The anatomy of perfect product alt text

Creating effective alt text is both an art and a science. For CPG and retail, where the product is the star, getting it right is paramount. Here are the key components that create a high-quality, high-impact alt text description:

• Be specific and descriptive: Go beyond the obvious. Instead of “handbag,” write “Woman’s black leather tote handbag with gold hardware.” This level of detail helps both users and search engines understand the product’s specific attributes.
• Incorporate relevant keywords naturally: Your alt text is a prime spot for relevant terms, but they must feel natural. If your target term is “organic baby food,” the alt text for a product image could be “A glass jar of Brand X organic sweet potato and pear baby food puree.”
• Keep it concise: While detail is important, verbosity isn’t. Most screen readers cut off alt text at around 125 characters, so aim to convey the essential information within that limit.
• Avoid redundancy: Never start your alt text with “An image of…” or “A picture of…” Screen readers already announce that the element is an image. Using these phrases just wastes valuable character space and creates a clunky user experience.
• Situational awareness is king: The alt text should reflect the image’s purpose on the page. If an image shows your product in use, describe that context. For example, “A person spreading organic almond butter from a jar onto a slice of whole wheat toast.”

The challenge of scale in a visual world

A solid alt text description, paired with high-quality product images, is fundamental to a modern online store. But for CPG and retail brands with thousands of products and even more images, the manual creation of alt text is a monumental task. It’s a resource-draining bottleneck that slows down product launches and often leads to inconsistent, rushed, or simply missing descriptions.

The best alt text translates visual information into a concise, accurate description. It doesn’t just say “red shirt.” It helps the user and search engine understand that it’s a “woman’s v-neck short-sleeve cotton t-shirt in bright red.” Manually writing this level of detail for every single image is simply not scalable.

Good alt text examples in action

Seeing effective alt text in practice makes the difference clear. Here’s how to transform basic descriptions into brand-perfect, SEO-friendly alt text:

Example 1: A piece of clothing

• Bad alt text: red dress
• Good alt text: A woman in a bright red, floor-length evening gown with a V-neck and sparkling sequins

Why it’s better: The good version provides details about the style, color, length, and material, creating a much clearer picture for both users and search engines.

Example 2: A food product

• Bad alt text: chocolate bar
• Good alt text: A bar of Brand XYZ 70% dark chocolate with almonds, with two squares broken off to show the texture

Why it’s better: It includes the brand, the type of chocolate, key ingredients, and a visual detail that conveys the product’s appeal.

Example 3: A home decor item

• Bad alt text: lamp
• Good alt text: A modern, minimalist desk lamp with a matte black finish and an adjustable brass arm, casting a warm glow on a wooden desk

Why it’s better: This description captures the style, materials, and context of the product, which is crucial for items where aesthetics are a key selling point.

Notice how the optimized versions include specific details (materials, colors, sizes), target keywords naturally, and paint a complete picture for both users and search engines — all while staying under 125 characters.

Why alt text is a non-negotiable for modern retail

In the digital marketplace, every detail on your product page contributes to the customer experience and your bottom line. Alt text, or alternative text, is a short, descriptive label attached to an image’s HTML tag. While it operates behind the scenes, its impact is front and center in three critical areas.

Accessibility

For millions of visually impaired users who rely on assistive technology, alt text serves as their window into your images. Assistive technology vocalizes the alt text, describing the image to the user. Without it, a potential customer hears only “image” or a meaningless file name, creating a frustrating and exclusionary experience.

Providing accurate, descriptive alt text ensures that everyone, regardless of ability, can understand and engage with your products. It’s not just a feature. It’s a fundamental aspect of inclusive design and a legal imperative under regulations like the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). This approach can improve accessibility significantly for your entire website.

Search engine optimization (SEO)

Search engine crawlers, like those from Google and Bing, can’t “see” images the way humans do. They rely on text-based data to understand what an image contains and how it relates to the surrounding content. Alt text provides this crucial information.

By including relevant SEO keywords in your alt text (e.g., “Nike Air Max 90 white sneakers” instead of just “sneaker”), you help search engines understand what the image is about. This helps your product detail pages rank in Google Images search results and can boost SEO for the overall page, driving more organic traffic to your website.

And, for retailers with physical locations, including geo-specific keywords in alt text (e.g., “handcrafted leather tote bag from our Austin, TX workshop”) can improve local search visibility and attract nearby customers.

Answer engine optimization (AEO) and geo-targeting (GEO)

The digital landscape is shifting toward answer engines. Users are asking specific questions, and AI-driven platforms like Google Assistant, Siri, and Alexa are providing direct answers. AEO involves optimizing your content to be the source of these answers. Detailed alt text, rich with descriptive terms and product identifiers, makes your images prime candidates for being featured in these rich results.

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) influences how AI tools use your content to generate original responses based on indexed web content. When these AI systems analyze your product images, comprehensive alt text helps them understand and accurately describe your products in their generated responses. This means your brand gets mentioned and cited when users ask AI assistants about products in your category, expanding your reach beyond traditional search results.

How alt text generator AI agents are transforming the CPG/retail industry

The most forward-thinking CPG and retail brands no longer ask their teams to manually write alt text for every image. They’re automating the process with AI agents that understand images as effectively as a seasoned team member would — freeing up human creativity for higher-impact initiatives.

Ensuring brand consistency across all product images

Your brand’s style isn’t just in your copy — it’s in every detail of your presentation. An image alt text generator can use your specific guidelines to ensure that the tone and terms used in your alt text are always consistent. Whether it’s for a new line of organic snacks or a seasonal clothing collection, the descriptions will align perfectly with your brand identity, strengthening your presence across your entire digital shelf.

Scaling product launches with rapid image optimization

Launching a new product line involves a mountain of tasks, and image optimization is a critical part of it. Manually writing alt text for hundreds or thousands of new product images can cause significant delays. An AI agent eliminates this bottleneck, generating accurate image descriptions for your images in seconds. This means your marketing team can get products to market faster, confident that every image is fully optimized from day one.

Enhancing SEO for a competitive digital shelf

In the crowded CPG and retail market, search engine visibility is paramount. An AI agent to generate alt text helps Google and other platforms better understand the content of your images, which is a key factor in image search ranking. By automatically including relevant SEO terms in a natural, descriptive way, the agent helps your products get discovered by exactly the people looking to buy them, driving more organic traffic to your web page. This approach can improve SEO significantly across your product catalog.

Championing accessibility and reaching a wider audience

Accessibility isn’t just a compliance checkbox — it’s a commitment to serving every potential customer. By providing clear, accurate alt text for all images, you make your website fully accessible to visually impaired users. This not only improves the user experience for a wider audience but also enhances your brand’s reputation as an inclusive and socially responsible company. An AI-powered approach ensures no image is left behind.

Get started with WRITER’s free alt text generator AI agent

Our free AI alt text generator is just one example of how WRITER is transforming work across enterprises. It’s a simple yet powerful tool designed to give you a taste of enterprise-grade automation.

Let’s walk through how to use our free version:

Step 1. Provide the image

First, simply upload the image you want to generate alt text for. This can be any image, whether it’s a product on your ecommerce site or a promotional graphic.

Step 2. Generate and review your alt text

WRITER’s AI agent, powered by Palmyra Vision, analyzes the image content and generates a descriptive, accurate, and SEO-friendly alt text description. You can review the generated text and copy it directly to your website’s backend.

Beyond the free tool: Enterprise-grade AI for creating alt text for accessible web images

The difference between good alt text and great alt text often comes down to integration and brand alignment. While our free AI generator delivers impressive standalone results, WRITER AI HQ offers enterprise-grade AI that scales with your business. Imagine custom alt text agents that live and breathe your brand guidelines. Or agents that automatically translate your PDPs so you can reach global audiences. All of this is possible with enterprise-grade AI and agentic workflows.

Amplify your accessibility strategy with WRITER

Image alt text serves as the digital key that unlocks your images for everyone. WRITER, the AI-powered platform for enterprises, ensures that key gets used effectively. From automatically generating descriptions for entire product catalogs to ensuring every new image meets both accessibility and SEO standards, WRITER AI agents free your marketing team from production bottlenecks. At the same time, they maintain the consistent quality that builds customer trust and expands your reach.

Ready to see our alt text agent in action? Try the free alt text generator AI agent today or schedule a demo to see how WRITER’s full platform can transform your enterprise.

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