You have been very astute so far, attracting prospects with social media marketing, creating amazing landing pages and building a great content strategy. And now your leads are browsing your products, ready to make their first purchase. Would it surprise you to know that many sales are lost because of the way product pages look like?
Many business owners consider their sales funnel and conversion finished when people go to the online store section of their site. Actually, the conversion process is completed when the lead places an order and goes through checkout. Many conversion opportunities are lost at the moment when people start browsing through your products. If the design of these pages is not as carefully crafted as the rest of the website, the sale is lost.
So, what makes a great product page? Which features drive conversion? Here they are:
- High Quality, Interactive Photos
Product photos need to be taken by a professional. The photographer’s talent, combined with a professional camera, will create superb images which can be enlarged or made to the size of a thumbnail without losing their clarity. You cannot achieve this kind of quality with your phone camera, no matter how hard you try.
Also, people expect more than just a few static photos in order to assess a product. Zooming in and out, 360° views and even augmented reality (virtually trying on products) are basic requirements now for a high-converting online store.
- Big, Bold Titles
Titles need to be as descriptive as possible, written in a large, stylised font which pops out of the page. When you consider writing a title for a product, imagine being a street vendor trying to attract people’s attention. You would not say “women’s shoes”, would you? Instead, you would say “elegant patent leather stiletto shoes”. Make sure you give out the most information you can about your product, even before the prospect looks at the photos.
Leaving aside the fact that descriptive titles help your SEO efforts and strategies, they also help hurried customers find exactly what they need without going through each product page.
- Product Description – Placement and Content Matter Equally
Great copywriting is essential for a persuasive product description. But, if you squeeze it between two photos and set it in a puny font, it won’t do much good. Usage of white space (actually, it is called negative space in design terms) is meant to help guide viewers’ eyes from the title to the description and then to the photos.
The best placement of the text, as seen in the most successful online stores, is side by side with the photos. People tend to shift their eyes to identify each descriptive item on the photo itself and in this way they can do it without scrolling up and down.
- Make the CTA Button Stand Out
Whether you opt for “Buy Now” or “Add to Basket”, you must make sure that your CTA button pops out of the web page. As we have advised in a past article, it is worthwhile spending time with A/B testing on your CTA button, until you achieve the maximum conversion. Try various shapes, colours and placements until you reach the perfect combination.
As an extra tip, combine A/B testing with analysis of your web page heat map (the areas with the most frequent mouse movements by visitors) to help you determine the best position of your CTA button.
- Provide Customer Assistance by Live Chat
A small and unobtrusive pop-up allowing prospects to start chatting with a customer assistant is a very useful feature of a product page. People have questions, especially before making a purchase for the first time. Maybe they are looking for a different colour or size. Maybe they are unclear about shipment fees and refund terms and conditions. A short chat with one of your representatives (it can also be a chatbot programmed to assist customers) makes the difference between a completed purchase and an abandoned shopping basket.