Creator economy · Content craft
Alt text for shoppable posts, and why the product title will not do
Half of product titles name no brand and one in five is a bare category noun. Pasting one into the alt attribute helps nobody.
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Part of: For creators
Do not paste the retailer's product title into the alt attribute. We checked 7,716 live US product titles on 3 September 2026: the median was five words, 52.1% named no brand, and 18.2% were bare category nouns.
390 separate listings had the exact title ‘Coffee Mug’. As alt text that tells a blind reader nothing, tells a search engine nothing, and tells your audience nothing. Writing one honest sentence instead takes fifteen seconds.
Why the retailer's title will not do
| Property | Listings | Share of 7,716 |
|---|---|---|
| Median title length | — | 5 words |
| Generic category noun, three words or fewer | 1,407 | 18.2% |
| No brand name in the title | 4,018 | 52.1% |
| Twelve words or more (specification dumps) | 586 | 7.6% |
| Stray quotation marks around the title | 120 | 1.6% |
7,716 live US in-stock listings across fourteen product families, 3 September 2026.
The two failure modes sit at opposite ends. A five-word title is too thin to describe anything. A twenty-eight-word title — the longest in our sample — is a specification dump with colour codes and size grids in it, which is worse than useless read aloud.
The most repeated bare titles in our sample: ‘Coffee Mug’ 390 times, ‘Hiking Boots’ 102, ‘Cat Tree House’ 97, ‘Cat Tree’ 81, ‘Human Dog Bed’ 52.
How to write it
- Name the object. ‘A ribbed knit crewneck sweater’, not ‘sweater’.
- Add what makes this one this one. Colour, material, shape, the detail you would point at.
- Say how it is shown if that matters — flat, on a model, in a room, close-up on a seam.
- Stop. One sentence. Alt text is a description, not a caption and not a sales pitch.
- Leave the price out. It changes; the image does not.
| Instead of | Write |
|---|---|
| Coffee Mug | A white ceramic mug with a curved handle, photographed against a plain background |
| Hiking Boots | Brown leather ankle hiking boots with red laces and a lugged sole |
| Cat Tree | A three-level carpeted cat tree with a hanging rope toy |
| " Cashmere " | A cream cashmere crewneck sweater laid flat, showing the ribbed cuff |
Left column: exact titles from live listings in our sample.
Keep reading
The shoppable-post specifics
- Describe the product, not the outfit. If the post links one item, the alt text should make clear which item.
- Do not put the affiliate disclosure in the alt text. Disclosure has to be visible to everyone; hiding it in an attribute is the opposite of disclosing.
- Handle multi-product images explicitly. ‘Five products arranged on a table: a grinder, a kettle…’ is correct and reads fine.
- Mark decorative images as decorative. An empty alt attribute is the right answer for a divider or a texture, and screen readers skip it.
- Do not stuff keywords. It reads terribly aloud, which is the actual test.
Where each platform puts it
Every platform handles this differently and several change it regularly, so this is a place to check rather than to assume. Checked 3 September 2026:
- Your own site. The
altattribute on the image tag. Full control, and the only place you truly own it. - Instagram. Alt text is set per image in the advanced settings when posting, and can be edited afterwards. The platform generates automatic alt text when you do not.
- Platform storefronts and link pages. Usually inherit the retailer's title, which is exactly the problem this page is about. Override it where the tool allows.
- Email newsletters. The alt attribute doubles as the fallback when images are blocked, which many clients do by default. It is doing two jobs there.
- Short-form video. There is no alt attribute. Describing the product out loud in the audio is the equivalent, and it also helps the majority watching with sound off.
Frequently asked
What should alt text say on a shoppable post?
What the object is, what it looks like, and anything a buyer would need to see. Not the retailer's title: 18.2% of the 7,716 titles we checked were generic category nouns like 'Coffee Mug', which describe nothing.
Can I use the product title as alt text?
Usually not. The median product title in our sample was five words long and 52% did not name a brand. 390 listings shared the exact title 'Coffee Mug'.
Does alt text help with search?
It is one of the few signals a search engine has about what an image shows. But write it for the person using a screen reader first; the search benefit follows from doing that properly.
How long should alt text be?
One clear sentence is usually right. Describe the object and the distinguishing detail, and stop before it becomes a caption.
Method and scope
- 7,716 live US in-stock product listings across fourteen families, pulled from the CJ product catalogue on 3 September 2026. Title length, brand presence and generic-noun classification computed on that set.
- A title counts as generic when it is three words or fewer with no digit and no brand from the feed's own brand field.
- Rewrite examples in the table describe real listings from that sample; the suggested alt text is ours.
- Platform behaviour is described as checked on 3 September 2026 and changes without notice.
Last verified 3 September 2026 against 7,716 live US product titles measured for length, brand presence and generic-noun usage during this run
Keep reading
How this guide was made. We research and draft these guides with AI, then a person checks every price, link and factual claim against the source before it publishes. We work this way because it lets us re-verify prices across hundreds of guides in a day, which is what keeps the numbers here current; it does not decide what we recommend. Anything we could not verify is labelled as unverified rather than filled in.