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Why are product images and their optimization important?
Would you ever buy a product without seeing it?
Even if you have heard of iPhone 6X, let’s say, a lot, you will not buy it unless you check its image. In short, the pictures effectively communicate the details of your product. Just a glimpse on an e-commerce store is enough to make a deal.
Besides, you deliver convenience together with the quality products. Your customers need not visit the store in-person to catch its details. It frees them from physically handling the product. The cutting edge digital platform is studded with related product options, payment and shipping alternatives along with reviews and rating, which generally the buyer skips in shopping personally.
If you talk about image optimization, it is the process of making images look the best, attractive and also, easy to upload or download on any device. Also, the consistency reflects through its size, which generally triggers conversion rate up to 17 percent more than an un-optimized image.
Some other points of concern about image optimization are to get the number of images per grid right. Make sure that this point should be implemented separately on desktop and mobile phone. Optimize at least three large images per row, if you optimize it for the desktop view. Keep it to just one if it is about the mobile view.
Apart from that, you should keep these points for optimizing picture according to SEO while editing pictures for eCommerce website.
How can you optimise images for e-Commerce sites?
The optimisation is all about making things best or, you can take it as a process of effectuating efficiency of products and things. An image editing company always keeps optimization in the mainstream so that buyers could churn through interesting web journey. This is how its engagement rate skyrockets out of the blues. Ultimately, optimised images maximize conversion.
So, you should always keep these optimization tips at the back of your mind to attract customers:
- Image size: The size and orientation of diverse images may vary. But, you should create a uniform blank frame in the Photoshop. Stud every product’s image in its dimensions consistently. This is how all images will be identical in size and you need not create a frame every time from scratch.
Ideally, you can start with a template of 1200px X 1600px on its longest side. Attend detailing of every image carefully, since customers want to see by zooming in and out.
- Load time: The users are impulsive by default. If an image takes more than 3 seconds to upload, nearly 40% of users go off, according to a survey. Besides, the Mobile-first indexing also gives a reason to focus on quick loading of the image. The rule of thumb points that the image file size should be under 70 KB, provided that its quality will not degrade.
Saving that file as “Save for Web” can help you not to compromise on its size and quality.
- File types: Majorly, JPEG, GIF or PNG files are preferred for saving images. It is simply because of their unique qualities, which are:
- JPEG: It is a standard image file over the internet, preferred mainly because it is “easy-to-compress”. But, repeated saving could adversely impact its quality.
- GIF: The quality of images downgrades in this file. It is why this file is opted for icons and simpler images.
- PNG: It can be used as an alternative of JPEG files, as it does not interfere with colours and format even if it is saved many times. This file is good for saving big images or content.
- Thumbnails: Thumbnails are the best hacks to bet on for creating a quick visual reference. It strongly influences the mindset of the customers. But, you should keep into account that it could hamper page loading speed of your e-Commerce site. If you’re setting up an eStorefront through Shopify, keep such worries aside, as it automatically optimizes thumbnails.
Otherwise, you should optimize them before making them ‘live’.
- Alt tags: Alt tags are the titles that we name images with. To experience, you can move mouse over an image. The popping text will be the ALT tag.
- Being known to the impulsive nature of customers, choose a descriptive name that accurately describes the product.
- Insert an associated keyword to benefit SEO efforts.
- Differentiate ALT tags for thumbnails from the main image, which quickens indexing of the latter one in the search engine. Hence, it becomes visible in search results.
