Lifestyle image
A lifestyle image shows a product in use or in a real setting, such as a sofa in a furnished room or a jacket being worn.
- Lifestyle shot
- In-situ image
What it means
A packshot shows the product alone. A lifestyle image puts it somewhere: the bath in a finished bathroom, the frying pan on a hob, the rucksack on a walker’s back. It helps a shopper picture the product in their own life, and shows its size next to things they know.
Google Merchant Center has an optional attribute for these, the lifestyle image link, which takes “up to five lifestyle images”. Its examples include “clothing worn by a model” and “furniture staged within a room”.1
For the main image, Google asks that it stay “focused solely on the product itself”, and points in-context and lifestyle shots to the lifestyle image link instead.2 Styled shots can also go among the additional images, which may “show the product in use”.3
Think of it like this
A holiday brochure uses both kinds of picture. The plan of the room gives you the facts, and the photo of the balcony at sunset helps you imagine being there.
For example
A Brackmore kettle’s packshot shows it alone on white. Its lifestyle image shows it on an oak worktop in a sunlit kitchen. In a Google feed the first goes in the image link, and the second in the additional image link or the lifestyle image link.
Why it matters
Lifestyle images answer questions a white background cannot: how big the product is, how it looks in a room, how it hangs on a person. They seldom make a good main image, so a supplier who sends only styled photographs still leaves the main image to find.
Not to be confused with
Lifestyle describes what a picture shows; additional describes where it goes in a listing. A lifestyle shot is often sent as an additional image, but a close-up of a kettle’s controls is an additional image without being a lifestyle one.
Sources
- Google Merchant Center Help. Lifestyle image link [lifestyle_image_link].
- Google Merchant Center Help. Image link [image_link].
- Google Merchant Center Help. Additional image link [additional_image_link].