E-commerce image cheatsheet - Shopee, Lazada, Zalora

For those of you keeping an online store alive and well, we’ve put together some do's and don’ts when it comes to keeping your store looking consistent and customer friendly. We’ve also included a small cheatsheet for the 3 major platforms across southeast Asia: Shopee, Lazada, Zalora.

Making it easy for the shopper

First and foremost, the shopper must feel comfortable browsing through your products. We should mention, humans are rarely reading when browsing or comparing items, instead they are scanning for the information that is important to them. So, the least we can do as sellers, is make their catalog easy to scan and put product information in the same place no matter which product. This means:

Same set of product images

• Use the same types of angles for all products. For example: front, back, side and in use.

Same amount of images

• Use the same amount of images for all products. Shoppers will start to wonder and become confused why some products have more product images than others. 

Consistent layouts for thumbnails

• Related to the above points, make sure to have product information be placed in the same spot across all product images. Placing the same type of information in different places will make the shopper work harder, because they have to look for it when viewing a different product.

• Product description images have shown to be very effective when converting shoppers. When showcasing a lot of product information, it is crucial that it is presented consistently from product to product. If similar products use different layouts, the user browsing through them will get tired and lose interest in your brand.

Maintaining consistency

Now, how do we maintain this consistency? There are many aspects to consider when creating a shopping experience, all of which must work in sync to produce a pleasant shopping experience. 

Hight quality images

• Invest into a decent camera, that can produce high quality images. Nothing creates suspicion like low quality, low resolution images.

Consistent lighting and photography

• To produce consistent imagery, the photoshoots must be consistent. That is, same lights, same angles, same lenses on the camera. Ideally, the only thing that changes in the photo studio is the product.
  

Consistent composition

• Just from analyzing product images of global brands, we can easily spot the precision with which all images are cropped and retouched. If a product is an item, make sure it’s cropped to be the same size on the image. If a product is apparel, make sure the models are cropped and composed the same way for all products.

In the online shopping world, providing product information to the shopper is number one. Shoppers don’t have the opportunity to physically interact with your products, so the least an online store can do is provide as much information as possible in as scannable layout as possible.

Image specs for Shopee, Lazada & Zalora

Final word

When building a brand, being recognizable and consistent are absolutely key. Establishing recognizability is very expensive and takes a very long time. Consistency does not require too many resources. Consistent presentation of your products is be key when establishing and maintaining a presence online.