Using Contrast to Increase Product Cover Conversion Rates

Kirsten 0:00

Hey there, friends and welcome to another episode of the creative teacher podcast. As always, I'm here to bring the very best to my audience. So thank you. Thank you so much for tuning in today. This week, we are going to go into a little bit of graphic design theory and some tips on how you can increase your product cover conversion rates. Now this is not 100% Guaranteed. But based on the graphic design world and what we know about what is appealing to humans in general, I am going to give you some tips on how you can use contrast to increase conversion rates on your product covers, so you should stay tuned.

You're listening to the creative teacher podcast, a show for busy teachers looking for ways to engage, inspire and make an impact in their teacher businesses. I'm Kiersten, a teacher business owner who is all about simple and actionable tips, strategies and resources that result in wins, big or small. If you're looking for that extra spark of creativity, you've come to the right place. Let's dive in together.

Today's episode is all about using contrast for your product covers. We're going to talk about what this means. What is contrast, in the design world as far as graphic design. What are some different ways you can add contrast. And we'll talk about some tips through each of the ways you can add contrast, it's a little bit more in depth than you may think. But I don't go too crazy about you know, going to it's going to be super easy to understand I promise you.

So let's talk about what contrast is contrast occurs when two or more visual elements on a page are different. It seems simple enough, right? When designing something with contrast, you can use it to generate impact to somebody looking at a certain design, it can create a focus. And it makes it a little bit more exciting and appealing and attractive to the human eye. We are naturally drawn to things that are opposite to one another are contrasting to one another. So anyway, you can incorporate that in your product covers. Since that's you know, one of the first thing people see visually in the search results. This is a really great way for getting people to click on your product cover and read more into the information to see if it's the right fit for them. There are many different ways to add contrast.

And we're going to talk about a few color, shape, size, typography and photos, we're going to talk about five ways you can add a contrast to your product covers the first one color, this can be super easy to do. For example, it would be where you have black text on a white background or, or the opposite white text on a black background. The colors you use in general need to have contrast to each other. You want to make sure whatever contrast you use with whatever colors. You don't want it to make it it doesn't you don't want it to be hard to see. Let's say you have a really cool lime green background on your product cover. Which do you think would have a higher contrast? Would it be if you use black text on the lime green background or yellow text on the lime green background? If you said black text on the lime green background Yes, that is true. racked, you would have higher contrast just because of how it looks in general, as far as drawing the eye, if you were to use yellow on a lime green background, because they're so close in hues on the color wheel, it's going to be very hard to read compared to if you used black text, and it kind of almost blends in a little bit. So think about the colors you use and how they can relate to and see what you can do to add more contrast with your colors that you're using.

All right, here's another example of ways to add contrast, you can use different shapes. So pairing different shapes that are in contrast to one another, can draw the eye to certain phrases that you want. So for example, if you use mostly rectangles or squares on your product covers, you can add a circle shape to create contrast. Or maybe you know, instead of like just regular circles, if you want to make something pop make something different, like some type of hexagon or triangle, or some type of spiky circle or something like that. Something that has the opposite, you know that is opposite shape wise with it. That can give your design a little extra oomph. I usually add circles. On the bottom right corner, I usually have where it says grades three through five or whatever, and how it's print and digital. I've been doing that recently. And I like how it kind of complements but yet adds contrast to my text that is highlighted with a square or rectangle adds a little bit of contrast kind of makes it a little bit more appealing and eye grabbing.

Next would be sighs. Think about what the most important thing you want your audience to know about your product cover or about your resource in general. This is why I always say to not make it too cluttery, especially on a product cover, you really just need a title and a subtitle. And then you might can add, you know, some extra little features. But the title should be the large text, that's where the I would go first. Smaller text would be your subtitle, or your important features would be even smaller. So don't put watermelon math activities. For kindergarten as all the same size. You could probably do watermelon math activities as one size and then for kindergarten would be a smaller font. So you want people to see something first and then second, you can always change the size.

Next would be typography. What I like to do is contrast a really nice bold, chunky font, like my favorite kg fonts, or Ka fonts, or Amy Groesbeck, Florence, all those cute fonts that you can get on Teachers Pay Teachers with a rounded font such as century Gothic or Poppins. You could also use the same typeface and contrast it by having a bolder weight paired with a thinner weight. If you're looking for an example of what this looks like, you can actually go on my website. And my fonts for my website are a bold Poppins for my heading fonts. And then for my body text would be a it's a thinner weight, but it's still the same font family. So this can be done as well on your product covers if you're looking for something that pairs really nicely. But you also want to add some contrast with what's the most important, which is not as important but still important to know just not as important as what the main bold print would be.

The last part would be the photos you use. I'm still a big proponent of product photography. Of course, there are different ways you can utilize that not all my resources have photos in it. But my goal one day is to make sure that all my products have photography in it either on the cover or the thumbnail or preview in some way or form, that's going to be my goal for the next three to five years. So with the photos you use, you want to make sure they're edited with contrast in your product cover because it can make a difference in who clicks. Even before I was an active TPT seller. I was personally really drawn to pictures that had a bright white clean background and their product and all of the little props around it was bright and colorful and contrasted really well with the whitespace I don't know if but for some reason it you know, I guess just being the type a person that I am it made me feel, you know, something that I could use in my classroom and it was really clean and neat and something that was is really appealing to me that I could buy. And that's just something I naturally gravitate to. So those people, you know, I am their ideal teacher customer. So whatever your ideal teacher customer is usually teachers in general are looking for something that stands out and is bright and contrasts with bright colors, especially if you're, you know, elementary. But think about how you can utilize photos and edit that with contrast as well. What you don't want, or what I've kind of moved away from is something like with a, you know, wooden brat background or Chevron or some type of dark background, it just does not look as eye catching as having higher contrast with a nice white clean background. Something else you can do if you're not sure how to edit it to make sure that background is super white is Canva has a background remover, so you can actually play around with it. And I'm sure Photoshop and other different platforms use it. But Canva, you can remove the background so that it's just the resource showing, and you can get rid of all that darker space around the back to add more contrast to your photos. So that's something to consider as well. A really good example, if you're looking for what that would look like. If you go to the Instagram account of the literacy party, she she mostly talks about different books. And I love the way that she edits it so that you only see the books you don't see the background around. It's just a nice whitespace contrasting with the books that she's shared. So check out the literacy party on Instagram. If you're looking for what that could look like, I could definitely envision something like that on a product cover, I think it really could capture attention.

Something to think about is you can definitely do a combination, you can use contrast with color and shape, and size and typography and the photos you use. But you don't want to overdo the contrast, draw the eyes attention in but don't overwhelm the eye with a ton of varying contrast, you want to make it look and come together cohesively. So start simple with what you're comfortable with. If you're comfortable changing up the color contrast, just focus on that. And then you can add on what you can see more based on what you think might be appealing and go from there. Alright, so my creative action tip for you is to review the tips and see what you can do to create contrast in your next product cover. And keep an eye on how it can impact views and conversion rates. While it's not guaranteed to increase conversion rates. Just knowing that this is a very common design theory. Everywhere we look high contrast appeals the eye, it's just something that is been tried and true. So see what you can do to add a little bit of contrast and see how it impacts your TPT product listings.

All right, well, that's the end of this episode. I hope you got some really great tips on contrast and how you can use it in your product covers. I will talk to you again soon.

Thanks for tuning in to the creative teacher podcast. If you enjoyed listening to today's episode, feel free to subscribe and leave a review. I'd love to hear your feedback. You can also find me on Instagram at the southern teach. I cannot wait for you to join me in the next episode for more tips and inspiration. Have an amazing day.