[Estimated read time: 13 minutes]
An effective e-commerce product page captures the audience’s attention and compels them to convert to paying customers.
Many e-commerce businesses believe a product page is all about high-resolution images with detailed descriptions for each product.
Although these are important areas that need to be considered, thinking that they are the only elements needed to win the game for you is overly simplistic.
In this post, I'll discuss the elements that make a product page captivating for visitors. I'll discuss in detail the things you should consider doing on your product pages so that they stand out from the competition.
Product URLs must be a priority
Let me start out with something that's critical to get right, yet is often neglected: optimizing product URLs. Unfortunately, I know dozens of e-commerce stores that don't consider the URL to be part of a product page at all, much less one of the most important parts.
Well, guys, they're wrong. Ignoring this vital fact can seriously impede your click-through-rate (CTR), especially in terms of organic searches.
Remember, there are literally thousands of choices for a visitor once she decides to buy a product online. She will go for options that she's satisfied with. Let’s suppose a user runs a Google search and sees this in the results:
Note: I've purposely hidden the titles and descriptions so you can focus on the URLs.
Now, try and understand the psychology of a potential customer who has multiple available choices online. Look closely at the two URLs given above. Which one would you click if you were looking to buy men's shirts?
Naturally, the first one — it's clear that upon clicking the link, you will directly land on the men's clothing section of an e-commerce site. The second URL, on the other hand, look like it will take you to a brand page — which may or may not offer the shirts you're looking for. (The second URL doesn't make it clear whether they're selling shirts for men or women.)
Takeaway: SEO-friendly URLs aren't simply important because they'll give you better rankings in search engines; they also answer basic questions pertaining to the buyer's awareness stage.
A URL must give a clear indication of where the user will land once he clicks it; therefore, it must be relevant to the search query.
Think carefully about product titles
Your titles should be SEO-friendly, but there's a very fine line between SEO-friendly titles and overly optimized title tags.
Catchy and attractive titles can significantly increase the number of clicks.
Let’s suppose you're searching for "business plan consultant" and all you see is a title loaded with different keywords that basically mean the same thing. Now compare this to another page that has the correct keywords to please potential buyers and search engines. Which page title would you click?
The reason why I'd choose the first one is that its message is clear, and it's completely relevant to what I'm searching for.
So, if the product page is stuffed with all the possible keywords that the audience could possibly search for, you're actually decreasing your chances of being clicked.
Takeaway: Titles are important for search engines, but they're equally important for your target audience. Make sure the title for your product page is well thought out, relevant, and delivers the complete message in 65 characters or less.
Always use high-resolution images
A website's image section is one of the most important sections of a product page, as it's sure to capture the attention of visitors (provided that it is well-constructed).
The clearer your product image, the more interest you can arouse in your visitors. A visitor is bound to look for the image of a product in order to make sure that it is, indeed, what he wants to spend his money on.
When it comes to images on product pages, you should consider the following few things:
Image size
When I say high-resolution, I don’t just mean the image quality, but also the image size. The image should be of a size that lets users easily see the product details and understand what it would look like when they receive it at their doorstep.
Images that are either too small or too large (in a way that doesn’t fit the screen) can negatively impact user experience, thereby leading them to leave the page.
The best thing to do is to use images of the same size and allow website visitors to zoom in to take a closer look at the details.
I like how Sophie & Trey present the images on their product page. They display two images of the same product side-by-side, and a visitor can get a closer look at the product by hovering the cursor over a specific area of the page.
Multiple angles
If you want users to buy your products, then you have to encourage them to make a purchasing decision by giving them all the product details they need to do that. Normal images are two-dimensional. If you take photos of your products from multiple angles, however, you can give your potential customers a more realistic of how your products look in person by presenting them virtually as three-dimensional images.
For electronic products like cell phones, laptops or tablets, it's important to show visitors multiple angles so they can understand how long or wide a product is, how it looks up close, and how it will look and feel in their hand.
If you have a fashion brand, then try showing the same dress of models with different looks. This will make it easier for the visitor to imagine how she will look in the dress she is looking at if you purchased it from your site.
Takeaway: When you optimize your product pages, make sure the product images are high-quality and available in different angles. This will allow visitors to not only see what your products look like, but virtually get a sense for how they feel as well, thereby increasing the likelihood that they'll convert into paying customers.
Product videos
This one is simple, and becoming increasingly important in the world of e-commerce. Like it or not, videos can work wonders for fast sales.
You don’t have to trust my words. Listen to the head of search at ao.com, who has tried it on her website and reaped the rewards of success:
"Video gives us the opportunity to wow our customers and this, in turn, delivers results. We have tested and proven that when someone watches our video reviews they’re 120.5% more likely to buy, spend 157.2% longer on the site, and spend 9.1% more per order. So my focus this quarter is to increase customers watching video. Simple."
There are some common questions about video that come to mind, especially if you're looking at e-commerce from a technical point of view. For example, what's the best method to add videos? Should we use a CDN, upload videos on YouTube and embed the links on our website, or something else?
This guide will help you answer those questions and more.
Takeaway: Including product videos on your product pages is a trump card that leads to better conversions. If you're skeptical, invest in videos for a bit and see if your conversions improve. If so, create a budget for making high-quality product videos on an ongoing basis.
Get creative with product descriptions
The product page description is important from two aspects. First, it helps you with SEO. With unique, quality, and keyword-centric product descriptions, your chances of ranking for product-related keywords via search engines will be higher. Second, well-written product descriptions can engage visitors and encourage them to convert into paying customers.
If you have a website with thousands of products, the common challenge is to write unique and high-quality product descriptions. While overcoming this challenge can be frustrating, you need to do it or you'll risk losing out on considerable amounts of potential traffic (and paying customers).
Even if your target audience can read hundreds of words in the description section, my advice is to show only 60 to 80 words, and hide the rest under "more."
Takeaway: Following are a few of the things you need to keep in mind when creating product descriptions for your e-commerce website:
- You have to create unique and engaging product descriptions that allow users to convert into paying customers.
- Do not copy product descriptions from manufacturers' websites, as doing this will kill your conversion rates.
- Either invest time on creating product descriptions for each of the products, or hire talented people on a freelance project basis to help you with it. Make sure to keep the quality in check.
These are the few ideas to keep in mind while creating product descriptions that are not only SEO-friendly but also enhance user experience.
Provide quantity and color selection options
From personal experience, I can tell you that I bounce from product pages if options for color selection or purchasable product quantities are either unavailable or difficult to find. I know people who actually pay higher prices to other manufacturers/retailers that have this option available.
The whole idea is to make it easy for the user to find and buy multiple products at the same time, instead of forcing him to come back and buy again.
Also, if you have a product that is available in different colors, it's better to create it as one product with the option to choose three different colors instead of three different products.
Takeaway: The ideal product page means little to no frustration for the visitors.
User reviews can work wonders for your business
There are two different mindsets in the e-commerce industry as it regards reviews.
One view is that there shouldn’t be a review section on the product page, as most people don’t really leave reviews, and an empty review page is unappealing.
On the other hand, some believe there should be a user review page, as it will provide some extra unique content to the page.
I don’t think either of the above is the correct method of implementing user reviews.
I'm a strong advocate of using a strategy like the following for reviews:
- Send an email to all your happy customers and offer them a 10–20% discount if they're willing to leave a genuine comment on your product page about their purchase.
- Another idea is to gamify reviews in a way that would encourage buyers to leave reviews on the different product pages on your website in a way that benefits them.
Takeaway: User reviews are very important as they strongly impact visitors' buying decisions, but implementing them with yet another plugin could be a mistake. The idea is to deploy a smart strategy and adjust it as needed.
Don't forget your social sharing buttons
Having prominent and easy-to-use social sharing buttons on your product pages encourages users to share products with their social circles. This will not only increase your numbers, but the returning social traffic from this activity can bring in more conversions for your website.
Takeaway: Encourage visitors to share your products within their social circles by rewarding them with freebies every now and then.
Be smart with the "add to cart" button
This is the most important element of the page from the perspective of conversion optimization. The "add to cart" button must be easy to find; otherwise, you'll risk losing potential customers.
The fashion brand Lulu's websites provides us with another excellent example of how the "add to bag" button can be effectively used to drive sales on product pages. The main color theme of the website is black, but if you focus on the add to bag button, you'll notice it stands out because it's pink.
Takeaway: The "add to cart" button needs to stand out from the overall color scheme of the page so the user can easily identify it and proceed towards the checkout.
Cross sell and upsell
You can always add elements on your product page that will help you cross-sell and upsell stuff to get the most out of a customer.
This is a great example of cross-selling by Nordstrom. I don’t think their placement is outstanding at the moment, but when you're implementing this on your product page you can do some testing to see what works best for your audience.
Takeaway: Consider showing related products together with the product that the user intends to buy (cross-selling) or selling related products as a package (upselling).
An e-commerce website is incomplete without live chat
The numbers speak for themselves.
If you're a business that supplies products to several countries, try using live chat software that supports multiple languages to help you build better relations with overseas clients.
Takeaway: Do I really need live chat software on my website? An e-commerce business should quit pondering this question and start investing in live chat.
Pricing
This one is a personal favorite. There's no serious e-commerce website on earth that won't add the price on the product page or will make it hard to find. So, why are we even talking about this in the first place?
That's because as a business you should remain mindful of a few things when including pricing on product pages:
- Make prices clear and easy to read.
- There are different pricing strategies you can try. I wrote a detailed article on the subject a while ago and you can read it here: 4 Pricing Strategies for SaaS Startups to Increase Conversion Rate (applicable to e-commerce, as well).
- Experiment with adjusting pricing according to the scarcity principle and you'll see an overall improvement in conversion rates.
In the above example, the company is using the "magic of the number nine" technique on their website.
Takeaways: Keep the prices on your product page simple, clear, and readable. Try different pricing tactics that work within your industry, such as the "number nine technique", the "discount on bulk order" offer, and the "scarcity principle."
Be trustworthy
The buying cycle starts with a single question and moves forward when it gets answered.
While the potential customer is on the product page deciding whether or not they should buy the product, the most important question running through their mind is "Why should I trust this company?"
At Workplace Depot, we use this trust signal throughout the website (including the product pages) which is why our conversions over the months have only grown.
Having a trust signal on the product page is important, but where to put it is tricky and can only be assessed via A/B testing.
Try placing the trust signals on different parts of the page and test it against the data to see which place works well with your target audience.
Takeaway: Quality trust signals are important and need to be included throughout your e-commerce website in order to increase overall business conversions.
Page load time
I always advise my e-commerce clients to go with a minimalistic design because less clutter allows websites to load quickly. Slow page loads will kill your SEO and dramatically decrease your conversions.
This infographic by Kissmetrics nails it perfectly:
Takeaway: In e-commerce, every second counts. Make your product pages clean and light. Visitors don't have patience for slow websites.
Mobile
If your product pages are not mobile-friendly, you're likely losing fifty percent of your prospective customers.
The same factors above apply for mobile, but remember: folks are even more distracted on mobile devices, so using concise, clear messaging with large, easy-to-read fonts is your best bet.
Conclusion
Product pages are often neglected as businesses focus on optimizing their e-commerce sites for long-tail keywords at the expense of the user.
Don't make this mistake.
Focus instead on optimizing your product pages by keeping user experience at the forefront of all your actions, and you'll very likely be rewarded with higher conversions.
If you think I've missed something, please let me know by adding it in the comments section.
Nice post Mossa its worth a time & thumbs up. You almost cover each element of product page in detail. Just wanted to add some more tips.
1. Core ingredient of website is user not the product you are selling. So every page should be user centric. While writing product description focus on benefits of products instead of features. ie while selling a drill do not focus on its features like its power, length etc focus on hole. People do not need drill they need a hole. So product features should be convert into benefits. This is what 99.9% of stores are missing.
2. when a website has huge amount of inventory where rewriting all product description aren’t possible than find out high traffic pages and start rewriting those pages. You will be amaze, how this lift the conversion.
3. when it’s come to conversion 8 is the magic number. During my analysis for some of my clients I tested various number of call to actions. Staring with just 1 call to action on page to 15 – 18 different types of call to actions including social shares. But each test shows the similar results.
3.1 Side note, having multiple social share icons, FB, Twitter, Instagram aren’t a single call to action these are 3 different call to actions so my recommendations is to only use social share button which perfectly fit with your target audience, in some case you can skip Instagram or in some Facebook.
Thank you for the detailed comment Asif. I totally agree with the fact that choosing social call to actions should be based on your target persona. I mean imagine if you have an online store of women clothing and you are believe that just because Pinterest never work for my service business, I should not have include Pinterest sharing button.
Its important to understand what your customer want and try to provide them on the product page because if product page leave any question answered, probably you will lose conversion.
Just a thought!
Thanks, Moosa. What do you think about out of stock items? What's the best way to promote here, push another product or propose a notification when the item is back on sale?
It depends… I mean there are multiple ways to go about it. One idea is to show a popup on the product pages that are out of stock and get their email addresses so that you can email them when the product is back in stock.
Another idea is to get the pre-orders of that product and give them the date when the product will be delivered to their doorstep.
Technically, if the product is out of stock and will come back again, I believe there should be no temporary or permanent redirection.
Helpful post Moosa. Actually these points are not only useful in case of product page, one can/should use most of these tips for any kind of website.
Glad you like it Singh... This will help me create better content in the future.
Exactly :An e-commerce website is incomplete without live chat:I have seen in my career that yes its very much essential but the toughest part is how your On-line consolers are interacting with your business prospect client,Anyways seems a great post for eCommerce business owners,Thanks keep sharing.
Glad you like Aryan! :)
Excellent post, Moosa!
A few things I think eCommerce websites could generally do better...
*Make sure images are JPEG and not PNG (unless you actually need transparency)
*Run all images through TinyPNG to minimise the file size - this is great for website speed without impacting image quality.
*Really think about product titles! I see so many eCommerce stores that self-cannibalise their main keywords! Vary your product titles people!
This final point is not related to product pages specifically but I'm amazed at how few eCommerce websites capitalise on basket abandonment. These are visitors who the store may have paid Google to acquire and yet they let them leave so easily. It's not hard (or costly) to implement good basket abandonment technology and it can have a massive impact on generating extra revenue that would otherwise be lost.
You nailed it Matt… I have worked with couple of big eCommerce websites and almost all have this issue of focusing main keywords on their home page as well as on category pages. They sometime don’t even realize what they are doing and how its hurting their own rankings and eventually business for the website.
I think it’s a great advice to use JPG instead of PNG as this will help the page to be much more lighter and changes are page load speed increased ridiculously.
So glad that you took the time and share your thoughts on the blog.
Thank you very much.
Good read! Thanks Moosa
In e-commerce industry i believe the more product images are the more is chances of conversion + considering other factors as well (description, titles, etc)
I think that this is something that all must here more and more people are turning to ecommerce and as you stated exactly folks normally attempt a classic approach with going after keyterms only instead of really thinking of the entire user experience. For me this article pointed out the most of having muilitiple shots of the product, video, and focusing on the load speed. I mean why just have one picture and hope for the best instead flood the user with quality information and at that point you gain the trust of the person considering purchasing your product or at least from your store.
The only part of this article I disagree with is hiding the product description behind a "read more" button. This is for several reasons:
- SEO. Google have said that content hidden in this way is devalued.
- Page speed. Unnecessarily adding extra javascript on the page can slow down the page.
- UX. Many people will argue that expandable content is generally poor user experience. If a user needs to click a button to read about the product then its a bad idea.
Instead I would follow the quality over quantity principle and make full use of bullet points to explain the features. The page should also be designed in such a way that if more content is necessary then it will fit in nicely.
Regarding images, is there a rule that you would follow regarding how high the resolution should be? Whilst I agree that the quality needs to be high, this can also slow down the page so that a compromise is required? Would you agree?
As far as I know Google confirmed in July/August 2015 that Google will index content hidden in “Read More” tab but content’s weight will be lower since it’s hidden. I mean one argument is right that why hide content when it can potentially risk your rankings for mobile but again if the UI and UX is not good or irritate user, chances are your rankings will only produce bounce rate instead of conversions.
Just a thought!
I see websites like Huffington is using read more button on mobile and not only the experience is great but its relatively fast so I guess there are ways around it.
Obviously, there is no rule for images and how high-rez it should be. I also agree to the fact that high rez images means they will be big in size that potentially can increase the page load time.
I guess the idea is to use high-quality images… quality enough to satisfy user’s virtual experience. I mean if there is a shoe image, I should be able to see color, thread, style and other important stuff. The image quality should convince me to move towards conversions.
Just a thought!
Read more is fine, there is nothing wrong with it at all. As long as it is user friendly and cuts down on the content bloat, why not. We use them all the time and our content gets indexed just great : )
I feel Read More is required when pages are accessed using a mobile. It may not be required when using a laptop or a desktop.
Nice sharing it was. The point are very good which are given for the product page like-high-resolution images, Multiple angles, Product videos, Get creative with product descriptions but I think add to cart is the most important point which we never forget if we make product page.
Great post about product pages!
When it comes to SEO, the website taxonomy is just as important as the ux on the product page. Also, make sure to address what happens when the product sells out. You can 301 redirect the product page to the product category, or let the product page exist as out of stock, and cross-sell recommended items instead.
Also, social media is becoming increasingly important on the product page too. It's great to share user-generated Instagram photos of the product (with permission, of course).
Interesting points Cynthia!
When products sells out there are tons of options that a person have as they have to make decisions based on the situation they are in to. I know quite a few fashion brands are using that Instagram idea and I would defiantly going to recommend this to anyone who have the kind of products that people can take pictures of and put it on Instagram.
Thanks for the read and sharing your valuable insight!
Great post Moosa ! I have experience of eCommerce website, So i know that live chat is more necessary and important part of an eCommerce website. And live chat means nothing only a corner box of live chat but it's 24*7 live chat.
Your suggestions for creating a product page are really innovative.For an eCommerce website, every product page must be optimized on high level like title and description of each product page must be unique.
True. Adding a live chat feature is easy what’s really difficult is how to use it on its full potential and get most out of it. I know a brand here in Pakistan who actually initiate chat with potential customers instead of waiting for them to break the ice and conversion rate for them improved significantly.
Glad you like the post mate!
What a good post! I think that product video is really good for selling your items, since people can see how it works and they don't have to go watch reviews on Youtube, for example. If you add other buyers opinions to that, it makes a perfect match.
I agree. The only problem is that ecommerce owners often find video is a big investment with no clear value in return. But as ecommerce market is getting more and more saturated, having a product video is no more a choice anymore.
just a thought!
Good contribution
In this complex and competitive world of e-commerce is an obligation optimize every page of your site that way. We must protect all the details so that nothing is missing and this post reminds us how we design each of our url to succeed, or what is the same, conversions.
Worth reading this article you bring many tips . Unaware that the online chat was fundamental. The only thing I 've missed less in your description is that the shopping cart should be as fast as possible, without collecting data that are not useful for the purchase, because if multipage form can decay purchase are filled.
So glad that you find it interesting. Oh, Live Chat is important and I have actual case studies that see a big jump in their online sales after implementing live chat on their websites.
As far as the shopping cart stuff is concern, I do understand the importance of it but as our topic was limited to product pages, I thought not to go for shopping cart and checkout pages. But it is defiantly important.
Thanks for the comment sir!
That's a great post, Moosa! From having an user-friendly URL to writing a captivating product description, optimizing individual product pages are an important step creating a pleasant experience for the buyers. As a matter of fact, these are the important on-page components that offer impetus to your overall SEO campaign.
I think your first point about product URLs is misleading. I agree that one should make sure your system generates friendly (and non duplicating) product URLs, however your example is not showing that.
The first example shows rich snippet where the URL has been replaced by a breadcrumb rich snippet. It is not showing the products URL. It is unfair to compare that to a standard snippet where the URL is actually shown.
Takeaway: To get those nice breadcrumb rich snippets you want to show breadcrumbs on your product pages, and better yet, add structured data to indicate they are breadcrumbs.
Thank you very much for this post. Very useful information
Thank you.... Glad you like it!
Worth reading post Moosa specially that specific part about live chart many eCommerce companies still neglecting this part.
One small question if any of our product discontinue by brand and that page is getting good organic traffic, Is implementing 301 is the right step to do with the closest match product or not as I think searcher may confuse because of the different results which they are not expecting. I hope you understand my point.
Hey Hammad, so glad that you like the post :)
I agree about the live chat part… but in my opinion, its easy to convince a client to keep the live chat part active but what’s really difficult is to convince them to train their team on how to use live chat to get maximum out of it.
As far as your question is concern, honestly it depends upon your audience, your own strategy and more. I mean if the product is not available but will be available in the future you can take preorders using the same page. You can also say that the product is not available but here are other relevant products you can check
If removing the page is the only solution, than my advice is to redirect it to main category as it will allows user to look for other stuff within that category. You can also create a customer 404 page with the message that tell user that the page isn’t available and route them to other important areas of the website from where they convert.
The idea is to keep user engaged with the website and possibly convert them in to leads and paying customers.
Just a thought!
Moosa,
Great article (which I'm sure you know by all the positive comments) I have one suggestion and a recommendation:
Lastly, I believe your URL suggestions are spot on!
Kevin, thank you for your comment. Obviously, I am enjoying every single comment but I enjoy more when people like you point of the problems instead of just saying great post!
On reviews, I guess you get me wrong. The Google URL that you mentioned talk more to bloggers who review product pages on their own blog/websites. When they link out they are supposed to make their link no-followed.
When I am trying to explain here is the reviews on the product pages and not by bloggers but the customers who actually used the product in the past. This has no link benefit but it will create the trust factor that encourages potential buyers to convert with more confidence.
I hope this clear my point.
RIOT, I never use the tool but I did a quick search for it and It seems promising.
Again, thank you for leaving this meaningful comment here… I hope you enjoyed the post!
Have a great day!!
Great post !, a question, for online shops with thousands of products like do to write a unique description? time is a limiting factor for this task
I totally get your point. Writing unique descriptions especially when you have tons and thousands of products is a thought job but to be honest with you… there is no short cut to it.
You have to invest some time and money and allocate some resources to get the unique and real descriptions for your product, there is no way around to that.
This is very beneficial from the SEO as well as SRO stand-point.
Great post, and I have already shared it with 4 ecommerce clients. One question, though. On page meta titles, the preferred example you give is Cayenne Consulting - Business Plan Consultant.. Shouldn't you put the target keyword phrase first for more SEO juice, followed by the business name? And are you suggesting that we never use two phrases?
And I see a colon too. What is the preferred divider - | : and if it is flush with a word, will the word still be searchable?
Very important and necessary elements so that your customers are fascinated with your product page .
Hi Moosa.
Great post, I am not into product creation.
But your post was very informative and anytime I want to create my own product, I will be sure to follow these tips you have chalked out so very painstakingly.
Thanks a lot for sharing.
Regards.
Veena
Thanks for the post! I learned a thing.
That first example isn’t a URL though.
Great Tips Moosa! To create an innovative product page; we all require a good structure, a good content, good images & specially good ideas those you’ve shared here.
Thanks mate for sharing this!
Nice Post Moosa! And yes, you are right about product images. Multi-dimensional and 3D images engage more users and more effect because visual information makes a great impact.
You see, i advice any newbie to create a description as though they were talking to their parents. It will feel comfortable to word yet respectful and adequate.
"He who learns but does not think is lost. He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger"
-Confuolus
-Great Okonkwo
>> While the potential customer is on the product page deciding whether or not they should buy the product, the most important question running through their mind is "Why should I trust this company?"
I'm not sure if I totally agree with that statement. While trust is a factor, I'm not sure if that's what the user is actually thinking--that is something that the Google Quality Raters are thinking. Trust is a big factor, and users will, in fact, hit the back button and go no further on the page if they don't seem to trust the page. We've seen cases where web design of the page plays a big role in trust, as well.
Eric I guess trust is one question that user is thinking from step one till he actually checkout from the website. If at any step website didn’t manage to maintain the trust, probably a user will bounce. I mean imagine if the website have all trust factors available on the home page but on product page either the images are not high-rez or one of the product review is negative from the person you know…. I guess maintaining trust is as important on the product page as it is on the home and different category pages.
Just a thought!
Great Resource.
I am dealing with online sport wears and sheos b2c shop based in Turkey. I have a question. Our e-commerce website is getting better rankings than a single products pages. Do you think search engines prefers Categories more than product pages. Because we are apply almost all on page seo techniques you have mentioned in your article bu still categories are stronger than products pages in terms of ranks.
Thanks your for your article it is very interesting for my ecommerce. I think that the point of Video Reviews of Products is the most important point for increase very much the conversion of ecommerce.
If my site is starting from 0 views up. Isn't it necessary that we have only high ranking keywords in product titles rather than keywords that attract customers?
Because gaining traffic is foremost important when you are new. I am learning SEO currently so your views would guide me better.
Thanks for so many valuable tips!
Wasn't aware of how important live chat is, thanks for this profound summary.
Thumbs up for the post. You cover each element of product page in detail. Thanks
Nice Information Stuff i learnt the Does and Don'ts for the Ecommerce Site. Thanks for Sharing
Superb post, this will surely help for me
Having social sharing buttons in product pages can be a bit tricky. It can act as a negative social proof too. Wingify has a great article on this (here). Also as Asif mentioned having social share button which perfectly fit with your target audience, this might sound generic view to go with FB, Twitter etc. but that's not always the case, I have wrote an article about social sharing buttons you should use, you can find it here.
How much importance is placed on product reviews?
I would like to know if anyone has done analysis as it its effect?
I personally detest the pricing practices of most companies. We're still pricing gas with 9/10 of a cent. I mean seriously? No wonder people were lining up to buy Tesla's. Ending anything in 99 just screams "I just took marketing 101, and now I'm an expert!". I'd like to see a test done on conversion rates of $5.99 vs $6.
Who can deny the magic of number 9. I never really tried testing this on any ecommerce website but as far as SaaS is concern, the magic of number 9 works like crazy. I mean look at Moz… its not $100 a month… its $99 J:)
Great article! One question/point of clarification I wanted to bring up relates to the page titles and descriptions. I absolutely agree they are important from a click conversion perspective, but I am under the impression they do not have an impact on rankings? I could be wrong, but if you do know that would be great! Thanks.
When you create a page its first for your user and then for search engine and your titles and descriptions should please both your users and search engines. I am trying to say that SEO is important but in quest of getting ranked, if your titles and descriptions cannot appeal potential customer, what is the point of that SEO?
Hope this helps!
Fantastic article. Sir you almost cover each element of product page in detail. I started building Product landing pages to collect leads, and my first experience was terrible! People just kept bouncing out of my product page, and not optin.
I’m busy with Design depart to redesigning my Product page & listing pages at the moment and reading this has just given me even more options to consider!
so Glad that it helped syed!! :)
Nice..I especialle enjoyed reading about site architecture, we changed over a year ago, and it is still having a huge impact on our rankings. Thanks for sharing very educational blog.
Thanks Moosa, a very interesting post.
I´d like your comments if possible on reviews. I understand the importance of reviews and this is easy to implement if you have a large portfolio of products to offer for a given category
What would be your opinion in case you offer a limited portfolio for a category? Reviews are important but if there are not many options to choose from getting them included can also play against sales. (let´s imagine you are the reseller but also the provider for one of the categories on the site)...
Any ideas on how to handle this ?
Thanks
Luis, I think product reviews are easy to implement if your products are quality and your customers are satisfied with your product. All you have to do is to reach out to your satisfied customers and offer them something to encourage them to leave product reviews.
Honestly, it just need a pick…once you will have few product previews rest will come organically.
By reading this blog post i came to know that you have to make content rich and should be informative whether it will be of words or may be of an image which is going to use for the promotional purpose.
I consider the word content to be diverse umbrella… images, infographics, podcasts, BTL, ATL all are the forms of content that can be used to increase conversions for the businesses.
Hi Moosa and other Mozers,
Hope you are all doing well. All the elements you talked about are important and you basically shared the whole list with us which is really good :)
I would like to ask few things from you. How can we optimize images for better speed if we are using HD images and also what is the best speed on mobile and desktop for E-commerce websites?
Regards
When using HQ images, you can always use CDN to call the images instead of sharing it on the server. This will make the page lighter and overall load speed of the page increases. This post covers some other good ideas that might help!
https://www.iispeed.com/pagespeed/optimizations/image-optimization
When it comes to the ideal speed of the web or mobile, the infographic shared above speak about that in detail.
Thank you for sharing your views on the post.
All good points, you may like to add Wishlist a very common and vital feature to have. A visitor specially the one exploring website via mobile has a small screen to play around, they in general prefer to put either product in cart or add in wishlist.
nice idea sarfaraz.. I will try to get some data around it and might add this in my future post.
Thanks, Moosa. Good stuff!
Question: What about negative comments/feedbacks/reviews? Keep or remove? (When they are on your own site)
Thanks Anton!
As I said tanking reviews as a strategy will help you win the game. If you get couple of negative reviews on the product page, Instead of deleting those, I will reach out to satisfied customer on that product and ask them for their feedback that I can use to make it review part look natural.
In my opinion, if all your reviews says “amazing product” I probably will not believe you… so couple of negative reviews with positive ones will give a positive gesture to potential buyer and help them make informed decision (probably in your favor!)
Just a thought!
Great post Moosa.
I have a similar question here. Suppose, a brand's image isn't that good in the market (assuming they're working on better UX continuously now). Should they still think about integrating reviews and ratings on their product pages? People might use that space for a lot of negative comments on their past experiences, any thoughts on this?
Thank you Nitin for the read and comment.
See as I said earlier adding reviews, as functionality is easy and not valuable if you leave it as it is instead of wrapping it with the good strategy.
In my opinion, not all customers can’t be bad and if you look in to your inventory and comments that you got from customers, you can always guess who is a satisfied customer and who isn’t. The idea is to reach out to the customer, give them some giveaway or a discount and get a review against it.
Yes, when things will start picking up… there will be some negative comments but combination or negative and positive comments will make it more natural to the potential customer.
Just a thought!
If you are receiving masses of negative feedback they I would assume there is a little room for concern as something is potentially wrong with your businesses relationship with its customers.
As nobody ever actively encourage negative reviews they are always going to crop up and keeping them available to users/customers show's you are getting genuine reviews from real people, Purely 5 star across the board looks a little less trust worthy and that could of been manipulated. How you handle any negative comments can in some cases actually boost your users confidence in how you react etc. Although were possible try to take offline with your response, suggesting they call you to discuss or that you will be happy to call them.
I always go by the basis that people are more than willing to complain and that it is harder to gain positive reviews, I would suggest you actively pursue your customers whom have had a positive experience. You could look to set up automated email campaigns to ask for reviews once a customer has passed a returns or feedback threshold, and ask how you performed.
Finally, there are so many review sites out there that you can use, but I would suggest trying to keep to those partnering with Google. That way, as you build up a positive rating, you will start to see positive stars appearing next to adwords campaigns should you be using them. You can also apply aggregate schema mark-up to your products to also benefit from star ratings in your organic listings. This should give you a nice little boost in CTR as you stand out from the crowd.
Hope this adds some more :)
Great article by the way!!!!
Thanks, Tim
Thanks for the comment Tim and I love the idea of dealing with negative comments. I totally agree i mean if most of your comments are negative then one should consider checking your product or service out.
But if there are few negative comments, and if you as an ecommerce owner deal with them smartly... chances are this will only boost your conversions. There are quite a few examples that you can easily find on Yelp reviews... where people wrote negative review and brand actively respond to it and not only satisfy that customer but also convert that negative comment into positive one.
Thanks again Tim.
A product page should foremostly have a URL address, by opening which a person can know about the details minute even, which are otherwise not there on the main page, where a product or the other is tried to be promoted and publicised. In addition to having in it if possible, images, videos etc., which can just make a product page interesting, other than just effective, beautiful content written towards one by a Content Writer of course.
Interesting point!
How users who believe that all the same not optimize the urls and descriptions of products may exist? If you're not someone huge nobody will ever look for your brand, but we seek products !!!
Once we have optimized all this is when we can start to give due weight to other factors (quality of the images, videos, price and shopping cart always visible, loading speed ....)
Congrats for te post, Moosa!!
Glad you like it Ivan! So good to see you here.
I would say this is one of the profitable post for the e-commerce websites. Each and every point that being mentioned in this post are highly beneficial to optimize an eCommerce website right way. As far as concern the product page optimization, so in that case I would say this is the stuff that I was looking for, creating an awesome product page that converts leads. I would like to give one suggestion, especially for e-commerce sites for the SEO purpose that if we target category page for eCommerce site then it would be more beneficial towards ecommerce businesses.
Thank you for the kind words Bhushan. I personally believe that every page on the website has its own importance and each page participate in making people convert better. From the SEO stand point category pages usually have better traffic coming from search engines (if ranked for targeted keyphrases) but if the product pages sucks traffic that derive from category page might not help the user convert into paying customers and good amount of potential buyer might leave.
Just a thought!
Amazing post. Very accurately you have covered all the factors regarding product-page. It's really helpful to the e-commerce industry.
Nice post. I always try to refer to the giants in the industry and pay attention to what they're doing. Amazon has all these points well covered ;)
Josh, I like the idea of looking for the giants in the industry but I see a problem here. Websites like Amazon, are big which is why their targeted audience is diversified. My idea is to understand your target audience and look for successful website that have more or less safe target persona as yours and you will understand better about what functionalities to add on your product page and what to drop.
I mean idea if having cross sell and upsell options are great in B2C but in many B2B businesses (not all) this isn’t really a very good idea.
Just a thought!
Hi Moosa,
Nicely done! A few things that stood out to me – I love the idea of moving away from overly optimized and lengthy title tags, meta descriptions and other ‘non-human’ on-page elements - which speaks to your overarching point of putting user experience before search engines. Our team has recently inherited a pair of eCommerce sites that are indisputably marked-up for search engines and search engines only. So between client interfacing and developmental red-tape, we have our work cut out for us. Thanks so much for taking the time to churn this out; you’ve helped validate some of our own thoughts and more!
Thanks Again!
Hey Paul, i am so glad that things worked out for you really well.
Nice article on creating converting product pages for e-commerce sites.
Thanks @Moosa Hemani exactly what I told my past eCommerce customers to improve their product sale.
Glad you like the post sir!
A post worth sharing, thanks alot
your idea is really super and nice thanks for sharing
Thanks!!!