3 of our Vevol Media Shopify specialists recently hosted a webinar where we covered the fundamentals of optimising your product pages for conversions. In case you missed it and you’re short on time to recap the entire session, we’ve covered the basics below. We find so often that clients who come to us struggling to land sales have focused all their attention on their homepage while their product pages end up being neglected.
Here’s the secret. Your product page is the most important page on your website as an eCommerce store. Yes, even before your home page or landing page! Depending on your SEO strategy or paid ad campaigns, shoppers may land on your product page before any other page on your website. Imagine landing on a product page that is poorly designed and lacking the information you need to close the sale…you’re pretty unlikely to checkout, right? Hence, neglecting your product page means your conversion rate suffers.
How To Design Product Pages With The User Journey In Mind
It is important to consider the user journey when designing your product page. The user journey generally goes something like this:
Awareness: Your audience searches for a product and sees your ad campaign or is served a sponsored post on social media
Consideration: The user clicks through to your product page and sees what it’s about
Purchase: If your product and the user experience match their expectations, they will make a purchase
Retention: If you make use of a nurture sequence and have a marketing strategy in place that helps you stay connected to your audience, they will come back for future purchases
So, knowing this, how can you use the customer journey to enhance your online experience? This brings us to our next point, the features all websites should have in order to improve conversions.
The Must-Have Features Every Product Page Needs
We’re not about gimmicks but we do know what works, and with our collective experience we’ve learnt which features add value to a product page and increase conversion rates.
Add social proof by enabling your customers to leave reviews. Social proof is a powerful psychological tool you can take advantage of to nudge your customers towards a sale. In fact, multiple reviews can boost sales by up to 44%.
Have a clear product description with your top-performing keywords naturally included in the text. Good product descriptions can improve your website’s SEO ranking and visibility, which in turn can drive organic traffic to your product pages.
This is one of our favourite features to add because it packs a serious punch when it comes to increasing conversions…add an Estimated Delivery Date. Say your customer needs a last-minute birthday gift for a friend and you offer same-day or next-day delivery which is stated on your product page, whereas your competitor offers standard 3 to 5-day shipping. Who are they going to purchase from? You, without a doubt.
Add suggested products at the bottom of your product page or bundles (such as discounting the order when people buy certain related products together. This allows for upsells and cross-sells which increase your average order value.
A sticky Add To Cart button keeps the product button visible while a user is browsing your product page to make it easy for them to go ahead and add the item to their carts once they’re ready.
World Class Examples Of Product Pages
Dan selected 2 examples of world-class product pages to demonstrate the points covered above. We’ll briefly cover what these 2 brands get right with their product pages.
First up, we looked at Umzu, a US-based health supplement company. Here is what we love about their product pages in a nutshell:
There is an option for a one-time purchase (e.g. to sample the product) or to have a recurring monthly subscription which makes it convenient for people who want to continue using the supplement on a monthly basis. When a buyer opts for a subscription, they can enjoy a 25% discount on every order which encourages them to choose the subscription model. It also lets you know you will receive a delivery every 30 days.
They have included an Estimated Delivery Date for added convenience
They show social proof with product reviews.
Use of short but keyword-rich product descriptions and lots of additional information about the supplements, including instructions on how to use each product.
A FAQ section answers any questions the user may have and can help nudge them along to make the purchase.
There are a few related product suggestions to enable upselling.
If a buyer doesn’t think the product is right for them, they can take a quiz which is designed to help recommend products based on the answers given.
A little added bonus that Umzu has also included is an accessibility tool so users can tweak the site to suit their needs.
The next brand we looked at was Decathlon, an athletic-wear brand. Here are some features of the product page we really liked:
Use of powerful marketing words like “Lowest Price” and “Best Value” as an image overlay.
They have set up Klarna which enables payments in instalments or deferred payments, which is helpful when buyers are on tight budgets.
Social proof is provided in the way of reviews.
There is a size guide included and a drop-down that states 88% of users found the top to fit as expected, which can help when selecting a size.
There is a short, clear product description but further information such as technical information, product technology, environmental impact, similar products (hello, cross-selling!) and more pictures as you scroll down. There is also a “buy it with” tab which recommends what to pair the top with to encourage upselling.
So Let’s Answer The Question…Where Do Fish Drink Water?
When we say “where do fish drink water?” the answer is in fact everywhere! Consumers are much alike…they are shopping around and browsing across multiple websites but the goal, of course, is to get them to drink YOUR water. By keeping the user journey and experience top of mind when designing your product pages, you can attract customers to your store and nudge them towards making purchases. How do we do this?
Optimise your product page
Make technical website improvements like speed and performance
Ensure your product pages are mobile-ready
Offer top-notch customer service
Basically, optimise every area of your website and customer experience you can!
Technical Optimisations That Can Give You An Extra Boost
Bogdan, our Head of Development, led us through the various technical optimisations you can make to your website. We dug through the data and found over 47% of website users expect websites to load in under 2 seconds. Furthermore, 45% of users suggested they were less likely to follow through with a purchase if they encountered a slow-loading website. Hence, speed optimisations are vital in terms of improving your conversion rate.
So what can you do? Here are some speed optimisation actions you should take right away:
Speed up image loading - multiple image sizes for different devices, convert images to next-generation WebP format, lazy loading of images and make use of a Content Delivery Network (CDN).
Block your website from running unnecessary scripts
Remove outdated or inactive plugins and apps
Minify code
Another area you can focus on improving is above-the-fold. This refers to the area of your page that users can see without scrolling, which tends to be 600 x 800 pixels in size. This is the area of your product page that will first capture the attention of browsers, so it is essential it includes attractive images, a clear title and useful information to encourage users to hang around longer and continue browsing. We’ve covered this in more detail in a separate blog post, which we’d love for you to check out right here.
Conclusion
We ended off a jam-packed session with a few live audits conducted by Alexia, our eCommerce Specialist and Project Manager followed by a short Q&A session. If you’d like to see what we uncovered in those, be sure to take a look at our webinar recording and skip straight ahead to 33:50.
Thanks to all who joined us live for this webinar and if you missed it, be sure to keep an eye on our social media accounts for details of the next one.