Title says it all. I know what the policy says, but I’ve never have had a white background main image. Anyone ever done any testing to see if ranking is penalized for such? In my category I see a lot of listing with or without the white background at the top, so logic tells me there is not a penalty. Just wondering if anyone has observed otherwise.
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It does matter IN GENERAL. Some categories Amazon bots aren’t great at enforcing it though
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I’ve had new listing creation unable to publish when not a pure white background… 
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I’ve had listings go unsearchable because the main image didn’t meet their requirements. Not exactly a penalty per se, but not being able to sell your product pretty much is it’s own penalty.
Amazon should send you a warning and let you know your image is out of policy. I’ve had this happen because I adjusted the colors on the image and they apparently didn’t think the background was white enough after I adjusted it. Easy to fix and replace but both Amazon bots and your competitors will look for stuff like that.
Good Luck
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Yep even if the item is white. And their bots are horrible,
I would use photoshop to make sure it was pure white, and they would tell me it’s not white enough. I wish I was joking
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I have two in unsearchable pergatory right now. Done in PS, definitely white. I even keep making the white wider. No go - bots keep kicking them back.
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I had listings suppressed for this reason. Sometimes because some nimnul got detail page control and corrupted the listing.
I fully support the white background requirement.
Thumbnails in the search are often a poor substitute for a good representation of the item, but they are a major factor in whether the listing will be viewed.
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Other than white backgrounds distract from the portion of the thumbnail which represents the item and reduce the likelihood of a click through for many, many items.
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LOL I sound pretty lucky to be honest. I wonder if there’s a little leeway in my category because I sell blinds and to be honest if everyone had white backgrounds everything would basically look the same.
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I sell off white soap and they WILL kick it eventually if it doesn’t meet their standards. I use this tool to remove the background and replace it with white in one step. I believe they let you try a few free ones , but a subscription is only $7.99 a month and it’s worth it for me. I can do it in Photoshop, but this takes me literally less than a minute and no mistakes. Looks good too. You can also process in bulk. I have no affiliation with the company other than being a customer.
AI can also do it, but the results may be hit or miss depending on what AI model you use.
-Ana
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Yup, and I’ve rearranged images trying for a better one to grab eyeballs, only to realize that one had a stray non-255 pixel and the listing got suppressed for days until I noticed.
All the listings I decided to retire when they forced Handmade to use 255 are suppressed.
For the history, they allowed handmade to join with non-white backgrounds in 2015, then decided, nah, you gotta go factory look in 2020 and forced us to all change. For many of us, that meant 100’s of new photos to keep existing listings, new skills to do photography that way, white boxes, etc. And of course they announced in August and said do it NOW. They eventually kicked up the date, but it was a huge learning curve and burden for many of us.
Anyway, I pay for Fotofuze to do background removal after I get a very nice clean white background edited image.
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I use a clear background, which works for Amazon.
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Since they are generating a lot of AI and rolling out a lot of AI, I wonder how this will change the white background game?
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Internally at Amazon the non-white background was permitted as part of the panic when Amazon lowered the standards they had envisioned for the category,
The intention was it would be a high end, crafts gallery with juried artisans and artists. The high end crafts people were not selling their latest works online due to concerns over protecting their designs and would not sign up.
In panic, it was changed to another Etsy, and the Etsy sellers who they contacted insisted on this change and others to the program.
As we all know, or should know, Handmade by Amazon could not compete with Amazon, and handmade had to compete with machine made products in the Amazon search.
The white background requirement was instituted when it became obvious that the click throughs for handmade items was being negatively affected.
It was a burden for Amazon as well as the sellers and they too were dealing with a learning curve.
Before Amazon had any third party sellers, I had a similar vision for a high end, online crafts gallery associated with my website. That was just over 30 years ago. The crafts people I wanted most would not place their designs on the internet. And that was before the theft of designs was commonplace. We shelved that effort.
We know many crafts people who have a token presence on Etsy with a few of their designs, and mostly an easy to find way to communicate with them. Their major business is galleries and shows and less visible areas of the internet.
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There are also a good many quality artisans who have made nice businesses on Amazon Handmade, before and after the white background requirements. Or at least we did, before Amazon gave up on what they built for over 8 years before deciding to merge it with “regular” amazon.
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Not denying that. But Handmade was a disappointment from its launch, to Amazon and to the people at Amazon who staked their careers on its success.
Like the collectibles and fine arts categories it did not succeed, and when that was obvious, it became part of what you call “regular” Amazon and those who were succeeding felt pain.
Been there.
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