Shopify Image Alt Text: A Practical Guide

Alt text is one of the most skipped fields in Shopify, and one of the easiest wins. It helps shoppers using screen readers, and it gets your products into Google Images, a search surface most stores have zero presence on.

By One Supplier LLC · Updated June 16, 2026

What alt text is

Alt text (alternative text) is a short written description attached to an image. Browsers show it if the image fails to load, screen readers read it aloud, and search engines use it to understand what an image depicts. In Shopify you set it by clicking an image in a product's media section and choosing Edit alt text.

Why it matters

• Accessibility. Shoppers who use screen readers rely on alt text to know what your product looks like. Missing alt text is a genuine barrier, and increasingly a legal expectation.
• Image search. Google Images is a real shopping entry point. Descriptive alt text (and file names) is how your products qualify to appear there.
• Context for the page. Good alt text reinforces what a page is about, a small but real on-page SEO signal.

How to write good alt text

Describe what's actually in the image, plus the product context, in a natural phrase. Keep it under about 125 characters.

Good

"White ceramic pour-over coffee dripper sitting on a wooden kitchen counter"

Too vague

"product image"  /  "IMG_4821.jpg"  /  "dripper"

Keyword-stuffed (don't)

"coffee dripper pour over coffee dripper best coffee dripper buy coffee dripper"

The rule of thumb: if you read the alt text aloud to someone who can't see the screen, would they understand the image? If yes, it's good.

A few rules

• Don't start with "image of" or "picture of." Screen readers already announce that it's an image.
• Decorative images can have empty alt. Pure decoration (background flourishes) should have alt="" so screen readers skip it. Product images are never decorative.
• Vary it per image. A product's front shot, detail shot and lifestyle shot should each get their own description.
• Name the file well too. ceramic-pour-over-dripper.jpg beats IMG_4821.jpg.

The scale problem (and the fix)

Writing one good alt text takes thirty seconds. Writing it for a catalog with thousands of images is the part nobody finishes. This is where AI vision helps: it can look at each image, describe it accurately, and write alt text in the right format across your entire store. That's one of the checks our Shopify SEO audit automates, alongside meta descriptions and the rest of the catalog.