11 Ecommerce Product Page Essentials
August 15, 2016
11 Ecommerce Product Page Essentials
Are you trying to figure out how to build an awesome shopping experience for your customers without shattering your piggy bank and giving all of its contents to your web developers? It can be a challenge sorting out the “must-haves” from the “nice-to-haves”. In the highly competitive world of ecommerce today, it is important you provide a simple yet informative shopping experience that provides enough of the information your prospect cares about to get a conversion but does not overwhelm or distract them. Your prospect should have all of the information they need to make a decision by the time they have reached this page. It should also help you maximize the amount of revenue acquired per customer and convert as much of your traffic as possible.
At BrightHaus, we have seen a lot of high performing product pages and we have also seen a lot of not so high performing product pages. The good ones typically have almost all, if not all, of the features below in common. Whether you are a first time webmaster learning as you go or a seasoned webmaster with a track record of increasing revenue per transaction and countless CRO success stories, it’s good to look back at the basics and remind ourselves why these elements are so essential.
- Buy Now/Add to Cart/Contact Us button – This is your most important closing tool. Seems obvious but it has to be said, a good ecommerce product page closes for the next step.
- Price – There is no reason not to show the price of your product if you are a traditional e-commerce business. Be upfront and display the price prominently and early in the checkout process whether you are a cost leader or quality leader.
- High Quality Images – I wouldn’t buy a product from a site that didn’t have pictures of what I would be receiving. It’s a trust factor and it’s also eye-catching and can draw in a visitor that is on the fence.
- Product Description – Resist the urge to copy and paste the product description from the manufacturer. Write a unique product description that highlights the characteristics that your potential customer cares about in the order that they care about them.
- Out of Stock Notification – Gain back a percentage of revenue lost due to lack of inventory. Allow your visitor the opportunity to opt in and receive an e-mail notification when the product is back in stock. Any e-commerce platform/CMS worth its salt will provide this functionality out of the box.
- Create Urgency – Anybody that has ever worked in sales understands the importance of instilling a sense of urgency in your prospect. Displaying the number of products left in your inventory can accomplish this as well as highlighting the product as available for a “limited time”.
- Really Highlight Those Discounts – Who doesn’t love a deal? When an item goes on sale, make sure everyone knows about by highlighting the price drop and putting a timer on it (sense of urgency). If it’s a popular selling item for your site, put it on the homepage as well.
- OnPage Optimization – Had to sneak this in here (After all, we are SEO’s). Your title tags, meta description, and product description should all contain your product keywords in a natural way! They should also be in the URL of the product page (Use dashes to separate words).
- Link related products for cross and up sells – Amazon does a fantastic job of this. If your customer is on one of your business shirt product pages show them related products like ties, belts, slacks, dress socks, etc. Chances are they need one of the other items and the fact they need another item may not be front of mind or maybe they planned to purchase it elsewhere. Highlighting related products can result in more revenue.
- Allow customer reviews – Most potential buyers want to hear from other people that have used the product what they liked and didn’t like about it to give them comfort that they are making the right decision. Allowing customer reviews will help your buyers make the right decision and help you learn what products your customers don’t want!
- Showcase trust signals – There a lot of ways you can easily show a customer trust throughout your site (publishing your business addresses and contact information for example). On your product page, you should display whatever trust symbols you can publish that communicate to a user, “You can buy from me without a care in the world.” Payment option badges (Visa, MasterCard), SSL Certified checkout badges, that BBB ethics award you received, etc.