eCommerce Image Requirements for eBay and Amazon

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People spend billions of dollars online every year. With an increasing number of marketplaces available for e-merchants, it can be challenging to decide where and how to sell. Additionally, buyers are becoming more and more demanding in terms of the shopping experience, and they are right! It is, therefore, necessary to meet their requirements and deliver exceptional customer service.

Whether to start an e-commerce activity or grow, it is essential to choose the marketplaces to sell and understand how they work and differ.

It’s safe to assume that the essential marketplaces are Amazon and eBay, and they owe their success to how they present their images. Images are at the core of every online store. Usually, when you go to a physical store, you see an item, inspect it, check its quality, and decide to buy it. Shopping online is not so different, except that you can’t hold the product in your hands. How you present the product is how you sell it. However, you can’t just put in any image in your store.

You have to make sure you follow the image requirements. Otherwise, your images’ file size is too big, which will affect your store’s loading time, or if your images are too low in quality, nobody will trust your business as your visitors will assume that you’re not an honest business.

Let’s now explore the image requirements on eBay and Amazon so that when you decide to become a seller on said sites, you’ll have the necessary knowledge available in your arsenal.

eCommerce Image Requirements

Presentation is essential. You have no right to mistakes: they must be irreproachable. We recommend that you use high-quality images taken by yourself or possibly by a professional photographer. Here are some tips for doing a home photo lab.

More and more online stores are starting to integrate videos. Above all, do not use the manufacturer’s standard videos! Instead, make your own. If this is not a product you made, you can use the video to show a test and give your opinion on its pros and cons. This will build your customers’ confidence and make them want to come back.

Let’s look at the specific details of eBay and Amazon’s image requirements to know how they’ve remained at the top tier in the industry.

eBay Image Requirements

eBay Image Requirements

eBay is one the biggest e-commerce sites, with millions of unique monthly visitors. The site is very general so that you can sell everything there, except fresh products. Unlike Amazon, it is a pure marketplace, only offering sales from individual to individual and from professional to individual. It is possible to filter the results according to the type of salesperson (professional or not). eBay has developed very strongly as a sales channel for professionals.

Let’s now look at the Technical Product Image Guidelines of eBay:

  • The minimum image size is 500 x 500
  • 1,600 x 800 is the recommended size
  • For the best zoom-in quality, images should be between 800-1600 pixels on the longest side.
  • Images should have a maximum file size of 12MB
  • PNG, JPEG, GIF, BMP, or TIFF are all acceptable formats
  • JPEG format images should reach a minimum of 90 on the quality scale for JPEG files
  • For the images to not look pixelated or distorted, the thumbnails should not be scaled up.

Primary Image Guidelines by eBay:

  • Images should have a plain white background. Alternatively, gray is allowed.
  • A light shadow is permissible. However, mirror reflections are not.
  • The product should always show the front view from either a straight or angled view. Never display the back or side view.
  • Images should exclusively display the product and nothing else
  • You can display multiple items for multi-packs or bundles, but the main product should be clear as it is the priority.
  • 80-90% of the image should be filled by the product.
  • Product images should be close up and display as many details as possible.
  • Unless necessary, product images with boxes are to be avoided
  • Placeholder images are prohibited
  • Copyright marks, watermarks, logos, and extraneous text and graphics are not allowed.

eBay Secondary Image Guidelines:

  • Plain White Background or Light Gray Background
  • To keep products in focus, a Neutral Backdrop is recommended
  • Mirror reflections are prohibited, but a light shadow is allowed
  • You can display your products at different angles, and you can include a box if necessary
  • You can display several images of the same product
  • You can display another object in front of a product, but they have to show different angles.
  • You can show the whole body or a body part using a model but only for wearable products.
  • You can use cropped photos, but only if the critical aspects of the product are visible.
  • For crops, you can use straight cut or effects like a blur
  • Like in the technical guidelines, never scale up thumbnails or image sizes as this can affect your clarity badly

Amazon Product Image Guidelines

Amazon Product Image Guidelines

In this age of reading pictures, especially for e-commerce merchants, they know the importance of pictures. Some say eCommerce only sells pictures. These sayings are exaggerated, but they reflect the importance of images to an e-commerce business. After all, on the e-commerce platform, the image is the only way for the customer to know the details. The electronics trade has stipulations and requests for images uploaded by merchants to prevent misuse of amazon product images. Today we are discussing the amazon product image requirement.

Amazon has formal requests for the products sold; the image is vital, especially during the review to classification. Images posted by merchants must match Amazon’s requests for the images. In addition, there are still requests for details in the different rankings. If the quality and type of the image do not match the request, Amazon has the right to refuse the bid image. So the quality of the amazon product image and the artifice of its improvement are essential; merchants must extinguish them. 

Amazon Product Image (Technical) Requirements

  • The merchandise must occupy 85% of the image area, and it must display only the merchandise sold. Furthermore, it must never consist of any text, emblem, or watermark.
  • The main image background is distinctly white and does not consist of unusual props or non-branded text and artwork. The background of the auxiliary images can adopt other colors, but white is proposed.
  • At least 1000 pixels for the longest edge of the image. When the height or width is at least 1000 pixels, this image will have a dilation function. Thus, merchants can zoom the image to inspect product details locally.
  • When the vertical aspect ratio of the image is 1: 1.3, you can achieve the best visual efficiency on the Amazon site.
  • Jpeg is offered, but PNG or GIF are also accepted.
  • For the changed product, the main and auxiliary products need the main image.
  • No border on the image Adds a 3-pixel border to the book with a white cover.
  • The main image of the product is called the “main image.” The main image represents the goods on the search results and visit interface; it is also the first image the customer sees on the merchandise details interface. The cover image is the primary image for books, CDs, DVDs, and other media merchandise. For other commodities, the primary image is of the merchandise for sale with a white background. The primary image should be a photo with appeal, specialty, and high resolution. And the product occupies 85% to 100% of the area.
  • The background of the main image must be plain white (the pristine white corresponds to the Amazon search standard and commodity detail interface RGB 255,255,255). The main image should display the merchandise as much as possible to make the product more readily known to the customer. It cannot consist of accessories that the customer will not receive, support that the customer misunderstands, text that does not belong to the description of the goods or the image, and the watermark.
  • In addition, Amazon requires that amazon product images do not contain nudes.

Alternate Image Guidelines

  • The main image is not the actual product image, artwork, or design, nor comics.
  • The main picture can not consist of the logo or watermark; there shouldn’t be outstanding accessories. A product logo is allowed.
  • Models are allowed in some kinds of products (clothes, linens, hosiery for example). However, you have to use professional models. If using mannequins, they should stand upright, no flank, back, or sitting position. Also, do not display items that are not for sale on the models/mannequin. Usually, models are not allowed, but they can demonstrate the products like bags, jewelry, shoes, etc.

Your Turn…

Changes in consumer behavior, increasing online shopping rates, and the effects of the biggest catalyst for change in early 2020 are pushing businesses to adopt a digital-first model. By going digital, borders become less of a barrier, and the world becomes your marketplace, freeing up unprecedented opportunities to connect with new customers. 

That’s why it is crucial to understand the ins and outs of eCommerce, and images are the biggest step to making your store work. As previously stated in the article, the main requirement is for your images to have a plain white background, and there are many tools to assist you with that process. 

You don’t need to spend a lot of money on these tools. Removal.AI is one such app that can remove the background from your product images with ease, as it uses artificial intelligence to work its way around the images you feed it seamlessly. As stated, it’s free! Start building your digital strategy now!


Author’s Bio:

Jaja Denila is a technology, eCommerce, and digital marketing writer. She currently runs her eCommerce store: OfficeDeskMat.Com, which sells premium yet affordable office accessories like desk mats, mousepads, and other workspace decors. 

eCommerce Image Requirements for eBay and Amazon

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