The importance of adapting images to different sales channels for digital marketing.
The human brain always looks for an image first.
Around 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual, so a quick glance is much more likely to remember an image than some text.
For e-commerce retailers and digital marketers selling online, this means that the images of your products appearing in front of your customers need to be engaging, eye-catching and captivating.
Combine this with the fact that the average person spends just 1.7 seconds before deciding if your social media ad image deserves their attention and you can see the importance.
For this article we’re going to take a look at four key e-commerce channels:
- Facebook Ads
- Amazon
- Google Shopping
We’ll find out the role that product images play for each, plus the importance of adjusting how your products appear, in order to meet the specific rules and requirements of each channel.
Let’s get started!
Tailoring your images for Facebook
A report from 2018 eMarketer stated that digital marketers spent around $21 billion on Facebook ads in the US alone– around 19.6% of the total market share. When compared to other social media platforms, Facebook accounted for an amazing 83% of total ad spending.
This tells us that marketers are putting in hours of work and countless dollars to push their products with Facebook Dynamic Ads.
But are they actually using that time and money in the right ways? Often, I’m afraid they’re not.
True, you might have nailed down your ad copy and homed in on your perfect audience – but when 80% of that ad is taken up by a boring-looking image, you won’t have much luck in meeting your conversion and revenue goals.
Of all the sales and marketing channels we’re going to look at, Facebook actually gives you the most freedom in tailoring your product ads to be as interesting as possible. You can add text, logos and branding, seasonal promotions (e.g. 50% Black Friday sale), colored backgrounds.
Check out the image below and tell me that the addition of text, color and logo doesn’t draw your attention as much as a plain white background and stock image of your product would!
Image Credit – 10forward
The Take-away message – Facebook gives you freedom to be creative with your product images. Use an image transformation tool to take advantage of that.
How to adapt to Amazon’s requirements
If you are also selling on Amazon, you’ll find that the rules concerning your product images vary greatly from Facebook.
What’s more, they are often tightening their rules and regulations surrounding their image size and quality policies for seller’s listings, so it’s important to stay on top of things.
First, make sure your images adhere to Amazon’s minimum product image requirements.
For starters, they allow you to add up to 8 additional images for a product. All images you provide should be large enough to enable Amazon’s zoom function – allowing customers to look more closely at your product, the distance to your product is reduced and trust is built.
Your main product image
This is the image which will be displayed on Amazon’s search results. Similar to Google Shopping (as we’ll see later), it’s generally recommended to use a white background, and make sure the image fills 80% of the frame (image below).
Image source (Author’s own)
In contrast, your other 7 images (and video) have more freedom. Like Facebook Ads, you can add text, non-white backgrounds, branding and promotional messages to tell the narrative of your product in greater detail.
Use the item as a reference to how the product is used. An image is useful when the installation and use of a product is not easily accessible and requires explanation. Clarifying the facts and add text which highlights high-value features (see image below).
Image source (Author’s own)
The Take-Away message – While it’s your main product images that drives clicks from the search result pages, Amazon allow you to use those 8 product images from each listing.
Unlike the limited images allowed by Facebook Ads, use Amazon’s 8 images to the product from different perspectives, with special features and an outline of unique selling points.
Making the best of your Google Shopping images
In comparison to the previous channels, this is where things get a bit stricter!
I couldn’t tell you the number of times I’ve seen retailers who use images directly from their online store, or which have been adapted for Facebook Ads – and try to implement them for their Google Shopping campaigns.
If an image is too small, too big, contains promotions, has a non-white background (etc…), you’ll receive an error on your Google Merchant Center account and your listings will not go live.
That’s why it’s important to pay attention to the requirements that Google provides:
- Non-apparel images: at least 100 x 100 pixels
- Apparel image: at least 250 x 250 pixels
- No image larger than 64 megapixel
- No image file larger than 16 MB
If the images you’re using on your website don’t meet these requirements, make the changes before submitting the feed to Google to avoid the pain of having to fix all those errors.
Content of your Google images
This should be a given, but the same as we saw with Amazon, Google specifies that the primary product image should display the entire product and contain no staging.
As well as this, sellers should avoid using generic images or illustrations (unless you are selling in specific categories like computer software where it might be needed).
(Image source: Author’s own)
High-resolution doesn’t just mean the quality of the image, but the actual size of the image – despite the low pixel requirement I mentioned above, Google recommends that your images are at least 800 x 800 pixels. It should be large enough to show potential customers the product and understand what it is going to look like when it arrives on their doorstep.
Therefore, the best practice is to use images which are all of the same size and quality.
Adding extra images
Much like Amazon, Google lets you add an extra 10 additional images to your individual listings.
Unlike the primary image link category which, as mentioned above, should be as simple as straightforward as possible, this is a chance to show your products from a different light and add more info.
Google recommends that you take this opportunity to use additional images to show the product in a different light – perhaps out of its packaging, being used, a bird’s-eye view or a labelled plan of the product (see screenshot below).
(Image source: Author’s own)
The Take-Away message – Google have strict rules about what can and can’t be used for product images.
Follow these rules to the letter and make use of the additional images to ensure your images stand out from your competitors. You basically should see this as a chance to answer any questions your shoppers might have about the appearance, usage or feel of certain products.
Adapting your Instagram images
In 2018 Instagram crossed the 1 billion user mark, with 500 million using the platform every day, spending on average 53 minutes browsing each day (source).
This means there is a large and dedicated audience who can be reached through effective Instagram advertising. In 2019, 71% of businesses in the US have an Instagram presence, so it’s crucial to take steps to make your ecommerce business stand out from the crowd.
Using Instagram Dynamic ads is pretty handy for e-commerce retailers because:
- They use the same data as your Facebook product catalog, so there is no need to set up new templates for Instagram.
- By using a pixel which gathers the data from your own store and your users’ browsing behaviors, you can promote all the products listed on your online store to the right audience at perfect moments.
Source (above): Strikesocial
The single image ad (above) contains a large (high-quality!) image, ad text and a call-to-action such as ‘Learn More’.
Single Image Ad requirements (source)
- Caption: up to 125 characters
- Recommended image size: 1080 x 1080 pixels or 1200 x 628 pixels (the typical Facebook ad image size)
- Image format: .jpg or .png
- file size: 30 MB
Alternatively, Carousel ads can be a great choice for digital marketers selling physical products through the social media channel.
You can showcase 10 images or videos into a single ad, with dots appearing under the image to indicate to the viewer there is more than one image (see photo below).
Source: Adweek
Instagram Carousel Ad Requirements (source)
- Caption: up to 125 characters
- Recommended image resolution: min. 600 x 600 pixels, max. 1080 x 1080 pixels
- Image format: .jpg or .png
- Minimum number of cards: 2
- Maximum number of cards: 10
The take-away message – Like Facebook ads, Instagram gives you a lot of choice in building product images that draw users’ interest.
It might be tempting to save time and just use images directly from your online store, but with Instagram placing so much emphasis on the image, taking the steps to optimize images makes so much sense here.
Conclusion
No matter where you are selling, the image is the first thing your potential customers will see.
Pushing the same images from online stores across all sales channels is a technique that many e-commerce stores use: it’s easy and saves time. Yet as we’ve seen, if you want to avoid listings getting rejected and stand out from competitors, you have to adapt those images to meet the channels on which your selling.
Failing to do this means you will be pouring ad budget away, as the vast majority of potential shoppers will be scrolling on past unoptimized, uninteresting images
- Follow the image rules and requirements of your selected sales channel(s), as well as optimizing images across your omnichannel set-up to improve engagement.
- Add extra factors which will make your products look engaging and interesting. Through color, on-image text and relevancy, the examples from Microsoft and Breville were designed to capture the eyes and play on the Fear of Missing Out for potential shoppers.
- To do all this effectively, consider a professional design tool in order to get the best results.
