Media assets, such as images and videos, play a crucial role in enhancing the overall experience on an e-commerce website. High-quality visuals help showcase products or services, providing a better understanding of what is being offered.
Media assets are classified as two different types of media items. The first type is a simple media item, which contains the reference to a single image.
The second type is responsive media, which can include differently sized versions of the same base image. We will examine responsive media in greater detail later in this lesson.
But first, let's look at how we can add simple media to products in the Product Cockpit.
Adding Simple Media to Products Using the Product Cockpit
Note
Make sure you are logged into the Backoffice Product Cockpit with the Backoffice Product Manager role and that you have selected the staged version of your intended product catalog.
- Search for the product, and select its Multimedia tab.
- Select the Image identifier, and add a new media item.
- Name the Identifier, select the catalog version, upload the jpeg file, and choose Save.
Responsive Media
Now, let’s talk about responsive media. For simplicity, we will talk about images, but the concept applies to other media (like videos) as well.
Responsiveness is a key factor in delivering a smooth user experience.
Responsive images mean having multiple versions of the same image for different situations.
With SAP Commerce Cloud, you can upload and manage responsive images that automatically adapt to different screen sizes and resolutions (like desktop, widescreen, mobile, and so on). This helps ensure that your website loads quickly and displays correctly on various devices, improving performance and reducing bounce rates. Using responsive images is essential for delivering an enhanced user experience.
Grouping and Structuring Media Items inside Media Containers
Grouping and Structuring media items in SAP Commerce Cloud offers the following benefits:
- Improved organization
- Enhanced user experience
- Content personalization
- Multichannel consistency
These practices contribute to a more efficient and effective e-commerce operation.
Let's see about grouping and structuring in greater detail.
Every media item has a specific format. You can store several media items inside a media container for logical grouping, allowing the media container to hold several variations of the same image. You might want to do that to handle different channels to support responsive images (for example, Banners), since these are not automatically scaled for different display sizes.
Adding Responsive Media to Products Using the Product Cockpit
In the following video demonstration, you'll see how to upload and manage responsive media in the Backoffice Product Cockpit.
The Media Conversion Process
Media conversion in SAP Commerce Cloud involves uploading media assets, storing them in a centralized repository, converting and optimizing formats, generating responsive images, optimizing quality and file size, adding metadata, and delivering the media assets to users in a tailored and efficient manner.
To convert a media item, you:
- Create your media.
- Define a media conversion format.
- Create the conversion group.
- Create a media container and start the conversion process.
Note
Media conversion is available in SAP Commerce Cloud in the Public Cloud using the cloudmediaconversion extension.
The Media Conversion Process (Responsiveness Simplified)
- Your online store needs images in various sizes for different purposes.
- A single input image is uploaded and its reference (media item) is stored in a media container. The media formats are specified in the conversion group. The media container contains both the conversion group and the source media.
- The conversion process is initiated by selecting the convert button. The media container houses both the source media and the converted media files.
- An important use of media conversion is to simplify responsiveness. By generating images in a different format, a product can be described efficiently on different-sized screens. For example, each of the 1,000 products in your catalog will need one image suitable for a tablet, another for a mobile phone, and yet another for a widescreen desktop computer. If you already have differently-sized images available, then no problem. But if you only have a single size of image for each product, the system can create the necessary 3,000 images to display each product on three different screen sizes. These images are placed in the product’s media container by the conversion process. You then need only specify the container in the Gallery field of its associated product.