DaveLindberg.net

At first I thought ElasticPath’s post “Should Your Use Large Images on Category Pages?” would shed light on the size of thumbnails, but the discussion is about the importance of testing big-footprint lifestyle imagery. Does a large banner above the thumbnails add a sense of place to the page, similar to display banners in the retail environment? Or is there a sense of redundancy, pushing the products below the fold?

A few thoughts on what constitutes an effective category banner:

• Since so few visitors enter from the home page, any opportunity to demonstrate the brand through lifestyle imagery should be explored. If your product images are primarily laydowns (as opposed to model shots), the potential value from adding a model to the page is even more significant.
• It’s important to establish the correct relationship between your lifestyle image and product shots. The goal is to balance your lifestyle banner sizes with the monetary value of the site’s real estate. 
• Use compelling copy to create action. Promote the style on model, and always be sure that your lifestyle images are imagemapped to the corresponding style page(s).
• Photography may be optional. Have a compelling promotion? A well-designed type copy treatment might do the job, and download quicker.
• Track your clickthroughs and conversions.

I’ve probably missed some good ones, feel free to add more.