What can you do with ecommerce image management to bring in more traffic

“A picture is worth a thousand words”. It is known that 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual, and visuals are processed 60,000 times faster in the brain than text. To make a striking impact, it is always best that we communicate visually rather than in words. This is more so, especially when buying or selling in the ecommerce stores and Shopify websites. Customers are better informed and engaged when there are well-composed images and shots of what they are interested to buy. Credibility is built around the brand and the product when it is all out in the open through visuals. Ecommerce stores achieve higher conversion rates and customer retention with impactful product images. Nowadays, users searching through images for researching their products has become commonplace. Users searching for a certain product image can click 'visit page' or the image itself and be directed straight to the webpage where it is hosted. That way, your product, service, and brand are more likely to be seen by individuals who might never have found the webpage otherwise. It is now clear that pictures play a big role in user engagement in ecommerce businesses. They also account for over 60% of ecommerce page weight, which means they have a significant impact on site performance. Visitors abandon websites if they take too long to load, and conversions and revenue are adversely affected as well. Thus image quality, size, and bandwidth consumption are some factors that can have a significant impact on the ecommerce business. Image manipulation, optimization, and SEO are very critical to building a strong and successful product line.

In this blog, we will cover,

• Basics of ecommerce image management
• Need for ecommerce image management
• Different phases in the ecommerce image management journey
• Image capture and its challenges
• Image storage methods
• Image optimization and its challenges
• Image publishing and updates

What is image management?

Image management is an end-to-end solution for handling images of an ecommerce website. It handles the whole image life cycle in an ecommerce store. It involves many steps which are listed below.

• Clicking the product images.
• Optimizing the image sizes.
• Planning the storage methods.
• Speeding image delivery to end-user devices.
• Providing image insights.
• Rendering the images in an efficient manner.
• Following the search engine protocols with SEO.
• Distributing and rotating them on the Shopify website forms.

Image optimization allows the store owners to dynamically alter image dimensions, sizes, and formats to accommodate device type, screen resolution, browser type, and user latency. Every time a user connects to a website, the website adjusts the bytes delivered to dynamically deliver the most suitable picture. Site administrators can apply customizations to product pictures on the go, such as zoom-ins, logo swaps, colour changes, and text overlays, to enhance the digital shopping experience and user involvement. Why are we so particular about image management in ecommerce? Why should an ecommerce store owner even consider this?

In this blog, we will cover,

• Basics of ecommerce image management
• Need for ecommerce image management
• Different phases in the ecommerce image management journey
• Image capture and its challenges
• Image storage methods
• Image optimization and its challenges
• Image publishing and updates

Why image management?

So what is it that a well-composed image does when compared to a well-written text or information? Why is everyone screaming image optimization and image SEO for boosting ecommerce business? For any business, a customer is the most critical factor, which can make or break the business. Everything that a store owner sells and how he sells finally boils down to how he gives it to the customer. As we mentioned before, there is something in visual content that hits the bull’s eye when compared to text. Long text or information triggers a long and complex decoding process that takes place in your brain. You are not only seeing the shapes of the text written down but at the same time, you are translating them to make sense of the information that they convey. Whereas visual content, hits the brain directly and reaches the cognizance faster and thus a customer reacts quicker. The instant information that an image gives is why images, videos, and visual content always appeal more than mere text. Now that we have the customer’s attention to the website with well-composed images, is that enough? To the social media savvy customer instant gratification leads to instant sharing. This, in turn, spreads the word and soon we have more interested customers. Let us now see what are the other reasons for image management in an ecommerce business.

If a person visits your website to buy a specific product and then bumps into a blurry photo with screwed-up colors, he/she will doubt your professionalism and reliability. A good rule of thumb is to treat every image you output as the face of your brand/store. Websites use responsive web design to automatically adapt to the screen and resolution of the user's device. This adds complexity in selecting the best-suited images to be dynamically delivered to each device after (automatically) identifying where the web request is coming from. Resizing and reformatting images for all possible device types, screen sizes, and resolutions can become exceedingly cumbersome if done manually. Image management simplifies this. Ecommerce sites will definitely load faster if their images are smaller and consume less bandwidth. Unfortunately, lowering image quality is a surefire way to lower user engagement. No one wants to shop at a shabby-looking store! Doing this work manually is difficult as images are typically larger and perform worse.

Automated image management compresses pictures, alters format, and minimizes file size to improve the page loading speed without sacrificing image quality. This improves SEO rankings and thus89\nincreases website traffic. An image management solution reduces complexity by letting administrators test out different image options or sizes on a web page and see what sticks best with end-users. Finally, bandwidth reduction contributes to cost savings by compressing and optimizing image delivery. A centralized image management application (such as a CMS for images) reduces complexity, allowing merchants to keep all their images in one place. Using image management can eliminate the need for a large in-house team, resulting in significant cost savings. By eliminating the need to store multiple versions of an image statically on the origin server, image management also reduces storage costs. Using a single master image, multiple design options, sizes, and formats may be produced.

Phases in image management

Now that you know the importance of image management, you may be wondering what goes into it. In order to manage your images, you need to consider each phase of the process. These stages include image capture, storage, optimization, publishing, and finally updating. Image capture - First, you need to start with a plan for image capture. You don’t want to leave it up to chance, hoping that someone will be able to take a good picture of your products. You need to have a system in place that allows you to take the best pictures possible. Image storage - Next, you’ll want to decide where you want to store your images. Some business owners store their images on their computers, but this can be problematic. Other businesses take the safe route and store their images in the cloud. It’s best to do a bit of research to decide which option is best for your ecommerce business. Image optimization - Image optimization is the process of making sure that your images are as small as possible without losing any quality. This is important because the images you have on your website have to load as quickly as possible. If they take too long to load, your potential customers will leave without purchasing anything from you. Image publishing - Next, you’ll want to consider how you publish your images to your website and when you do it. You don’t want to publish all your images at once. Instead, you should publish them one at a time. Image updating - Finally, you need to decide when you will update each of your images. You don’t want to update them too often, but you also don’t want to wait too long.

Image capture

A product image is your last and first chance to make an impression on a consumer. It's critical that every image be effective. Consumers want to know what they are purchasing, and product images are the only way to inform them. Your job is to ensure that every image counts. The first thing that image supplier should consider when working with a third-party ecommerce company is getting pictures directly from the manufacturer. Manufacturers would like to provide their vendors with as much information as possible. If a manufacturer is selling a new product, for example, they may not provide any pictures of it. It's up to the ecommerce company to take photographs and improve the pictures of their products before posting them on their website. Before they post the item on their site, they may be required to photograph and improve it. After they receive the product, a team will stage and photograph it.

If the e-commerce business sells its own products, then product photography is critical and significant. A gorgeous and alluring ecommerce picture can be achieved by thinking about both technical and aesthetic elements of product photography. Every little detail in product photography counts as a starting point for image management in ecommerce. There are a few ways to get the best images for your ecommerce store. You can hire professional photographers to shoot every product and create a library of images. You can also take photos of your products with a phone or tablet. What about a mix of both? Being able to create product photography that is top-notch will help you stand out from the competition, get more clicks, and ultimately, more sales. You can take great photos with a mobile phone, a DSLR, or a drone. The key to a great photo is lighting. Lighting can be natural (sunlight) or artificial (flash). The best way to learn how to take great photos is to take lots of photos and review them. Choose the right angle for your photo. You’ll want to make sure that your product is the focal point of the image. When striving to capitalize on these photographs, your pictures must feature accurate and effective depictions of what products are comprised of. Therefore, you should opt for high-quality pictures that allow users to depict and understand every element of the package and use a background that enables the products pictured to be easily recognizable. Customers will thank you for providing them with great and consistent shopping experiences if you create strict image standards-adhering product photography. For further details on image capture, refer

Image storage

Every online business relies on images to help users understand the products they are purchasing or the content they are reading. An image storage API or image hosting service is used to store these site photos. Cloud providers like AWS, Google, Microsoft, and others offer APIs for uploading and managing pictures. Alternatively, some firms keep images on their web servers. It is possible to store images as any other content on an e-commerce website's server in different ways. Shared servers are the most economical way to create a website since all the users split the maintenance costs. Users may host their website files on a server that is shared by all users. These servers are leased from third parties. A self-hosted server may be purchased from an outside service provider who provides periodic updates and support. A server may be adjusted to your specifications using this technology. It is best to store image/media files on cloud storage such as S3 or Azure Blob and then connect them to a CDN such as CloudFront or Azure CDN.

Image optimization

The size and complexity of the images on an ecommerce site play a significant role in determining its performance, as they must be large enough to display the images of each product. The performance of any ecommerce site is largely dependent on the size and complexity of the product images. With image optimization, a website's performance improves (and profits may be increased by as much as 95% with a 5% increase in customer retention). Considering the e-commerce SEO, you should optimize your images since, as we have seen before, they have a direct impact on loading speed. Optimized and lighter pictures mean less space used in your hosting.

There are many factors that influence the results of an ecommerce site, like the ease of use, content relevance, conversion rates, and others. Typically, product photos and other image types are neglected when it comes to optimizing them. An ecommerce site can benefit from using images of different types, including JPEG, PNG, and GIF images. Because of the digital age, marketers must comprehend the strengths and weaknesses of these image formats in order to determine which type of image will consume less bandwidth. An image with a larger file size takes longer to download. Thus, the performance of a website, especially an ecommerce site, is largely dependent upon file sizes. Keeping images at 1-2 MB in size increases a web page's loading speed and reduces its bounce rate with satisfied customers and prospects. To guarantee that all pictures are properly indexed and ranked on search results, it is crucial to address the problem of incorrect image SEO foundations. Every picture on an ecommerce website, however, must appear on search results, so it is crucial to ensure that all image SEO fundamentals are in place. Image file name, alt attribute, and compression are some of the other important optimization aspects. Choosing the default save option when you create images is simple, but knowing the difference between file formats and settings can have a big impact on your site. Keeping your images square will ensure they display correctly and look good regardless of whether the contents of the photo are longer or taller. Keeping page load times low is as much about image optimization as it is about image SEO. That is, getting your product and decorative images to rank on Google and other image search engines. Reducing the size of your images as much as possible without sacrificing quality is part of image optimization.

Image publishing

Consumers nowadays want to consume a lot of visual content. Consumers do not go window shopping at their local mall; rather, they browse the web. A properly advertised picture or video is important for creating a good product presentation online. It is not enough that you capture and optimize the image for drawing your customers to the website. It is also important that images are published on the website in a manner that reaches the customer. The images must be arranged in a manner that conveys all the aspects of the product. Regular updates of the product images based on the stock and availability are also critical. When there are promotions and sales, appropriate product badges and images must be displayed. Badges can be used to draw the attention of visitors to newly listed items, bestseller items, sales, and active promotions, as well as other advantageous policies for customers (such as free shipping, buyer guarantees, returns, and refunds, for example). When it comes to conversions and sales, an effective badge immediately grabs the attention of users, and it's all about an excellent marketing tool that every store can benefit from. The way images are displayed and updated also gives an exact picture to the customers about the products.

Conclusion

The importance of visual content in contemporary business is crucial. Visual material is frequently more engaging and easier to consume. Those who utilize visual assets frequently see better results on crucial metrics like followers, likes, shares, visits, clients, and revenue. Visual assets drive sales by creating better customer experiences. The importance of image optimization cannot be understated. Why? Because ecommerce is visual in nature, and people are unlikely to purchase anything they cannot see and evaluate thoroughly, image optimization is critical.