There are many strategies to increase conversion rates on e-commerce sites. One of the most effective is to design a converting product page.
Developing high-quality pages that make your products look enticing to the target audience can be extremely rewarding. Use the following eight tips to improve your existing pages.
Place Plenty of Listings on One Page
Consumers love scrolling through products and seeing all the opportunities. Too many online product pages contain just a few items, which can be frustrating for visitors.
So you should put many listings on each page, like this product page for new and used yachts. Visitors can click on a product that catches their eye in order to get more information, but the long scroll eliminates some of the frustration of having to download one brief product page after another.
Optimize the Buyer’s Journey
One of the best ways to take a website visitor to the customer stage is to create a clear buyer journey for people to follow. HubSpot identified Bellroy, a company that sells wallets, as a great example of a company that outlines a clear buyer journey.
“Bellroy divided its product page into three stages of the buyer’s journey — understanding the problem, how to fix the problem, and how Bellroy can resolve the problem,” the company explains.
Utilizing something similar on your own product pages will direct buyers simply and clearly to your cart.
Write Clear Calls to Action
Don’t expect your products to fly from the page to visitors’ carts. Most shoppers need a clear CTA to drive action.
Use language that in no uncertain terms will direct consumers to your cart. Simple things that dress up your CTA button — such as using a bold color, making it large, and playing up contrast — also go a long way.
Improve Your Images
“People DO judge a book by its cover, so invest in solid product photography,” Mark Perini, founder of ICEE Social told Shopify. “Your products will show up in a magnitude of sites throughout the web (social site, Google Search, Bing, Ads, social recommendation site) so make sure you are perceived in the best possible light by really making your products shine!”
Surely you know better than to use stock images, but you might not realize the power of taking your own high-quality photos. Hire a professional photographer, use great lighting, and install a plain white background to showcase your items in their best light.
Highlight Customer Reviews
Word-of-mouth marketing is by far the more effective method of selling products. To give your users the extra encouragement they need to complete a purchase, display customer reviews for each product.
You can generate more reviews for each page with a simple follow-up email. After a customer makes a purchase and receives the product, send an email that asks the person to rate and review the purchase for the benefit of other potential buyers.
Speed It Up
Slow product pages challenge sales more than anything else. If it takes more than a couple of seconds for the page and checkout window to load, your shoppers are likely to abandon the purchase.
Heavy product pages with images that are too large, and un-cached files, are the biggest culprit in the case of slow website speeds. “If you need to check whether your page is heavy (or not), what I would do is run a page test on tools.pingdom.com,” recommends Matteo Duo of Codeable. “That will tell you the size of the whole page (HTML and images).”
“Just as a rule of thumb,” he continues. “If your page is 10 MB or even 20 MB, which can happen in a store that has a lot of gallery pictures, it’s just too big and almost always because of too many, very large images.”
From there, you can take steps to fix the problem so customers don’t get annoyed with your page and leave.
Reduce Clutter
Clutter interrupts the customer’s journey, making it difficult for you to land sales. Customers are often distracted by a variety of elements on a product page, which makes it difficult for them to transition a preferred product from the page to their cart.
One digital expert identifies Abercrombie & Fitch as a great example for minimalizing clutter on product pages. “Abercrombie & Fitch has a great minimalistic and clean product browsing experience,” she told Neil Patel.
“Only the essential browsing elements (such as search bar, navigation, and product color variations) are visible. Even the color theme is simple and optimal for easy browsing.”
Humanize Your Product Descriptions
Many product descriptions tend to be too detailed: full of key words and somewhat robotic. They’re not terribly engaging, so prospective customers don’t give them a second glance.
Though your high-quality product images will do a lot of the talking, engaging and enticing product descriptions can drive the point home. Invest time and energy into speaking directly to consumers.
Do serious research on your target audience so you can compose product descriptions that will resonate with them. Add a little personality and explain the value proposition clearly in a voice they can connect with.
