Okay, I’ll admit it - I briefly thought about naming this post: “The Power of Images or: Sex Sells”. But this post is not about sex - it’s about the increasing importance of: Visuals. Images. Pictures. And sex is usually packaged in nice visuals - at least if it should sell to a broader audience. But again - this post is not about sex.

What this post is about is the recent announcement from my former employer ChannelAdvisor, in which they told the world that they acquired RichFX - RichFX is a company in the rich media image space. What that means is, that they produce Flash-based images and catalogs for online retailers which allows them to display their products in all it’s visual glory. RichFX has a nice client list including 45 of the top 500 Internet retailers - amongst them familiar names such as Wal-Mart, Disney, Saks or Brooks Brothers. Scot Wingo, ChannelAdvisor’s CEO, posted a couple of examples of customers using RichFX - check out Disney or Saks to get a feeling for the stuff RichFX is doing.

That’s all nice and good - but now you are asking: What does that have to do with anything? That’s a fine question - and deserves a fine answer. The answer is: Conversion - according to the information available from ChannelAdvisor and RichFX the usage of rich media images enhances your conversion by about 10%… Repeat after me: 10%. If you ever worked in retail and/or e-tailing you know that 10% is a lot. It is huge. Read Scot’s blog post for a pretty good example.

Now pause for a moment and consider what this could mean for an e-tailer: If you are able to increase your conversion rate by 10%, you are able to significantly enhance your competitve situation. Which makes me wonder how long it will take the wider market to adopt technology which is similar to RichFX. You don’t see it on that many sites at the moment - especially not in my home country Germany.

Which brings us to the power of visual product search sites like Like.com or Pixsta - but that is material for another post.