Who chooses the images for a product?
For years, we’ve been getting used to more and more visual material, because our digital everyday life is full of images. So for online stores, where customers can only see the product range virtually, good images are vital. In this article, I explain how we at Digitec Galaxus handle the images for our products.
Some customers know exactly what they want to buy in advance. In this case, the image can serve as a final check that it’s the right product before they purchase it. Other online shoppers browse through the virtual range and are inspired by various factors. Here, images can help them visualise the physical item by showing products in certain scenarios or explaining their use. There are also customers who compare products extensively, research them and obtain information on a wide range of details. Images with product details are an absolute must for this group.
In any case, a meaningful product description requires a set of high-resolution and detailed images from different angles. Here are three different product examples to illustrate this:
Our method for the best possible shopping experience
We help you find what you what you’re looking for. If you use the search bar to look for your product in our online shop, the results will appear in the form of a product overview. To ensure clarity, the individual products are presented with just a little information: price, product name, availability, customer rating and the first image. If you then click on a specific product, you’ll usually find more than one image.
Generally, we try to provide as many images as possible. A total of 27.6 million images are currently in use for the 8.1 million products in our Swiss range: an average of 3.4 images per product. However, the appearance of the shop should remain well curated too. For this reason, we often don’t display images similar to existing ones. For example, there are products which have countless images showing very similar perspectives. Or there are numerous images with the same content but varying quality. When this happens, our system in the background chooses the selection. There are different rules for this:
The first image
The first image has a particularly important representative function for the product. On the one hand, it’s displayed in various places in our shops, such as in the search results, in the order overview or in other product lists. It’s also the one used externally, for example for the Digitec or Galaxus ad on Google Shopping.
Since the beginning of 2023, we’ve been using artificial intelligence to select and process images. The first image should be cropped to display the product in the front view and have good resolution. Cropping is important for a uniform appearance. It allows all images to be given the same background colour, in doing so achieving a seamless transition to the background of the website in light mode.
The order of the images
If there’s more than one image for the respective product, the system has to determine the order. This is the order you move along when you click through the images as a user.
For us, it’s important the user can get the information they need as quickly as possible from the order of images. For example, the front view of an item of clothing should be the first image and the back view the second. Further back, images from additional perspectives, scene images, usage explanations and videos or other supplementary images are shown.
Images with special content
In addition to the actual product images, there are supplementary images such as energy labels. For certain products, as the provider we’re obliged to disclose such information.
This is why our algorithm has to recognise and specifically mark certain image types because the product will only be released for the online shop and be publicly visible once the correct energy label is available as an image. Otherwise, it remains in our internal product database, waiting to be completed with the energy label.
Image procurement and dealing with image rights
Image procurement takes place far behind the scenes. The image material reaches our central database via a wide variety of sources. On the one hand, there are our retailers and suppliers, who supply images of the products they offer. On the other hand, brands and brand representatives provide image material. In addition, there are specialised third-party providers who operate image databases and, if required, we also actively search for missing images. It’s precisely this manual image accumulation that shouldn’t be underestimated, as it’s enabled us to put several hundred thousand images online in recent years.
Another important aspect behind the scenes is the correct handling of image rights. For example, the providers may only have image licences for certain countries. When Galaxus entered the market in six European countries the system had to be adapted.
As of 2024, our image database contains around 73 million images. If you can recall the figure from above, you’ll now realise that only 38% of it is actually used. The remaining 62% is mostly redundant or poor-quality image material that we don’t want to display on our shop. This way, our system ensures that you as a customer find the right thing as quickly as possible.
