Hugo Galvao de Franca Filho, founder and director of Enjoy Pets, argues that a leash listed with only a studio photo on a white background answers almost none of the questions a dog owner actually has before buying: how long is it really, will it fit a thirty-kilo dog comfortably, and does the clip look sturdy enough for a puller? He points out that most pet listings on marketplaces are still built from the same generic template used for any other category, and it shows in the return rate.
A phone case or a kitchen gadget looks roughly the same in every home it ends up in. A collar, a bed, or a bag of food does not, since it has to work for animals that range from a two-kilo cat to a forty-kilo dog. Treating both categories the same way at the listing level leaves the buyer to guess at exactly the details that would have prevented a wrong purchase.
What a pet buyer actually need to see before buying?
Scale is the first thing missing from most pet listings. A photo next to a ruler, a hand or a common object gives an instant reference that a product description in centimeters rarely communicates as clearly, especially to a buyer scrolling quickly on a phone. Without it, shoppers either guess and risk a return or abandon the purchase to search for a competitor’s listing that shows the size more clearly.
Behavior in use matters just as much as size. A chew toy photographed sitting still says nothing about whether it survives a determined chewer, and a harness photographed folded flat says nothing about how it looks once buckled onto a moving dog. Buyers researching these categories are often looking for exactly that kind of proof before adding the item to the cart.
Why the generic marketplace template fails this category
Marketplace listing tools are built around categories where one photo style covers most products reasonably well, and pet sellers frequently reuse that same format because it is faster and because the platform’s own guidelines rarely demand anything more specific. Nothing in the upload flow forces a seller to think about scale references or in-use footage.
The cost of skipping that step shows up downstream rather than in the listing itself. A shopper who cannot judge size correctly either does not buy, which looks like a normal drop-off in the funnel, or buys and returns the item once it arrives too small or too large, which quietly inflates return rates without an obvious cause pointing back to the photos.
What a pet-specific listing looks like?
Building scale and context into a listing means adding at least one photo with a size reference, one image or short clip showing the product in actual use, and product copy that states fit by weight range rather than only by measurement. None of this requires expensive production, since a phone recording a dog wearing the harness for ten seconds carries more information than another studio shot.
At Enjoy Pets, Hugo Galvao applies this standard across the catalog, treating a size reference and an in-use image as a requirement before a listing goes live, not as an optional upgrade added later if time allows.
What this changes at the point of purchase
The buyer who can judge fit before clicking “buy” behaves differently from one who is guessing. They convert with more confidence, return less often, and leave reviews that mention accuracy rather than complaints about size, which then feeds back into how the listing ranks going forward.
To Hugo Galvao de Franca Filho, the pet listings that convert best are rarely the ones with the most polished studio photography. They are the ones that answer, before the buyer has to ask, whether the product actually fits the animal at home.
