Every experienced merchant probably realizes the significance of product image management for effective business development. It is more obvious with the example of shopping in the real store.
“I don’t care how awesome your products are, if the pictures suck I’m not buying it!”
There is hardly a buyer who can make a purchase without window shopping first, taking a closer look on the product, touching, smelling it or tying it on. Unfortunately, virtual online store doesn’t allow such opportunity. The only visual information that the customer gets about the planned purchase is the image on your store interface. That’s why product images are so important. No matter how good your products are, and how modern your storefront looks what the customer will look at the view of products that you offer.
“A picture is worth a thousand online sales”
Correct image management gives the merchant an opportunity to:
- provide customers with necessary information on the product
- influence the decision to make a purchase
- attract potential customers to the store
- increase sales
- spread the product information as images are shareable (via social media for example)
Knowing the importance of images management for each and every (including merchants and customers) Magento offers wide opportunities to process product and category images effectively.
Magentoing Product Images
Magento offers 3 types of images that can be used by default: base, small and thumbnail image.
Base image is the main product image on product description page. The image size is fixed, however there is an opportunity for the customer to zoom the picture to have a closer view.
Small image type is used in category listings and search result pages. It is also visible in Up Sell, Cross Sell, New Product sections.
Thumbnail image is a reduced version of base picture image. It appears in thumbnail gallery, shopping cart and Related items block. The example size is 50×50. Thumbnail gallery gathers thumbnail images of a product allowing you to show a single product from multiple sides. It can be located variously according to the theme, however usual position is under the base image on Product Detail page. When customer clicks on thumbnail the full size of image appears.
Regardless of size, images are resized automatically, as the container that holds images has certain requirements. Namely, the product image shape should be square. If the image is not assigned to each type, a placeholder image will appear by default. Also, there is a possibility to upload additional images to show the product from different sides.
Category Image Management
The procedure of adding image to category is quite simple in Magento shopping cart. The following steps should be taken:
- Login to Magento admin area
- Go to Catalog – Manage Categories
- Select the category where you will add image
- Go to General Information tab – Image field – Browse
- Choose the image – Click Save Category
Common Issues
Magento is a complicated platform so certain troubles with content management occur from time to time. The common issues unfortunately are connected with image display. The reasons may vary – from wrong gateway to picture catalogue to more complicated issues.
Wrong color scheme may result in not displaying images in front and back ends. To meet the requirements of browser, you should simply convert images from CMYK to RGB.
The common and quite frustrating issue that online store owners face is that images are not visible on the frontend but are shown on the backend. There are several solutions you may try in this case.
- Delete the cache and rebuild indexes (this helps when certain changes were applied to Magento shop)
- Ensure that /media folder is writeable
- Increase memory_limit in php.ini file (helps if product images are too big). Or you can reduce the image and re-upload it
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