Retail and e-commerce guide

Cloudinary is a powerful media management platform that integrates seamlessly into your tech stack. It provides end-to-end image and video management at scale, leveraging automation and AI to optimize performance, quality, and visual experience. While API-first, Cloudinary also offers a Media Library UI for easy asset management.

For e-commerce, this means faster load times, visually cohesive product displays, and a seamless, high-quality shopping experience—enhanced by personalization—across websites, marketplaces, and social platforms.

How Cloudinary enhances your e-commerce images and videos

Here are just a few examples of stand-out features that can differentiate your e-commerce visuals. Within this guide, we'll take a closer look at how to implement these features at scale.

Adapt images and videos for every channel

When delivering assets to different devices such as desktop and mobile, you'll need to change aspect ratios to fit the different sized viewports. Cloudinary simplifies this by allowing you to store a single source asset and dynamically generate appropriately sized variations for different platforms:

Smart video cropping

Switching aspect ratios for different devices can risk cutting off important parts of your images or videos, especially when working at scale. Cloudinary’s AI-powered cropping ensures the main subject stays in focus when resizing or adapting content for different screens, so your visuals look good across all devices:

AI outpainting for extended images

Use generative AI to seamlessly expand images, maintaining a natural look even when changing aspect ratios. This helps you adapt visuals to different layouts (banners, thumbnails, or full-width displays) without stretching or distorting the original content:

Personalize product visuals

Personalizing products engages visitors and increases conversion. Automatically customize product images with user-defined text and color selection for a tailored experience:

AI background removal and replacement

You might need to remove backgrounds when delivering product images, or personalize them by swapping in different scenes, like an urban setting or a beach. With Cloudinary’s generative AI, you can instantly remove and replace backgrounds, helping you create tailored visuals without manual editing:

Auto-generated alt text

Appropriate alt text is essential for maintaining your sight's accessibility and SEO. Leverage AI-powered object detection to generate meaningful alt text automatically:

Recolor products with AI

You might need to showcase products in several different colors. Generate these product image variations automatically to save the cost of repeat photo shoots:

Dynamic video overlays

Make your videos more engaging by adding text or image overlays that move with the action. It’s a great way to highlight key messages, call outs, or branding:

What's in this guide

Best practices

• Check out Best practices to understand the foundational elements Cloudinary provides. This section outlines key considerations that help you make informed decisions before implementation.

Visual differentiators

• Explore Visual differentiators to discover branding, personalization, and immersive media techniques for a distinctive and engaging shopping experience.

Customize and optimize assets on delivery

• Check out Customize and optimize assets on delivery to learn how to deliver optimized, customized assets using Cloudinary. This section outlines best practices for using direct and named transformations effectively.

Workflows

• Use the Workflows section for step-by-step guidance on structuring efficient image and video workflows. This section provides detailed examples for managing both product and non-product images, helping you tailor Cloudinary’s capabilities to your organization’s needs.