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Shopify App

The AltText.ai Shopify App automatically generates optimized alt text for your product and store images. The app is Certified Built for Shopify, meaning it does not slow down your store and has been rigorously tested by Shopify to meet their speed and quality standards.

Installation

From your Shopify Admin

  • Go to Apps, and type AltText.ai in the search bar at the top of the popup window.

  • Click the AltText.ai listing, then click the Install button on the app page.

    Screenshot of AltText.ai Shopify app listing.

From the Shopify App Store

  • Visit the AltText.ai listing on the Shopify App Store, or just search for AltText.ai in the app store.
  • Click on the AltText.ai listing, then click Install to add it to your store.

Setup

Link the Shopify app to your AltText.ai account via an API Key.

  1. Get your API Key by logging into your AltText.ai account, then go to Account: API Keys.
  2. Copy an existing API Key, or just create a new one to use.

  3. Back in the Shopify app, enter the API Key on the Settings page:

    Screenshot of AltText.ai Shopify app settings for API Key.

Product Image Alt Text

Our Shopify app runs automatically when you add or update a product in your catalog. It will look for any images that are missing alt text, and generate alt text for those images using your product data. Product images with existing alt text are skipped by default.

Say your store sells snowboards, and you add a new blue snowboard product called "Genesis", by the vendor "Board Town". Then you add a product image of a man doing a mid-air jump on the snowboard. The AltText.ai Shopify app will automatically generate alt text for the image and use your product name and brand, so you might get something like: A man doing a jump on a blue Board Town Genesis snowboard.

Alt text is always added in the background, so don't worry if you don't see it immediately. You might need to refresh the product detail page in your browser after a few seconds to pick up the changes.

A Shopify product image with alt text added by AltText.ai.

Updating a Single Product

Our app integrates directly into your Shopify admin so it's easy to update the alt text for an individual product.

  1. In the Shopify admin, view the product you want to update.
  2. At the top of the page, click the More Actions dropdown.
  3. Select AltText.ai - Update Alt Text

  4. Optionally enter additional SEO keywords you want to use. If you don't provide keywords, then by default our app will use your product description to get keyword ideas (you can turn this off in the Settings page).

    Updating alt text for a single product in the Shopfy admin.

Updating Multiple Products at Once

If you have several products you want to update, you can select them from the Shopify admin Products page. Our app allows you to update alt text on selected products from the Products action menu.

  1. From the Shopify Admin, go to Products.
  2. Check the boxes of the products you want to update.

  3. Click the "..." menu, then select Update Alt Text.

    Shopify App updating alt text for selected products

Bulk Updating All Images

The app has a Bulk Update tool which lets you update your existing library of either product images or non-product images (e.g. blog, site, theme images). To start a bulk update, follow these steps:

  1. From your Shopify Admin, click on Apps -> AltText.ai -> Bulk Update

  2. Click the Configure Catalog Update... button.

    Shopify App updating alt text for selected products

  3. Optionally enter any keywords you want to use during the update, then choose whether to update your product images or other images (blog and site files). Click Start Update, and the process will begin.

    Shopify App updating alt text for selected products

Info

Bulk updates are processed in the background, so it may take a while for your full catalog to be finished (Shopify typically allows only 1-2 updates per second). You will receive an email when the update is done if you chose to be notified of bulk updates in your app settings.

Updating Product Descriptions

If you have images in the HTML of your product descriptions, our Shopify app can generate alt text for those too! Just check the box in the app Settings page to process product descriptions:

Shopify App settings for product descriptions

Controlling Alt Text for Product Images

Use the app Settings page to control which products are processed for alt text, along with other features. You can skip products which are not active and/or published in your online store, as well as control whether existing alt text is overwritten or skipped.

What Was Processed

There are a few ways to see what has been processed by the AltText.ai Shopify App:

  1. Configure a special tag to be added to all products which are processed by the app:

    Adding a tag to products processed by the AltText.ai Shopify app

    You can then search for Products in your Shopify admin which contain this tag.

  2. Login to your AltText.ai account online, and view your Images library. This will show you the urls of all images processed in your account, along with thumbnail views of the processed images. You should see your product images here, along with the generated alt text.

    Note

    Editing alt text in your online library does not sync back to Shopify. If you need to edit the generated alt text for Shopify images, you will need to do that directly in Shopify.