Adding Punch to Product Images
The standard product page consists of product image followed by product description. However, to support product description if you can repeat the most important/differentiating points from your description into product image you will dramatically improve effectiveness. Posted below are some e-tailer examples. As you can see, this strategy works for all types of items- from diaper changers to ballet shoes:
betterretail
Interesting and attractive idea but I am reluctant to include text (solely) in my product images because search engines do not (yet) index this text, and so the important relevance signals from this text are lost. I doubt that the img alt tag would be of much use as a substitute for the lost textual content. An SEO-acceptable version of this idea would be awesome.
Ted
July 25, 2011 at 6:10 am
Hi Ted,
The product page should use the image format above while keeping the existing product description. Based on your comment I’ve updated the language above to– However, to support product description if you can repeat the most important/differentiating points from your description into product image you will dramatically improve effectiveness.
Thanks for the comment!
Rishi
betterretail
July 25, 2011 at 6:29 am
Rishi, great post. I think it would be interesting to better explore the economics of the production of these types of images. When does it make sense invest in this type of informative image. Depending on my SKU depth it may or may not make sense to invest in this. A simple ROI model that takes into consideration the improvement in conversion would be a good tie in.
Great work. Keep it up.
Shilo
Shilo Jones
July 27, 2011 at 9:57 am
Thanks for the comment, Shilo. I agree with your point– “Depending on my SKU depth it may or may not make sense to invest in this.”
I don’t think the retailer needs to make a choice between having all images in this format or none. They can pick and choose. I’d consider this tactic for the following–
1. Products that have a lot of technical specifications/differentiations. Dyson vacuum cleaner is a good example.
2. Product pages with a low look-to-book ratio.
3. Products that generate higher net-margins.
And I’d definitely run this as a test.
betterretail
July 27, 2011 at 11:17 am
[...] Want to add a little oomph to your product images? Rishi from Retail in the Eyes of the Everyday Customer shares a few examples of images augmented with product information. [...]
Bloggers Digest July 2011 « Get Elastic Ecommerce Blog
July 29, 2011 at 4:02 am
This is great stuff – thanks for sharing. mj
Michael K. Johnson
July 29, 2011 at 9:59 am
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