Most sellers obsess over product photos and then upload a shopfront banner that was clearly made for a different platform. The text sits half off-screen on mobile, the logo is soft and pixelated, and the seasonal promo banner is stretched into a smear. It is the first thing a shopper sees when they tap your shop name, and it is usually the least maintained image in the whole business.
Storefront images follow completely different rules to product images. Product photos are square, white-background and heavily standardised. Shopfront banners are wide, cropped aggressively on mobile, and every marketplace picks its own aspect ratio. This guide covers the current specifications for Shopee, Lazada, Etsy, eBay and TikTok Shop, plus the safe-area rules that stop your headline getting chopped.
Why storefront banners break so often
Three things go wrong, and they are the same three things every time.
The banner is designed at desktop ratio and viewed on mobile. Around 70 to 80 per cent of Southeast Asian marketplace traffic is on a phone. Platforms like Lazada literally ask for two separate files — a wide desktop strip and a taller mobile one — because a single image cannot serve both. If you upload only the desktop version, the platform centre-crops it and your carefully placed text disappears.
The file is compressed twice. You export a banner at 2 MB, the marketplace re-compresses it to fit its CDN budget, and gradients band while small text goes fuzzy. Uploading at the recommended dimensions rather than something enormous gives the platform less work to do and preserves more detail.
Nobody updates it. A banner advertising a March sale in August tells shoppers the shop is abandoned. Banners are the one image asset that has an expiry date.
The 2026 storefront size table
These are the current recommended dimensions. Where a platform publishes both a minimum and a recommendation, upload at the recommendation — the extra pixels survive compression better.
| Platform | Asset | Dimensions (px) | Ratio | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shopee | Shop banner / carousel | 1200 x 600 | 2:1 | Up to 6 carousel slides; JPG, JPEG or PNG, max 2 MB |
| Shopee | Two-image banner component | 2000 x 1000 (2:1), 2000 x 1125 (16:9) or 2000 x 2000 (1:1) | Varies | Pick one ratio and use it for both halves |
| Shopee | Product highlight tile | 600 x 600 | 1:1 | Max 2 MB |
| Lazada | Store header (desktop) | 1200 x 128 | ~9.4:1 | Extremely wide — logo and tagline only |
| Lazada | Store header (mobile) | 750 x 180 | ~4.2:1 | Separate upload, not a crop of the desktop file |
| Lazada | Store logo | 600 x 600 | 1:1 | Displayed small and round on some surfaces |
| Lazada | Long search banner | 1360 x 480 | ~17:6 | Campaign and promo placement |
| Etsy | Big banner / cover photo | 3360 x 840 (min 1200 x 300) | 4:1 | Cropped differently on desktop, tablet and phone |
| Etsy | Mini banner | 1600 x 213 (min 1200 x 160) | ~7.5:1 | Text at this height must be very large |
| Etsy | Shop icon | 500 x 500 | 1:1 | Your most-seen brand asset on Etsy |
| Etsy | Profile photo | 400 x 400 | 1:1 | Shows on reviews and messages |
| eBay | Store billboard | 1200 x 270 (1280 x 290 also cited) | ~22:5 | Fit content precisely; overflow is cropped |
| eBay | Marketing banner | 1200 x 270 | ~22:5 | Square 640 x 640 for secondary placements |
| TikTok Shop | Shop avatar / product images | 800 x 800 recommended (600 x 600 floor) | 1:1 | Storefront banner specs are not published; keep assets square |
Safe areas: the rule that saves your headline
Every one of these banners gets cropped somewhere. Etsy's cover photo displays at a different crop on desktop, tablet and mobile. eBay's billboard sits behind navigation elements on smaller screens. Shopee's carousel is viewed almost entirely on a phone in portrait.
The fix is a safe area. Design at the full recommended size, then keep every piece of essential content — shop name, tagline, promo dates, call to action — inside the central 60 per cent horizontally and the central 70 per cent vertically. Everything outside that is decoration: background texture, gradient, a product that can lose an edge without anyone noticing.
A quick test: shrink your banner to 25 per cent on screen and squint. If the message is still readable and nothing important touches an edge, it will survive whatever crop the platform applies.
Minimum text size
On a 1200 x 270 eBay billboard, body text below about 24 px will be unreadable once the image is scaled down on a phone. As a rule, headline text should occupy at least 8 to 10 per cent of the banner height. On a Lazada 1200 x 128 desktop header, that means there is realistically room for a logo and four or five words — nothing else.
One design, five exports
The efficient way to handle this is to build one master banner at the largest ratio you need — typically the Etsy 3360 x 840 cover — with a generous safe area, then export the other sizes from it. The wide, thin formats (Lazada header, Etsy mini banner, eBay billboard) become crops of the centre strip. The square formats (Shopee highlight tiles, logos, TikTok avatar) come from a separate square-composed version, because you cannot crop a square out of a 9.4:1 strip and get anything sensible.
That is exactly the kind of repetitive resize work that eats an afternoon by hand. Tools like PixelPrep let you upload the master file once and pull down every marketplace dimension in a single pass, with the file-size ceilings already applied so nothing gets rejected on upload.
File format and weight
Use JPEG for photographic banners and PNG only when you genuinely need transparency or crisp flat-colour text on a solid background. Shopee and Lazada both cap uploads at around 2 MB per image, and Etsy performs best under roughly 1 MB.
Export JPEGs at quality 80 to 85. Below 75 you get visible artefacts around text edges; above 90 you are adding megabytes for detail the platform's own compression will throw away anyway. Convert to sRGB before exporting — banners exported in Adobe RGB look noticeably flat and desaturated in browsers.
What actually belongs on a shopfront banner
Marketplace banners are not billboards, and they are not product photos. The formats that perform are boring and specific:
- Trust signals. Years in business, number of orders shipped, authorised-dealer status, local warehouse.
- One current offer. With a visible end date, so it is obvious the shop is active.
- Category navigation. On Shopee and Lazada, banner components can link to collections. Three or four clear category tiles outperform one decorative hero image.
- Shipping and returns terms. Free delivery thresholds and return windows remove the main objection before the shopper opens a listing.
What does not belong: dense paragraphs, stock photos of models unrelated to your products, and clip-art sale starbursts. Amazon, Etsy and eBay all moderate storefront imagery, and cluttered or misleading banners are a common rejection reason.
Your storefront banner checklist
- Design the master at 3360 x 840 or larger, in sRGB.
- Keep all text inside the central 60 per cent width and 70 per cent height.
- Export a separate mobile file wherever the platform asks for one — Lazada does.
- Build square variants separately; never crop a square from a wide strip.
- Headline text at 8 to 10 per cent of banner height minimum.
- JPEG at quality 80 to 85, under 2 MB (under 1 MB for Etsy).
- Include one dated offer plus a trust signal, and nothing else.
- Diarise a review date. A banner with an expired promotion is worse than no banner.
- Check the live shopfront on an actual phone, not just the desktop preview.
Storefront images are a twenty-minute job that most sellers do once and never revisit. Getting the dimensions right the first time, with safe areas built in, means the next seasonal refresh is a text swap rather than a redesign.