Missing Alt Text: The Accessibility and SEO Problem Every Store Ignores
Image alt text is one of the easiest SEO wins you're probably missing. Here's why it matters and how to write it properly.
If you sell physical products online, images are your storefront. Customers can't touch your products — they rely entirely on visuals. But there's a text-based shadow of those images that most store owners ignore: alt text.
Alt text (alternative text) is a brief description attached to an image in HTML. It serves two critical purposes: it tells screen readers what an image shows (accessibility), and it tells search engines what an image contains (SEO).
The SEO Impact
Google Image Search drives significant traffic to ecommerce sites. When someone searches "blue running shoes," Google can only return your product image if it knows what that image shows. Without alt text, your image is invisible to search.
Alt text also contributes to the overall relevance signal of a page. A product page with images described as "Nike Air Max 270 in blue colorway, side view" reinforces to Google that this page is about that specific product.
The Accessibility Impact
Over 2 billion people worldwide have some form of visual impairment. Many use screen readers to navigate the web. When a screen reader encounters an image without alt text, it either skips it entirely or reads out the filename — something like "IMG_4827.jpg" — which is useless.
Beyond being the right thing to do, accessibility is increasingly a legal requirement. The ADA applies to ecommerce sites, and lawsuits over inaccessible websites have grown year over year.
How to Write Good Alt Text
Product Images
Describe the product specifically. Include brand, model, color, and distinguishing features.
Bad: shoe or product image
Good: Nike Air Max 270 running shoe in midnight navy, side profile
Lifestyle Images
Describe what's happening in context.
Bad: woman
Good: Woman wearing StoreVitals branded t-shirt while working at a laptop in a cafe
Decorative Images
If an image is purely decorative (a divider, a background pattern), use an empty alt attribute: alt="". This tells screen readers to skip it entirely, which is better than a meaningless description.
What NOT to Do
- Don't keyword stuff:
buy cheap shoes best shoes online shoe store discount - Don't start with "Image of": Screen readers already announce it's an image
- Don't duplicate the caption: If there's visible text next to the image saying the same thing, the alt text should add different context
- Don't leave it empty on product images: Empty alt is only for decorative images
The Scale Problem
A typical ecommerce store has hundreds or thousands of product images. Checking each one manually is impractical, especially as new products are added constantly by team members who may not think about alt text.
Automated scanning catches every missing alt text across your entire site in seconds. StoreVitals flags every image without alt text and tells you exactly which pages they're on, so you can fix them systematically instead of guessing.
Quick Action Plan
- Scan your site to find all images missing alt text
- Prioritize product images — these have the highest SEO and accessibility impact
- Set up a process — make alt text a required field when uploading new product images
- Monitor ongoing — new images get added constantly, so check regularly
Alt text is one of the lowest-effort, highest-impact SEO improvements you can make. It just requires knowing where the gaps are.