What is alt text? (and why it matters for your store)
Alt text is a short written description of an image that screen readers speak aloud and that appears if the picture fails to load.
Alt text, short for alternative text, is a brief written description attached to an image. It is invisible on most screens. But it does real work behind the scenes: a screen reader reads it aloud to a person who cannot see the picture, and a browser may show it when the image does not load.
For a store, that makes it a matter of access first. A shopper who is blind or has low vision cannot judge your product from a photo. The alt text is their photo.
A before and after for a jute bag
Imagine a product photo of a jute shoulder bag with a cotton lining and a brown leather handle, placed on a wooden stool.
Before: `IMG_4521.jpg` or `bag`
A screen reader would say either something meaningless or one useless word.
After: "Natural jute shoulder bag with brown leather handle and a zip, standing on a wooden stool."
Now someone who cannot see the image knows what the product is, its main material, a distinct feature and how it appears.
How to write good alt text
- Describe what is actually in the picture, in plain words.
- Mention the product first, then the useful details: colour, material, angle, what is happening.
- Keep it short, about one sentence.
- Do not start with "image of" or "picture of". The software already announces that it is an image.
- Do not cram in keywords. A line stuffed with search terms is unpleasant to listen to.
- If the photo shows a size comparison or detail, say so: "close-up of stitching along the base."
Different photos of the same product should have different alt text, since they show different things. A front view, a side view and a lifestyle shot are not the same.
What about search?
Search engines also read alt text to understand an image. I will not claim it improves your ranking. It helps a system understand what is in a picture, which is useful in itself, and that is as far as I will go.
Common mistakes
- Leaving it blank everywhere.
- Using the filename, such as "DSC00234".
- Writing the same sentence on all five photos.
- Describing something that is not in the image.
If you are choosing file names too, how to name product image files properly shows what helps, and how to write alt text for product images has more practical examples.
What Varchas does
I looked through the storefront and admin product screens for an alt text field and did not find a dedicated one for product images. So I will not say you can enter custom alt text there. What you can control is the product name and description, which a store typically uses to label its images. Write those carefully, as described in how to write a product title that gets found. Beyond the store, keep a short description of each photo in your catalogue notes so that you have text ready when a tool does ask for it.
Next step
Take your top five products and write one sentence for each main photo, as if you were describing it to a friend over the phone. Keep those lines in your spreadsheet.