The Knowledge: The Perfect Ratio
In our semi-regular series, the Digishare team take a moment to share some of tips, tricks, or things they’ve noticed during their time deep in the product content mines. We hope you find these nuggets of knowledge interesting, and check back for more in the future!
Perfect Ratio
Getting the correct assets to your retail partners in the correct format can be vital in ensuring your products are as visible as possible.
However, other than ensuring that you meet the minimum requirements, what other factors do you need to be aware of when providing imagery to a retail partner?
Today we’re going to be looking at the aspect ratio of your images, and how it can affect how they display on Amazon A+.
What is the Aspect Ratio?
The aspect ratio is the ratio of the width to height of an image, expressed as two numbers. Put simply, if an image is 300px wide and 300px high, it has a 1:1 image ratio. If the width is twice the height (600 x 300), the ratio is 2:1.
Most images allowed by the Amazon A+ modules are displayed as a 1:1 ratio. However, as long as your image exceeds the minimum size requirements for each dimension, you can upload graphics at whatever ratio you want.
Uploading & Editing
So, let’s say we upload a 1200px by 600px to an Amazon A+ module that is 300px by 300px – what happens?
Firstly, Amazon’s A+ system will take your image and reduce it in size so that the shortest side fits the dimensions of the slot. In this case, it will be the height reduced down to 300px. The width will be shrunk proportionally as well, but as the aspect ratio is 2:1, the width will still be twice the size of the height.
To deal with this, Amazon crops the image, removing the left-most and right-most portions of the image so that it fits in the 300px by 300px frame. When uploading you get the option of dragging the image horizontally so you can choose to lose more on the right side than the left (or vice-versa), but the outcome is the same. A hefty chunk of the image you uploaded will not display in the A+.
This is why it’s essential to keep your aspect ratios in mind when designing and submitting imagery for enhanced content. Without ensuring the subject of your imagery is contained at the very centre, there is always a risk that this automatic cropping might cut off an important detail or some included copy.
Digishare recommends submitting media at the required size and aspect ratio in order to avoid any compression or cropping issues. That way, you’re assured that the messaging you want to display is featured in full on the final product page.