How To Use Google Images to Increase eCommerce Sales
Updated on October 11, 2022 in Ecommerce by Alifiya Mustafa
Our brain can process images 65% better than any text and that’s what makes the use of images to keep the consumers engaged, a number one strategy.
When it comes to online shopping, Google Images are in trend seven times higher than YouTube and 10 times more than Yahoo and Bing searches, which means – It is getting 26.79% share of all online searches!
Google Images are highly lucrative in terms of generating eCommerce sales. The issue is, most of the eCommerce business owners don’t know how to use it, and those who are using it – many aren’t doing it in a way it’s supposed to.
In this article, I’ll be telling you the most effective tips that’ll give you the right direction to make the most out of Image search strategy.
What ‘Remarkable’ changed in Google Images?
Google Images have a long-forgotten history of how it came in limelight. It gained popularity and massive attention in 2001 – all thanks to Jennifer Lopez’s green dress. That’s when Google realized the importance of improving Google Image search for a better user experience and soon became a grand gallery of more than one trillion images.
Google continues to get updated to date. And, recently in 2018, it updated Google Images where it removed the ‘View Images’ button.
So, why did Google do this? The reason provided by Google was that it was to connect Google Image users with visual content creators and take them to helpful websites.
Well, with such a great explanation, it wasn’t hard to miss the real reason. In a true sense, the action was taken under the settlement with Google Image’s partner, Getty Images. This ensured that both users’ experience and publishers’ concerns were taken care of.
Simply put, though it was a bit annoying for image viewers, it gave online business owners a considerable opportunity to rank higher in the Google image search results to gather organic traffic.
So – The platform isn’t limited to just the viewing of an image, but now the viewers can reach your website and land on your pages via Google Images a lot more.
Now, chances are, that a significant portion of your traffic might be coming to you via Google Images!
Hence, this golden egg is worth more than even real gold! Therefore, if you make sure that your images rank in Google Images, it may ultimately lead to higher traffic and more conversions.
I believe that you now have understood how rewarding investing your time and money in Google Images can be. So, it’s time we dive into the tricks and tips of working with this wonderful platform to increase online sales.
Tips to Rank Better on Google Images to generate eCommerce Sales
1. Use Alt tags and optimize file names
As Google crawls your site, it scans your website’s code to find out if there are any images attached to the pages. Hence, the first thing you should be doing here is to make sure the product images on your site have an alt tag with a descriptive file name.
For example, rather than having an image available as 80546320.jpg, providing a description like women-sports-shoes.jpg is far better. Why? At the time of crawling, it’d be easier for Google to understand the contents of that image and rank that accordingly.
If you just keep the file name as it is (numerical form), you completely miss the chances of getting ranked in Google Images if the shopper is looking for women’s sports shoes.
2. Use images that best portray your products
Google Images will show an endless ocean of images to the shoppers who searched your keywords. Therefore it’s important that you display the images that stand out from the rest and grab your buyers’ attention in the blink of an eye.
You may consider using high-quality, paid stock images, but that’s what your competitors are doing too – what’s different? Here’s what you can do instead to get your shoppers buying from you:
A. Click your own images
Do a one-time investment in a camera or simply use your iPhone to capture the real images of your products. Nothing can be more relevant to your products than their actual images.
This also helps in providing complete transparency to your customers and lowers the chances of returns.
B. Never post your images without editing
Editing improves quality and helps in removing anything that’s unnecessary or distracting. Most successful eCommerce business owners believe in outsourcing product image editing as it’s a lot cheaper and time-saving, and professional at the same time.
Did you know? More than 75% of online shoppers depend on product images to finalize their buying decisions, says SeattleWebDesign.
C. Run SEO over your images
SEO helps your images to rank better in Google Images and get noticed. Attractive and captivating images allures buyers into clicking on your images that ultimately leads to your website.
Here’s what you need to do a complete SEO on your product images:
- Properly name your image files
- Add descriptive alt text
- Adding captions
- Structured data
- Image and file size
- Be sure images are responsive
- Create an image sitemap
- Analyze the content around the image
3. Use captions in your product images
The study done by KissMetrics revealed that captions under the images are read 300% more than the body copy itself. So, not using them would simply mean losing a treasure full of potential customers who, otherwise would’ve got easily engaged.
No one stays long enough to read the complete body cope, and visitors simply tend to skim the information. Captions simply tend to hold the buyer for a few more seconds to read what’s in it.
Along with this, captions on Google Images quickly explain to your consumers what the image stands for. This instantly helps the buyer to decide whether it’s something useful for them.
4. Anchor user-generated content for an enhanced experience
What your consumers post on social media can also be used as useful content for your products and can even rank on Google Images. Images that customer posts help to build up your brand recognition and credibility, increasing your brand’s reach to the social followers of that consumer.
Platforms like Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook have changed the way we interact with images. Images are not merely the visual representation of some products. But, it’s the basis of comparison, judging the fit, quality, and authenticity, and the basis of making the final buying decision.
When these images come from actual buyers, it becomes highly influential as the source is very much more reliable than any of your self-marketing campaigns.
5. Make sure your images are loading fast
There could be nothing more frustrating than a slow-loading image or video. As soon as it takes more than 3 seconds, you lose your potential visitor. Fast loading images can highly improve the number of traffic you usually get. Do these things to make your images load faster:
- Compress your images to reduce its size
- Set proportions yourself
- Optimize your images
- Only compress HD images so that they don’t pixelate too much when compressed
Schema markup is the key
Schema markup is a code that is put on a site that helps Google or any SE return more informative results for users.
When you use structured schema markup, it allows rich product images and product attributes. This attracts potential searchers to your website while they search for items to buy on Google Search or Images.
It’s essential to maintain the accuracy and freshness of product information so that customers find it relevant and current.
With well-created markup, you can make Google Images your storefront window. Also, adding a markup to the product pages gives detailed product information in rich search results, including Google Images, which in turn helps in generating more traffic.
Conclusion
How shoppers shop online has changed a lot in the past 2 decades. Where long phrases were used to be written in search bars to get the results, it turned into a few keywords.
And, rather than jumping from one site to another, shoppers are now using Google Images to find the product they like.
Google has smartly managed to link those images directly to their website source to make it profitable for sellers and easier for shoppers.
Hence, working more on making your product images rank on Google Images can highly improve the traffic and the number of conversions for your online store.
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