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I'm customizing an ecommerce solution and I noticed that most people would place product pictures on the left, but I wonder if there is a reason behind it.

I would like to have my pictures on the right, and I even have an old mock up (it's not up to current design standards, but that's pretty much the layout I want).

enter image description here

What should I do?

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  • 1
    Show your target audience your designs and see how they react to it.
    – Mayo
    Mar 14, 2016 at 18:10
  • 1
    You might be interested in the baymard institute- they do a lot of research on this stuff
    – jackiemb
    Jul 24, 2016 at 23:10

3 Answers 3

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The position of elements on the website should order from General -to-> Detail. The general element should place on Top/Left -down-to-> Bottom/Right.

The title is most general for most e-commerce category it should place on Top/Left. Pictures are the second general it should place immediately after the title (some website pictures is more general than a title).

Lazada, BH, Amazon, Taobal

But the real answer is "follow the other" when most of the e-commerce website place picture on Top/Left. Users will look at Top/Left for the picture.

As an e-commerce, I don't want users to think of anything than "click add to cart" then I will put the picture in norm position.

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Typically you place the more important content to the left. For some products (e.g. electronics), the description/specs are more important and would make sense to place it to the left. For others (e.g. fashion), the pictures are more important, so they go on the left, leaving the product name/description to the right.

Of course, this is also something that's easy to A/B test. You should consider testing if you have time/budget to do so. :)

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  • Exactly. There's no single-best-layout. If I'm looking at cables it's hard to see if it's 9 or 6 feet from an image, in which case you a (simplified) spec sheet should be the first content block. Mar 15, 2016 at 6:46
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It seems like you really want the design to be for you, rather than your user. Keep in mind that ultimately it's the user that will be using your website most of the time.

The reason that images are placed on the left is that because people read from left to right. There is also research that shows a similar pattern that users browse web pages (refer https://www.nngroup.com/articles/f-shaped-pattern-reading-web-content/) Most important thing about the product will needs to be seen 1st.

However if you are from a region like the middle east, where people read from right to left, the opposite of this will be true.

Besides product pages with left positioned image, I've come across quite a few websites that have product pages with the image in the center. This is probably with the idea that users look at what's right in front of them (in the center of the screen) 1st before starting to scan the web page.

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  • If people "read" from left to right, then the picture should not be on the left.
    – Rob
    Jul 24, 2016 at 13:46
  • @Rob why do you say the picture shouldn't be on the left?
    – Blue Ocean
    Jul 27, 2016 at 2:21
  • Because you don't "read" pictures. If the most important element of a section is the text, then the element should start with text. Personally, I feel an image on the left also distracts me from the beginning of a line. I don't feel the same when the image is to the right of a paragraph.
    – Rob
    Jul 27, 2016 at 13:56

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