Interview Webshop Trade days 2011
‘Image is everything’ – an interview with Pieter Veenema, Studio-Online
A properly photographed and edited product is vital for web shops. Taking a few pictures is often not enough for web retailers: you want the photographs to look as attractive as possible, because image is everything. Studio-Online is a company that has turned image editing into its core activity. This includes unmarking, adding collars to clothing, changing colours and photography. On 25 January 2011, we spoke with Pieter Veenema, managing director of Studio-Online, about the importance and possibilities of professional image editing. Studio-Online will be attending the Web Shop Trade Days.
Professional pictures of your products are vital for a web shop. One of the main services provided by Studio-Online is turning pictures into unmarked items. What are the advantages for web retailers in terms of product presentation?
If all images are portrayed against a neutral background, it will leave a more qualitative impression with consumers. On top of that, there are numerous other qualitative aspects that are important. They include fitting images within the frameworks on a website, the focus of the images, but colour strength too is important. These aspects are part of our service and the result of years of experience with a proven track record of more than 50,000 assignments and 400,000 edited images.
You outsource a lot of work to India. Does this mean you can charge your customers more competitive rates?
We organise the training of the editors at our partner in India. It's not just about rates, but also about quality, capacity and supply reliability. This team works exclusively for Studio-Online and we are their European partner. They're happy with our assignments, knowledge and training, and we are happy with the capacity and rates for our customers. It enables us to provide a high-quality service at low rates, 24 hours a day.
Content is getting increasingly important within organisations, and also in web shops and on sites. Professional visual material can play an important role therein. Do you, as Studio Online, notice the effects of this increase in demand for relevant content? How do you respond to this?
In order to manage content and keep it organised, we developed a web application that customers can use to offer images for editing. In addition, our customers can make payments within that system and thus automatically place and retrieve orders, 24 hours a day. The web application offers each customer a personal environment within which all images are stored and administrated for possible reuse.
Do you only work for the Dutch market or do you also have customers abroad?
We are market leader in the Netherlands and operate in various countries within Europe.
You have just launched a completely new site. What are the main developments compared to the previous site?
Yes, that's right and it was about time that we did that. Sometimes these things are put on the backburner due to lack of time, but we finally managed to do it. The new website must be accessible and professional, offering complete transparency in terms of services and rates. And I believe we've been successful in doing just that. We now wait for the responses from our customers.
Studio-Online will be attending the Web Shop Trade Days. What can we expect from you there / what will you be presenting?
We will be actively engaged in photography, a professionally photographed product is vital for web shops as indeed is the editing thereof. So everyone is free to have us photograph products onsite and edit them. It is in fact a look behind the scenes (stand A083). We also offer a voucher to the value of € 50 for each contact at the trade fair.
Interview by Anneke Loeffen of OGZ on 25 January 2011
