sufficient natural light

Access to a photo editing tool or software

You only need a tripod that has an adjustable height and tilts angle. These can be bought for under $20 on Amazon. However, if you have a camera, it might need a special or unique tripod that can cost up to 5 or even 10 times as much, but if you snap pictures with your smartphone, 20-30 bucks should be enough.

If your products aren’t too big, a simple 5x7 foot (approx. 1.5x2.1m) backdrop should be enough. On Amazon, you can find them for under $15-20 as well.

These are more expensive and usually start from $45 per unit. You’re likely going to need 2 of them to illuminate your products evenly from two sides. Let’s say you get a slightly better option for $60 per unit and pick up two units.

The bounce is cheaper and goes for around $20-$30, so let’s say you’re going to spend $25.

Now if you really want to save money, you can pick up a table from a yard sale or from a Craigslist ad for less than $50. The only important thing is for the table to be big enough and level, so you can set the scene.

A lot of options are free but you can license Photoshop from Adobe at under $20 per month.

The total cost of good product photo equipment

So, to sum up, you’ll need to spend around $250 to get your in-house, beginner photo studio ready. You can, of course, rent a lot of this equipment, but the investment, compared to the potential benefit, is so small, and the freedom that you get with owning your own equipment is super big.

So, once you have the equipment ready, it’s time to move on to aligning the perfect shot. Remember, you’re spending time, money, and effort because it’s worth it. Stats show that 90+% of consumers consider the visual appearance of the product crucial in influencing their decision to buy.

Now that everything is set up, place the backdrop, level it out, clean it (if there’s dust) and align the shot so that the product is dead centre of your lens. You want the shooting area to be as fuss-free as possible. Of course, you can add in things for decoration like magazines for the background, colourful napkins, pop-art boxes, or other items that might enrich the composition. However, if your e-shop template and the whole design is minimalistic, you’ll never go wrong by keeping 

 clean and focusing solely on the product.

Set up the lights and try to avoid shadows that obstruct the view or are too visible. Take a few pics and instantly connect your photo camera or smartphone with a laptop or PC to see how those pictures come out on a larger screen.

Your table should be as close to the window as possible. You shouldn’t intersect the shadow from the windowsill for maximum clarity. The best compositions tend to be when the table is aligned to be at a 90-degree angle with the table. Keep in mind that only your studio and support lights should be on. If the main ceiling or other lights are visible, it can disrupt the entire aesthetic of the shot. Direct sunlight is bad either. You want natural light or adjustable studio lights.

If the window is behind the shot, the natural light can add a dramatic effect. This is great for tech items or something artsy.

Don’t forget to shoot multiple angles of your product so that the customer can browse and view different pics to get even more attracted to the product.

Lighting - one of (if not the) most important aspect

Good lighting can make a photo and poor lighting can break it. If you don’t believe it, think about the times when you go into the changing room of a clothing store. Your appearance in the mirror, especially up-close, can be unflattering, to say the least. However, once you’re taking a selfie, you can play around with the angles and other settings, to make yourself look as good as possible. That’s due to the alignment of the object (you) with regard to the source of light. And it’s super important in every picture.

Some technical knowledge and products are necessary, in order to produce quality shots of your products. But reaching a level that is sufficient for decent photos isn’t as difficult as you might think.

First off, have something that you can use to modify and dim/brighten/adjust the lights. Smart LED lights are a great solution but they’re expensive. Up-and-coming photographers can recommend umbrellas that can be expanded and dispersed on-demand and cost a lot less to own. Second of all, it’s advisable to have no less than two lights that will be placed off-camera. This means any two lights that aren’t connected to your camera (hence, flash doesn’t count).

Once again we have to mention the lights themselves. You can experiment with the angles, but yet another technique you can try is having two lights, set quite high, looking down on the shot from 45 degrees angles, in opposing corners. This way you reduce the length of the shadows. Also, adjust the light so that the backlight is slightly brighter than the front light.

Here are two images of similar products. The left one uses natural light and the right one has artificial lights set up. As you can see, the left image is a bit more rugged, has a colder colour palette.

So, with this example in mind, there are usually two ways to go about lighting your product photo. Photographers insist on using only one form of lighting. If you mix the two together, you risk making the shot look off.

. It’s what you get outside, from the sun. Actually, it is the sun, since it’s the only source of natural light that we can get on our planet. Sun produces a very soft light which is unique and very difficult to replicate, especially if you’re taking pictures outdoors.

Natural light has its own limitations on 

. You can’t increase the lighting intensity or change the look, you have to work with whatever you have. There are also time constrictions. If you’re working indoors, you have to align the shot so that the light shines from a particular angle and won’t disrupt the shot. Since the sun moves throughout the day, if you take multiple picture sets, you’ll have to adjust your shot over time.

Product pictures should be done with natural lighting if you take them outdoors. Don’t try to add artificial lighting to an outdoor composition. This would just ruin it. If you also add a person to the shot (i.e. a model), try to mimic the natural light look or do it with a natural light altogether. Experts also suggest using natural light when you want to focus on the atmosphere just as much as on the centrepiece or if the product isn’t just a small piece (for example a large decoration, etc.).

. This is any form of light source that isn’t the sun. Your LED lamps, candles, fire, bulbs, and anything in between are artificial sources of light. The best thing about it is that you can do many adjustments and control the intensity, tone, and overall vibe of this form of lighting. Artificial lights are also called 

. That’s because as opposed to the soft natural sunlight, they provide a more focused lighting effect. Artificial lighting should be used in cases where you want to highlight something, express a certain mood or feel.

Whether you’re using a smartphone or a dedicated camera to snap product pictures, make sure that you are aware of the possible setting changes. These settings are present for a reason. Automatic and AI-based colour correction tools don’t always do the best job. If you want to have great product photos which boost sales, you need to provide manual input and adjust the settings for the best possible result.

Here’s how you do that and here’s the list of settings that you should mind the most.

Here’s how a simple change in a few settings can dramatically change the whole look of your photograph.

We recommend turning the flash off if you don’t have the appropriate lighting setup with the bounces set up. If so, also set the WB (White Balance) to automatic or default.

It’s strongly suggested to take pictures in the highest possible quality. For iPhones and other smartphones that may be FULL HD, 4K, or even 8K resolution. For cameras - it’s the RAW setting or raw file capture which utilizes every single technical feature for the most detail. You can later downsize and downscale the picture whilst upscaling only makes the shortcomings of the photograph seem much more visible.

The abbreviation ISO is used to define the sensitivity of the camera, towards your light source. You should set the ISO to its lowest possible setting (e.g. ISO 100, ISO 50, etc.). In general, the lower your ISO setting, the higher the photo quality is.

For the best exposure settings, experts have two suggestions - either use AV (Aperture priority), auto aperture or go manual.

If you choose aperture priority and your camera does have this feature, the 

feature should be turned up to the max. It’s tricky to nail the shot with AV aperture priority because you might have to compensate for the increased exposure. So, avoid this if you don’t have any previous experience working with the camera.

Manual settings can also be a slight burden, but this is the mode to choose if your camera does not support aperture priority.

Auto exposure, however, will do the trick 99% of the time, especially if you’re a small and startup business that’s just trying out to take their first product photos. Exposure on your iPhone is automatically adjusted, based on the area which you click on. So it’s usually best to focus on the product and the camera will do the rest to make the perfect shot. Change the exposure point to get a different lighting.

Don’t use digital zoom as it just increases the scale of the picture and loses quality. If you use optical zoom (your camera must support it), this is a great way to focus more on the product and less on the distracting surroundings near it. Wide-angle lenses can be labelled as an 

for great product photos as they distort the whole field of view.

Now you’re good to go. Take the pictures and let’s move on to editing.

Photo editing (post-production) for product photos

So, you’ve taken the pictures and are happy with the results. Before publishing, you need to pass them through the 

of post-production editing. This is done in programs like Photoshop. Of course, there are alternatives, but if you aren’t familiar with other, specific types of software, learning Adobe Photoshop is a great investment into your digital skillset, hence, focus on it.

Adobe Photoshop gives you an almost endless array of tools that can help you alter and impact the way your shots look. 

can become magical after some work with Photoshop.

Adobe Photoshop is by far the most popular choice of software for photo editing.

Keep in mind, this process takes time. If you want to save time, you can use AI-based tools or apps on your iPad or iPhone to retouch photos in bulk. This will provide an 

result but do it very quickly. However, if you want to maximize the visual aesthetic, go for Photoshop editing on a larger PC or laptop screen.

You need to have some understanding of visual aesthetics if you want to successfully edit product photos. You can compensate for a lack of experience with a grand vision in mind, but it’s usually best to just make the product look clean, eliminating any background noise and adjusting the colours according to your brand’s image.

Also, you can outsource photo retouching services from sites like Fiverr and Upwork for as low as $1 per picture for a beginner-level retouching or <$4 per picture for a medium to high-level adjustment. This will save you enormous chunks of time and you can utilize it elsewhere.

Product photo optimization for online publishing

If you’re happy with the retouching, your product photos are almost ready to get published. However, you should take care of the picture SEO first. A significant portion of your traffic and potential customers will come from Google, hence, you should make your pictures SEO-friendly, so Google ranks you better.

Proper image optimization is also related to the load speed of your website which is a key component to having a happy customer. Images that are too large can cause the web to load slow and drive customers away.

You need to find the silver lining between great quality and size optimization for load times. E-commerce gurus might suggest photos that are no more than 250KB per pic, but it’s up to the load speed.

Depending on the size of your HTML container, you might need to adjust the scale of your picture. Resizing it is easy in Photoshop or web editing tools, so you only need to know the container size. Compress the image from the raw file with dedicated tools. Try not to lose too much quality but to reduce the size as much as possible, for faster loading times.

So, we hope this guide was helpful and provided some useful insights on ecommerce product photography. Keep in mind that you will have to spend some cash on equipment if you want professional-looking shots. Don’t mix lighting, adjust your shot well, set the right settings on your camera, and snap the pictures. Then, go into post-production and retouch your pics via Photoshop or have a professional do that for you. Once your pictures are retouched and finalized, you can resize them and compress them to reduce the size until it offers smooth and fast loading times. And that’s pretty much it on how you do product photography!

Tips and tricks for efficient ecommerce product photography.

Product Photography: The Ultimate Ecommerce Guide

Are you here to find out more about marketing on Google Maps? Good. Here at Atlasmic we are trying to give you comprehensive knowledge on various topics, related to the world of online business and more specifically e-commerce. But, we can’t overlook Google Maps marketing (also known as local SEO) which is the hottest new trend for marketing and advertising. Slowly but surely, Google Maps has become Google’s second most-used service (after the search engine). It’s now a hugely versatile tool that impacts your business’ SEO results and marketing strategy efficiency.

With that being said, it’s kind of new, and not a lot of people have sufficient knowledge about it, to put it to use. So, let’s dive deeper and look into Google Maps marketing to outline a guide for beginners!

First off - Google Maps benefits for your business

Google Maps has 1 billion monthly users. According to Forbes, close to 95% of all consumers use Google Maps to find out information about businesses close to them.

Out of those 95%, 61% called up a business after successfully finding their telephone number and 59% came and visited. We guess that there isn’t too much need for further explanation, but just to clarify.

There’s also the Local 3-Pack that everyone likes to emphasize.

The Local 3-Pack is a stacked search info window that displays a map with three recommendations of local businesses that Google deems most-suited for users like you. The suggestions are based on search history, activity of similar users, users in your area, etc.

It’s a great way to be noticed, but focusing solely on the 3-Pack doesn’t cover the whole entire spectrum of Google Maps. There’s a lot more to marketing on that platform. Let’s throw some numbers at you to see what we’re on about, praising the numerous benefits.

If you have 10,000 potential customers in your area that could be interested in your products and/or service(s):

9,500 will use Google Maps to find out information about businesses like yours in that area

6,100 will call yours or similar businesses

So just imagine the sheer potential of effective information placement. If you were to be able to utilize Google Maps marketing for your own benefit, even a simple 5% conversion rate from visits, with a small potential audience of 10,000 people and 5,900 in-store visits, you could be looking at 300 new sales. That is an amazing opportunity just waiting to be grasped.

Don’t waste any more time and stop your competitors from stealing both online and physical traffic away from you. Here’s how you do that!

For managing everything business and Google Maps-related, with regards to your business, you need to go and visit Google My Business (

). It’s a platform dedicated to business owners and entrepreneurs who wish to manage their commercial activity on Google.

Once on Google My Business, everything is very easy to navigate. Type in your business name or add a new business to the database.

Google My Business is a very straightforward, free-to-use platform with everything optimized to be understandable even for people with minimal past involvement with Google platforms.

The main point of Google My Business is to manage your NAP from the perspective of local SEO. It’s an acronym and it stands for 

, highlighting the three crucial and key elements for business optimization for the Maps platform.

Keep in mind that in order to add your business or to edit the information on the current database, you have to provide a proof of ownership or proof of representation. Upload relevant documents and Google will take a day or two to review them. After the approval, your account will be associated with the business and then you’ll be able to make changes and adjustments to your information on Google.

Just a few pointers for you before we move on:

Keep the name of your business short (don’t put too much detail in the name section)

Make sure that the address and phone number are correct

Make sure your service or product category is listed

Create a short description for your enterprise

Create local landing pages with contact info on your site, if you have branches, affiliates, or departments in different cities, regions, etc. Then, integrate Google Maps map with the location info on the page.

As you can see, people trust that most online reviews are genuine and sincere, which is why a whopping 84% of them trust it as much as the most dependable form of review - personal recommendation.

Stats and general practical experience have shown us that a business without any reviews is always struggling to do business. From your own experience, you perfectly know that making the first sale and satisfying the first customer is always the hardest.

Getting reviews isn’t easy. So should you even focus your attention on getting them? Should you spend time and cash trying to get customers to give a review? It seems so and two figures will show you why!

More than a half of people browsing will be impacted by a positive review and will want to visit your website

To begin with, if you have reviews, it’s easier to do business further on. Don’t mind the occasional neutral or negative review. These things happen and you should always acknowledge the dissatisfaction of the customer, make them feel heard. Even the brands with the best possible customer service and the 

Everything you need to know about starting on Google Maps Marketing.

Atlasmic - Shopify Staff Pick of the Week 21

On a mission to continue to provide a seamless customer experience.

What are Shopify Staff Picks?

What does this mean for Atlasmic?

What does this mean for our users?

Thank you