Hey y’all!
Today, we’re pleased to announce a new feature available to sellers with English as their default language: Text alternative.
If you’re not familiar, text alternative—also known as “alt text”—provides an invisible image description to buyers who can’t see what you’re showing in your listing images. Simply put: When you add alt text to your listings, you make them more accessible to blind and low-vision shoppers—enabling more shoppers to experience the best of Etsy. Moving into the holiday season, this is a great addition for both customers and sellers!
Ready to add alt text to your listings? Here’s how to do it:
- Go to Shop Manager > Listings.
- Select the listing you want to edit.
- Hover over an image, and you’ll see a pencil icon.
- Click the pencil icon to add your own alt text.
Consider these best practices to describe your images in text alternatives:
- Put yourself in your customers’ shoes. Close your eyes and think: What information about your item would buyers lose if your images didn’t load on the page?
- Focus on the details. Use your five senses to create a vivid description of your item—its appearance, texture, and its scale in relation to other items in your photograph are a good place to start.
- Keep it short but impactful: Condense your description into no more than 250 characters.
Keep in mind: Alt text on images can also be helpful for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) purposes. The text you add can act as keywords for external search engines. Try to avoid stuffing your alt text with words and phrases—those are likely already in your listing and won’t improve the SEO. Make sure it’s something that would make sense to a blind or low-vision person who’s hearing it read aloud.
For example, you want to strive for this: “Elegant wooden chair with tall back, upholstered in a white and teal fishbone pattern. Legs taper at the base. Arm rests wing out to the sides."
Versus this: “Mid century modern chair mcm 1950 1960 1970 danish swedish design modern design mid century design Hans Wegner Frits Henningsen Børge Mogensen”
A couple of final notes: If you choose to not add alt text to your listing, each listing’s title will still act as the alt text for images—it just may not provide as much detail needed to improve accessibility. And if you have your default language set to something other than English, fear not: Our team’s working hard to make the alt text feature available in other languages soon.
To learn more about alternative text, see here. And if you’re ready to add your own alt text, you can get started here.
Thanks for joining us in making Etsy—and the coming holiday season—that much brighter for everyone.
Happy alt text-ing!
