In the highly competitive world of eCommerce, pictures are certainly worth much more than a thousand words. Shopping has always been an extremely visual experience. However, internet retail entrepreneurs must work harder to provide an optimal visual experience for prospective buyers and customers. Unlike their brick-and-mortar counterparts, owners of online stores cannot bring shoppers to a place where they can see, touch and evaluate products. For this reason, proper use of multimedia content, particularly digital images, is crucial.
Independent sellers who list their products on the Amazon Marketplace should pay close attention to the images they upload as part of their product listings. Manufacturers and exclusive distributors who are introducing new products listed under new Amazon Standard Identification Numbers (ASIN) should realize that there is more than data entry involved when creating such new listings. An accurate and enticing product description must be accompanied by product images of the highest possible quality.
Why Good Product Descriptions and Imaging are Necessary
Let’s say two competing manufacturers of kitchen utensils join the Amazon Marketplace. If the quality, pricing and design of their respective product catalogs are very similar, shoppers will have to look for other factors to guide their purchases. In most cases, shoppers will either choose the utensils accompanied by high quality images or dismiss listings that show images of a lesser quality.
Amazon has always taken the issue of product images very seriously. In the early days of this company, back when it was exclusively a bookseller, founder and CEO Jeff Bezos noticed that high-resolution images of book covers and author photographs had a very substantial impact on sales. This is something that he always mentioned to publishers.
Images are crucial to the success of your ASINs. Here are 3 ways your Amazon products may suffer when you submit poor quality pictures of your products:
1. Suppressed ASIN
Amazon will suppress your listing if the pictures you upload return error codes, which range from backgrounds of colors other than white to sizes smaller than 500 pixels on at least one side. Suppressed ASINs are active but will not appear among product search results; in other words, they will be invisible to shoppers until image issues are corrected.
2. Lower Sales
This is the bottom line of quality images; if you have been wondering why your products are selling at sluggish pace, take a good look at the images used by your competitors. Your images alone will not make the sale; however, they will keep prospective buyer away if they are of poor quality.
3. Shopping Confusion
The quality of a product image goes beyond appearance; there may also be issues related to priority placement and ASIN assignment; for example, a tennis shoe manufacturer should give main image placement to its leading product, but full advantage should be taken by uploading photos of other colors available for the same model. The parent ASIN should be assigned to the main image; the child ASINs can be assigned to colors. Incorrect ASIN assignment may result in a shopper getting tennis shoes in a color they did not choose.
Importance of Following Amazon’s Guidelines
Since product images can be deal breakers for online shoppers, it is important that you invest time and effort in creating the best photos possible. Amazon gives some guidelines with regard to picture resolution and formatting, but the issue of quality is a bit more subjective. There are 18 error codes that Amazon can return when a product image is uploaded, and two of those codes deal specifically with quality. Error code 03, for example, describes images that were not taken by professional photographers or scanned at low resolutions.
The basic requirements for Amazon images include:
- 10 MB maximum file size
- Resolution of at least 72 pixels per inch
- Maximum 5-to-1 landscape dimension ratio
You should keep in mind that images you may have previously used for your eCommerce websites may not conform to Amazon’s photographic standards.
Quality product images are just as important for your ASINs as is protection from unauthorized sellers and counterfeiters. Brandlox is a subscription service that keeps an eye on your ASINs and notifies you of suspicious activity. To learn more about Brandlox and how it can help you as an Amazon seller, contact us today.
