Twice last week, I had the same problem with two bestselling beauty brands. Both
By Daniela Anavitarte Bolzmann ⚡ · June 9, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
Twice last week, I had the same problem with two bestselling beauty brands.
Both of these brands are best sellers in their respective subcategories, and both had main images that were already performing extremely well.
They had already applied a lot of the best practices that we would typically recommend.
Both images filled the frame with the product, taking up 95% of the space. Both had callouts, and both were performing really well.
There wasn't anything obviously wrong.
Our goal when we're working with a client is always to figure out if there's another image that can perform better than the one they're already using.
Often times, if they've already optimized for a square image on desktop and done all of the best practices, there's not much more you can do.
In this case, we took that as a challenge and still designed anywhere from 20 to 40 additional main images for each brand and tested them to see if we could generate something that would outperform their current image.
With both brands, we were unsuccessful. This is when you have to switch up your strategy entirely.
When your product is already filling the frame, any time you add eye candy or additional elements that you think are going to improve conversion, you're actually making your product smaller in the frame.
Any time your product gets smaller, larger competitor products are going to outperform your main image.
Try as you might to change the layout as much as you want, you might still end up in the same place.
This is when you have to go vertical. Optimizing for vertical is optimizing for the mobile shopper.
Vertical images take up more real estate on your phone screen.
They appear larger on your phone, meaning they grab more attention and get more clicks.
Because the majority of shoppers (60%) on Amazon are browsing on mobile, there's a good chance a vertical image is going to perform better than a square.
Layouts that don't work in a square frame have more creative flexibility vertically, and those elements can drastically swing the results of your test.
In both cases, the vertical images undoubtedly outperformed, this one getting 77% of the vote. (I know it looks smaller on desktop. That's genuinely the hard part to explain.)
If everybody in your category has square images, it's time to start testing a vertical image. Have you tested a vertical image yet?