#495 - The AI Workflow for Winning Amazon Main Images

Have you ever struggled with having the right inputs to get good output for your AI images on your Amazon listings? Today's episode is going to be perfect [music] to help you really level up your Amazon image game. Hello everybody and welcome to the AM podcast. My name is Bradley Sutton and I'll be your host. And this is the show where we discuss all things Amazon, Tik Tok Shop, and Walmart private label and how to generate recurring revenue streams 24 hours a day during the [music] A.M. and the PM. Hence the name of the show. Get it? AM PM podcast. And as a matter of fact, this week I'm [music] in Miami, Florida at our company offsite with over 300 other Helium 10 and PAC view employees. And even though I'm not running my Amazon business from here, they're still making money. [music] How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. So, today is our monthly AIM session, AIM. In other words, AI monthly, where we have an expert talk about something to do with AI. And we've had a little bit about how to generate images using AI the last few months. But today is going to be a little bit different because maybe you you've taken those workshops and you've been like, "Oh man, I have the best input possible, very technical and and and you know, the resolution and everything looks good, but I still feel like something is missing." Well, it's probably today's lesson because we're going to talk about it's not just about having all the right technical terms that you're inputting into or prompting into like chat GBT or Nano Banana or these other programs. It's also about doing the proper research beforehand to get other kind of like context that you can give to the chat GPT from reviews, from things like Rufus, uh from the bullet points, from the A+ content, from a lot of different aspects on your listings and your competitor listings and how to build them all together into one prompt. And then another thing that might be missing is your afteraction. Just because you create the image and you like it, does that mean you should just automatically go for it? No. You should be doing polling in order to really see does your target market uh really kind of like vibe with the images that you have come up with. So these are just some of the many topics we're going to go uh into today. Let's go ahead and get into this workshop. So we're going to go ahead and bring her on like a lot of you today. She also is right now calling from the Philippines. So Hannah, welcome to the show. How's it going, Hannah? >> Hello Bradley. Hello everyone. >> All right. Now before we get started here, there is a very unique fact about you that I have never heard anybody before, no fans of Helium 10, no Helium 10 employees have ever said, no ex employees, no founders of Helium 10. But what unique tie-in do you have to Helium 10? You loved Helium 10 so much a few years ago. Tell us all what you did. >> Yeah. [clears throat] Yeah. Um, so for everyone who is curious, uh, I have a son. He's three years old now. And I named him Helium. So, so I started um exploring Amazon 2020. That was COVID time. Uh I was a teacher back then and I had to you know uh find um and you know find ways to find income and so I I found Amazon. I I was I I started as a VA back in 2020 and that's when I learned about Amazon and then Helium 10. I was so amazed with the tool. [laughter and gasps] I was so amazed like when I was uh starting out I discovered how to use cerebro the x-ray and all those stuff and so and then I got uh pregnant at uh in 2022 and I thought you know what my name starts at letter H and I want my son to have a name that starts with letter H. So I thought okay I think helium is very unique it sounds very cool so let's name let's name him Helium. So that's the story. >> Hey, for anybody else out there, I don't know. We got to think of some kind of sponsorship. Anybody else who does that, like like maybe you'll get like 30% off of Helium 10 for life or something or maybe even more. That deserves almost more of a discount. But that is absolutely one of the best stories. Uh, you know, I've heard of people getting like actual Helium 10 tattoos, but naming your own child after a company, that that takes it to another level. All right. So, what what's been your experience uh lately in this field that you're going to be talking about? Like, why should we listen to you? Aside from the fact that you you have a son with the coolest name in the world, >> I have an agency. It's called Madcat Creatives with We have worked with like more than 300 brands. Um, it's like our daily job. So, we we analyze listings and create images every single day. So that's where we get the experience and we were able to refine our frameworks and processes internally to help Amazon sellers improve their images that you know bring them better results in their business. >> Awesome. >> Okay. So the the topic for today is how to create Amazon images that stand out and sell even without creative skills or design experience. Now, this presentation that I have for you, uh, this is for Amazon sellers who feel stuck guessing whether their images are helping or hurting conversions, struggle to explain what they want uh, they want to their designers or VAS. They have updated images before but didn't see a clear lift in results. And for sellers who know their images matter but don't know what to fix first. So if this you know if if any of these bullet points resonate with you I hope you find value in this presentation. All right just a quick question. Why do image decisions still feel uncertain even though you are investing in designers? You are investing with agencies. I know it may cost you thousands of dollars and uh you already have a lot of AI tools, but there's a feeling that you know it's still uncertain if this is going to work. And in my opinion or based on my experience, most Amazon images look good. It's just that they just don't convert and it's not your designer because designers need clear context and clear instructions from the seller and it's not AI because we have the most advanced AI so far. So I think it's it's not a design and AI problem but you have a strategy problem. So later once you learn this strategy, you will have confidence in giving instructions or brief to your designers, agencies or AI. You can confidently approve or reject designs and you feel in control of your image decisions instead of being overwhelmed by them. And over time you can apply this not just for one product but across any asens that you have. And especially if you launch products regularly, your listings become easier to optimize because decisions are more intentional and you waste less time and money on random image changes. Now, here's the problem that I want us to uh solve today. Designers and AI can only execute. They can't decide for you. And if you don't have clarity on what matters, what comes first, what success look like, you'll always feel feel unsure about your images. Now, uh before I start with the step-by-step process, I I think it makes sense to start with the thinking how I think about image decisions. So, to make confident image decisions, I don't start with the design. Okay? Um it may sound counterintuitive because we're talking about design but it's not the starting point. We start with how shoppers decide because every image plays a different role. So let me talk about the the the role or the job of every image. Okay. So the first role is the attention by getting the clicks from the search result understanding or helping them decide the shoppers decide and removing the hesitation through your images so that they have confidence when they buy your product. Okay. So for attention this is how um this is what it looks like in the search result using your mobile phone. As you know guys, 60 to 70% of shoppers, Amazon shoppers are using their mobile phones. So the first uh rule that we want to do for the for the main image is to get attention. Okay. So if we're working on this main image, it may look good in the web search results, but if you're going to check your mobile phones, it may look different because it depends on the size of your image. So later we can discuss uh that in detail. And then second is understanding. So once the once the shopper clicks on your main image from the search result, what what they're going to do is to check the first few images probably the second and the third image in your listing. And that gives them an understanding of what the product is about. So this is very important. That's why the sequence of your images should be strategic because maybe not all shoppers will check the rest of your images. You can upload up to eight secondary images in your listing, but maybe not all of them will not uh check all of them. So, just make sure that the second and the third image are uh strategic enough to give them an understanding of your product. Next is confidence. When I say confidence, I'm referring to the rest of the images. Because sometimes if the second and third image is not enough for them to understand the benefit of this product, how this product will solve their problems, they have to scroll or they have to swipe for more or scroll down to check the other images. Like they're going to check the A+ content. How about the brand story? Right? That's this the priority here. We start with the main image and then the first few images. Then the rest is for removing hesitation or answering objections if they are not sold yet in the first few images. All right. How are we going to turn this into a process? Now I'm going to use the sort framework. So sort uh S stands for spot the priority. O observe and gather context. are for reason through data and then test before committing. So let me talk about each of them. Um spot the priority. So the question that you can ask yourself is this a click problem? So what I mean is um is my main image catchy enough to get clicks? So you can check your PPC data if you're getting good click-through rates or you're getting good uh you're getting a lot of clicks. But the maybe if that's the problem then maybe the priority is the main image. But if you see that people are clicking on your listing but they don't buy then maybe that's a conversion problem and then we will prioritize the rest of the images. All right. Now O is for observe and gather context. Now this time we want to gather a lot of things first before we create the design. So this part of the process you can you can delegate it to your team to your VA or to to any member so that uh all of the context are readily available before the designer starts. So things to gather first is the Amazon search results page in mobile view. By the way, before we start, uh before I show you how we gather Amazon search results, this is what I do. Um this might not be the best, but this is what I do. So, first I use a mobile simulator um Chrome extension. So, this way, uh by the way, this is a free um Chrome extension. You can just add it to your to your web browser. And this is how it looks like if you're using this uh Chrome extension. Okay. So now uh once we have this uh mobile view, what I do is I use go full page. Go full page is another uh is another Chrome extension. This is also free. Um no need to pay for anything. Just uh download this to your Chrome extension. So I'm going to show you examples of the Amazon search results that we gathered. So once you use that, you will get this P either PNG or PDF. So by the way, we we gather search results in the US primarily if the product is in the US. But we also gather from DE or Germany because we noticed that there's a lot of main image ideas that are really really great in the the Germany marketplace. So if you if you're going to open it, it looks very long, but if you zoom in, yeah, you will see uh it's going to be very very clear. And this is a way for you to check how the images look like in mobile view. Okay. So your your team member can prepare this. Going back, another thing to gather is the Amazon product page uh your product and your competitor's product pages. So same thing you can um you can use uh go full page to get screenshots of your uh product page. So this is how it looks like. So this is how it looks like. You just have to zoom in. Yeah. So there you go. So why are we gathering all these? Because later you can um feed it to AI so that it will understand your product and your competitor products. Okay. So another thing that we can download or we can gather are the images for your product and your competitors. So you can download the PNG files and save it in your Google Drive. and then and then the customer reviews from your product and top competitors. So how to gather that you can before we are able to use um Helium 10 um Chrome extension I think it's not available anymore here in the Chrome extension but what you can do is you can just get screenshots okay you can get screenshots of your top competitors um here in the listing so take as many screenshots as possible because this is very important because this is our way on how to understand the buyer language. Okay. Next is the Rufus question. So Rufus is the AI within Amazon. If you're not familiar, you just have to click on the upper left side. When you click on Rufus, it will show you different questions or frequently asked questions about the product because Rufus understands the listing and uh it gathers all the information from your images, from your title, bullet points, from um the backend keywords and also from customer reviews. So that's where they what where the AI get the uh frequently asked questions. I suggest that you click on any of these because it will give you more questions as you ask uh as you ask questions. It will give you more other questions. So just get screenshots of these Rufus question and then compile it in your uh Google drive. And then lastly, if you have brand information, say you have a brand guide. Well, not all not all Amazon sellers have brand guide and that's fine. But if you have, you can gather all the brand guides. If you have website homepage, you can get a screenshot. You can use the full page chrome extension I showed earlier. If you have about us page, you can also gather that because these information will be helpful when you start creating A+ content and brand storing also storefront, Amazon storefront if you have one. All right. So next is reason through data. So the first step here is to process all the collected data because we have gathered a lot, right? Just a recap, we have gathered the customer reviews. We have gathered the Amazon search results from the US, Germany. You can also ga gather from UK if you want to. Um we also gathered Rufus questions. We have gathered um product page uh screenshots and uh and all the brand information that you have. So process all the collected data using chat GPD. So I can share with you the link to this GPT that I trained and from here we can identify the top unique selling propositions and the customer avatar. So this is very important because um sometimes we use AI by just giving instruction but the AI doesn't have quality input. Uh AI will only give you quality output based on what you feed it. So those information we gathered in the previous step will will uh train the AI to understand your product and your market. Okay. Uh I will show you the demo for this specific product. I'm showing you by the way this product from Bradley. This is his product uh coffee shelf. So when you start I have a button that says let's begin. Right? You just have to click that button and it will just literally it will just literally tell you what to do. So if you are a firsttime seller, I understand the struggle. So don't worry, I already um programmed this GPT to tell you what exactly to do. So it will tell you the first step. It will tell you to answer these questions like what's the name of their brand? What's the product name? What's the main keyword for this product? If you're unsure what the main keyword is, just use Helium 10. And then it will ask you what are the parts of the listing that you want to optimize. Are you going to optimize for the main image only, secondary images, premium, A+, etc. So here's an example. I gave all this information and then it asked me to prepare for all these information the the customer reviews the website pages the listings etc. So don't worry, you don't need to memorize everything I shared in in this presentation because this chat GPD will tell you what to do. Okay? So it will tell you what to to type honestly. So just copy and paste and then it uh it will ask you to upload everything. So you will upload uh this is your product page then proceed to step 1 a etc. Okay. So here are the listings we gathered earlier and then uh customer reviews. So I gathered customer review screenshots and then it it analyzes the reviews what customers like what customers don't like image ideas to cons to address the concerns of the customers based on the negative reviews and then I added more customer reviews from the competitors. It analyzed again competitor one, competitor two and three and then it combined all the reviews, right? It combined all the reviews and then we added the screenshots for Rufus. So these are from Rufus like what I said earlier just ask questions it will tell you more questions. So the more you ask question the more it will give you um more questions that people might be asking. All right. So this is very very helpful. So from there it will give you a summary of the top frequently asked questions and then it will tell you the unique selling propositions of your product based on everything that you feed it. So this is based on your um product only and then it will refine it based on competitor context. All right. So here is the final unique selling proposition. So this is like uh very important for you. It will give you details on which is the most feature USB based on you know how many people have mentioned this feature uh how many people are complaining about this problem and you want to solve that through your image. So this is very important. You just have to go to step five and after step five it will tell you the customer profile and avatar. This is important for your designer if you want to delegate it to your designer because they have um a customer avatar in mind. Who are they speaking to when they create the image? Right? So, so that's that. Uh let's go back to the presentation. So, this is how we process the data. This is like the the backbone of the whole strategy. We give all the information possible to make this strategy. All right, next is now we create the strategy. All right, so let's start with the main image. For main images, here are some guide questions that you should ask yourself when you start um strategizing for the main image. Is my main image mobile optimized? What are the patterns and strategies from the mobile search results that I can use? What elements can I use to stand out? Like popping colors, packaging, main keyword, accessories, and by the way, I have a detailed checklist. I'm only showing you three bullet points, but I have like more than 20 um bullet points in the checklist that I will share with you later on. So, let's have a real life example. So, this is our uh project. It's a coffin shelf and this is how it looks like on a mobile phone. You see that the main image looks very very small but compared to this competitor it looks so big. So, and this here's another competitor that looks very big in in the web view. I thought this is really good because we show a lot of value like it comes with a it comes with a gift box. It has uh accessories, right? But and and the pricing is also you know very big difference. So I thought this is really good in mobile result. So what I did before starting the before starting the design I thought okay I told my team let's have a poll first. Let's have a poll about what people think about the image. So so here in this in this screen you will see um a Pikfu poll. We use Pikfu. It's a it's a survey platform. You can get results in a matter of minutes or an hour. So, we created a mockup of of the search result for mobile because mobile optimizes the size, right, based on the device you used. So, I just made sure that the title uh and everything else is the same because I I just want to to test the main image. So obviously this one um one it has the oh no this one and this one uh they tied. So the reason why people love this is because it's very big. It's very big and they see a lot of colorful stuff inside this shelf. And for this one, people love this because they see um more information about the product like how it can be opened using the door because this this uh shelf has a door. All right. So I realize that one of the biggest reason is the size. So this is our product for this project. It's about uh aspect ratio is about 1 is to1. So this is square. This one is 1 is to2 aspect ratio. So it's vertical image or portrait image. This one is also one is to one. So this is square and another square image. All right. So I thought I told my team okay let's test uh I have uh a hunch that this is about um this is about uh the size. So I tested two sizes. One is aspect ratio 1 is to one, one is to two rather. So it's a portrait image and another is 4 is to 5. This is also a tall image but not as tall as this one. So this four is to5 aspect ratio one. And the reason why it won is because people see all the um how do you call this? The the accessories clearly. It doesn't look cluttered at all. But you see I'm I'm just having 15 um respondents here. By the way, you can get uh as many responded as many respondents as you want to have richer data, but just for this example, I just used 15 respondents. So you see, even though this one won, it only has eight votes versus seven votes. So it's not very significant, right? So when I read the comments here, people also love this because it looks very big um in the preview. people here just don't like the way the box is uh organized here because there's overlapping and they feel that it looks cluttered. So what I did okay you know what guys I told my team you know what guys let's try to create this taller image and no overlapping of no overlapping of elements so it doesn't look cluttered at all. So that's what we did. Um so we tested that so we have a very good results. Um in the initial poll we have four votes. So we got eight votes this time. So that's that. Um other than the size other than the size we also optimize some elements. Okay, I forgot to mention that we also optimize other elements like before we have um here we have accessories over here but I think we can make it we can make it more eye-catchy by showing you know crazy color like neon green right so that's what we did here neon green color um more orange color we have purple over here and then the box. The box. Let me show you the original box. This is the original gift box. Um, what I did is I I reorganized the red label, a red the ribbon, and added the main keyword coffin shelf gift box because um, Amazon can now read images. It can read keywords within images. So, that can help when it comes to SEO. So, that's that. Um that's something that you can also do with your main images. Test it using peakful. You will get results in a matter of minutes. Okay. So this is the before and this is the after. Okay. Now in case you don't have a designer and want to create the image yourself, I just want to give you a quick demo because this is something that you can do um using Canva. So I prepared here a Canva. So this is the original image I just copied from this listing. Okay. So what I'm going to do, I will just, you know, crop. Uh, by the way, this canvas, this is, let me show you the size. It's 1,500 width and the height is 3,000 pixels. So this is one is to2 um aspect ratio similar to what we did earlier. So what I'm going to do, I will just uh cut some parts. So we have all the elements. Um yeah, so this is something that even you're not a designer, you can do this yourself. You can see uh Canva is very easy to use like that. So we have now different elements. I will just remove background as well. so that um you know it's cleaner but right now it's actually not very necessary because the background is white already. So that's that. And then for the for the box since I want to use a different box what I'm going to do is I will use an AI to generate it. So I already created that before this um before this webinar. Let me show is it the one? Ah, so I created this uh I asked by the way this is my strategy. I use chat GPT to help me create prompts. So I use the dictate um feature here because I don't want to type and it's very timeconuming for me. So I just dictate uh and tell the AI what I want and it it will give me prompts like detailed prompts for AI because what I use is Gemini. So Gemini is from Google. Okay. So if you're if you have a business um business uh what do you call that? Google Google suite for for businesses you already have access to Google Gemini. Uh Gemini just go to gemini.google.com and you will have the pro account I think if I'm not mistaken. So I just what I did I just um pasted this the screenshot of this product and added the the prompt created using chat GPT and then it gave me this image. So actually I think this is really good already. So what I'm going to do I will just copy that and paste it here. Yeah actually you know what I will just paste it here and then I will remove the image. So, I'm not going to use this anymore. Okay. Not going to use that. Okay. Okay. Okay. So, that's that. And then we can use these elements here. make it as big as possible because we want to maximize the white space. Um the the bigger your product in the image, it gives a perception that they are like g they're getting more from your product. Even if they are just seeing an image, it's not the actual image. So make it as big as possible, as much as possible. Uh you can consume all the spaces until the edge that's totally fine. And then now we're missing the box, right? So the box that we have from the original main image is um an open box. So what I did I already prepared um I went to I went to chat GPT and asked the same process I asked GPT to to uh create a prompt for me. Let me just find where I got the Oh, here. So this is the box. So I'm just going to copy that. go to here. Okay. Okay. I will position. I will click on position so I can move the layers. So I want it to be at the back. All right. Now you have the main image. Let me see. Let me just try to flip it and see how it looks like. Uh, okay. Because if I flip it, I still have white space in here to maximize this box. Okay, I think this is great. Now, what I'm going to do is I will erase this text. I will edit and uh Okay, let's use magic eraser to erase this part. So, this is AI. So, just erase that. Wait for a few seconds and it will automatically be erased. Now, I also did like the the the text earlier because it looks gray. By the way, I can zoom in a bit more to make it like that. Just a moment. What if I try to make it bigger? Okay, great. So, now I'm going to add text here. I will make it bold and all caps. So the main keyword is coffin shelf gift box. You can do something like that. The bigger text much better because it's going to be smaller in the search results. So I guess that's it. We already have a main image in like 10 minutes using Canva a uh chat GPT and Gemini. So, I personally like Gemini. Just a few uh tips. I like Gemini when it comes to image generation. And uh just a quick tip, I suggest that you if you think if you think Gemini doesn't understand your prompt after a long um how do you call this thread, I suggest that you create new um chat again because sometimes it will not understand you. Actually can we can also use this. This is an angled um You know what? Let's try that angled uh image. Just remove background. I like this one because this one is angled. It shows the depth of the box. Let me just flip it. Flip. All right. Okay. Sorry about that. I will change this. Well, you can test if you want. You can test um showing the box um frontal in frontal angle or angle because people might like this one to see the the depth of the product of this this thing. Then let's just edit again. This is just a few seconds of erasing the text. It's not very readable anyway. So let's remove it. Then we can Yeah, just just like that. I think we already have a main image similar to what we have here. Where's the main image? So, here. All right. So, that's that. I hope uh this is something that you can apply to your main image later. If you have time later today, go ahead and start testing your main image. I will just scan um the rest. So, the the rest are for secondary images. This is where we can use a lot of what we use in chat GPT, right? Because this is like the backbone of your strategy and also the GPT it will it will give you um a clear step by step on what to do in your image. Obviously you can always brainstorm with GPT because at the end of the day you are the seller, you are the marketer, you understand the product. So you can brainstorm, you can use the tool not to decide for you but to help you decide. All right. So um after that you can get this information in GPT and this is what you can share with your designers or with your agency later on. Um just yeah by the way in GPT I already trained the GPT to give you AI image prompt. So if you can um just copy and paste it in in Gemini. So this is an example right and then you can use the Canva template for brief that I will share also with you. So this is something that you can share to your designer because if you just give them the text sometimes designers are very visual. They have to have like what's your vision? How does it look like? So you can have a designer reference image using uh Gemini and yeah so here is an example of what we did for the coffin shelf. So this is the before this is the after uh using the process earlier with chat GPT and then um last uh poll that I did here is that sometimes we don't know what is the right sequence. Remember in the previous slide I told you guys that the first few images are very important because some people might not see all of the images. So I just ran um another poll to see what is the most important image for them and then uh based on the ranking that's the that's what I recommend to do with PT01 PT02 and and so on. Yeah. So I guess that's it. That's the sort framework. We have spot the priority, observe and gather context, reason through data and test before committing to your images. So yeah, as promised, here are the three gifts that I have for you. You can scan this QR code so you can already download or make a copy of the template, the checklist, and the GPT that I trained for for this. So I there I hope uh you find value in this presentation and go ahead start using these tools to improve your listing images. >> Awesome. Awesome. Okay. Um real quick guys just we've been talking uh you know about Hannah's love for Helium 10. So if anybody's interested in a special that we have for Helium 10, you can save 20% off the diamond plan for up to six months. There's no, you know, it's monthtomonth. There's no contract or or anything that you're stuck for 6 months. You can try it out and then go back. Just use the code SSP20. Anybody who signs up for this code. Um you can get a one-on-one uh call with me. All right. So that's like a special. You just ask customer service. Say, "Hey, I signed up with SSP 20." Or who knows May maybe I'll see if if Hannah can come on the call, too, uh for some of you guys so she can answer some questions. But take down this code. If you're on the platinum plan or you don't even have a Helium 10 plan, you want to join. Alexandra says, "I've always used 2,000 by 2,000 pixels for all images." You're saying sometimes it's better to change the image size based on type of product. So, can you uh elaborate when it's good to use different sizes, Hannah? >> Yes. Um I also use the same size for a long time but then under uh knowing that 60 to 70% of customers are using mobile phones when when browsing on Amazon we want to ensure that this is that your main image is optimized for mobile. So as you can see in my process earlier I gathered the top competitors and when I download their images I check what what sizes are they using or at least the aspect ratio of their images. what are the the aspect ratio of their images? And if you want to compete with these um uh with these sellers, we need to test. You can use, you know, polling websites like Helium 10 or Pikfu to see um what people think about the image size when when seen on mobile. So, feel free to test because it is allowed on Amazon to to have different sizes, but there's a a minimum requirement of I think 1,000 um pixels on the longest side at least. So, just test it out, guys. >> Outside of that QR code, if just people want to see your website or find you on the interwebs out there, Hannah, what's the best way to uh find you out there? >> Yes. Uh feel free to just find me on LinkedIn, Hannah Tampok. Uh that's my name on LinkedIn. You can send me a DM if you have any question >> and send any toddler gifts for her son who's named Helium. I'm going to send some definitely some Helium swag. Still the best story. Anybody else? You name your your kid Helium or something like that, hit me up. I I'll hook you guys up with something something special from from the company. Well, uh, Hannah Salamo, thank you so much for coming on here and giving us this great, >> uh, information, and thank you for redoing our Project X coffin shelf images. We'll see everybody else in the [music] next episode. Bye-bye now.