68% of consumers trust opinions posted online. [Source] Reviews build trust and give potential customers the reassurance they need from others to make their purchasing decisions. Improve site speed Consumers have also come to expect fast load times when they visit websites. The best place on a product page to highlight a value proposition is the item description. For help creating great value propositions to use on your product pages, consider asking yourself these questions: Who are my customers? Write compelling product descriptions When shoppers read your product description, they mean business. Seeing how few products are left, the shopper feels as though they’re going to miss an opportunity to buy the item if they don’t purchase quickly. [Source] Adding additional educational content about your product secures buyers’ trust. There are shoppers out there who want to know every product detail before making a purchase. If you can show buyers the benefits of your products on this page, they’ll complete their order and give you a sale.
Sales shouldn’t be the only thing you celebrate — product page visits are worth a cheer as well. They indicate that someone is well on the way to becoming a customer. They’re one of the first steps in the right direction.
These visits only happen because of a lot of work — engaging marketing campaigns, strategic pricing, and captivating, high-quality product photos. But all of that effort goes to waste if the product page isn’t carefully curated to turn warm leads into customers. As Jason Amunwa, former Director of Products at Telepathy, says:
Each visitor that makes it to a product page represents the heavy lifting and money spent to get them there. The product page is not the time to squander that hard work. It’s up to you to create a user experience that gives the visitor what they need to become a customer.
You can create a product page that motivates visitors to purchase through easy design and copy adjustments. Just look at the online retailer DueMaternity.com — adding 360-degree images to their product pages boosted conversion rates by 27%.
To get started, here are 15 best practices for building product pages that boost conversions.
Let’s dive in.
1. Use high-quality images
We’re in the age of scrolling — shoppers will rapidly move through search results unless something catches their eye.
An easy way to grab their attention? Large, crisp, high-quality photos of your products.
Great product photography builds the buyer’s trust that you need in ecommerce. The shopper can’t see the product in-person, but they can assess its qualities with a clear photo. Providing a crisp image that covers all of the product’s details makes the buyer feel confident in making their online purchase.
The shaving company Harry’s uses a high-quality photo to showcase the fine blades of its razor product. [Source]
For sellers on a budget, outsourcing product photo shoots can be time-consuming and expensive. As an alternative, here are a few resources for taking your own high-quality product images:
With these resources, all sellers on any type of budget can create stunning, crisp product photos that inspire confidence in shoppers and motivate them to complete their purchase.
2. Add trust badges and statements
Every week, new stories are published online about data breaches, cyber identify theft, credit card fraud, and personal information being stolen and compromised by savvy hackers. As more events occur, consumers have become more wary of distributing their personal information online — creating a barrier to ecommerce shopping.
If you want people to buy your products, you need to convince them that their information is safe in your hands. To build this trust, trust badges are highly recommended.
A collection of trust badges you can potentially include on your product pages. [Source]
According to a study by Econsultancy/Toluna, 48% of shoppers agreed that trust seals help them decide whether to make a purchase. Clear and visual, trust badges are an easy way to let shoppers know that their purchases are safe.
To read more about how effective trust badges can be in boosting conversions, check out these blog posts:
As a clear symbol, trust badges immediately build confidence in your company so buyers feel comfortable completing their purchase.
3. Leverage reciprocity
According to psychologist Robert Cialdini, people are governed by a rule of reciprocity — a universal tendency of feeling compelled to repay when given a gift. Applying this rule to ecommerce, sellers can craft their product pages with gifts that aren’t only useful to buyers, but also encourage them to reciprocate with a purchase.
Reciprocity is leveraged in product pages with freebies. Sellers will often offer a free gift or a number of samples if a buyer completes an order.
[Source]
The free gift isn’t just a useful product for the buyer — following the rule of reciprocity, receiving the gift psychologically justifies completing the purchase, or repaying the seller, for the buyer.
To understand how applying the rule of reciprocity and other psychological principles can boost conversions on your product page, check out these resources:
4. Highlight reviews from customers
Businesses spend large chunks of their marketing budget for promotions on Google and Facebook to encourage sales. But the truth is, the most strategic, well-placed ads are often less powerful and convincing than an alternative cheaper form of marketing: word-of-mouth recommendations.
Consider these statistics:
- 72% of consumers say positive reviews make them trust businesses more.
- 68% of consumers trust opinions posted online.
- Word of mouth is the primary factor behind 20% to 50% of all purchasing decisions.
- 84% of consumers reported always or sometimes taking action based on personal recommendations. 70% said they did the same with online consumer opinions.
Given the power of referrals, it’s best to prominently feature reviews from customers on your product pages.
[Source]
Reviews build trust and give potential customers the reassurance they need from others to make their purchasing decisions. To feature reviews on your store, consider using these helpful tools:
- For Shopify users: Download the Product Reviews app on the Shopify store.
- For WooCommerce users: Consult this resource from the platform.
- For BigCommerce users: Consult this resource from the platform.
5. Remove the clutter
Shoppers don’t read product pages like novels — they scan them like menus. Eager to move on to more content, they’ll quickly read over your product pages looking for key information.
Keeping buyers’ attention then boils down to minimizing distracting clutter. With minimal product page content, shoppers can easily grasp the key information of your product and realize why they should purchase it.
The bag company Herschel uses a minimalist design of muted colors and small color swatches to highlight the gorgeous product photo.
The trick is to include only the most essential and engaging information on product pages. To get started, here are a few decluttering tips:
- Select and highlight several large, crisp photos. It’s all about quality, not quantity. A few high-quality photos highlight your products’ strengths, while an abundance of small, grainy images is just distracting.
- Utilize negative (white) space. According to a study by Wichita State University, properly adding whitespace between content can increase comprehension up to 20%.
- Be intentional with typography, CTA buttons, and other design elements. Product page designs that don’t align with the product and brand’s aesthetic are distracting to shoppers. Make design choices that match your business’ style and don’t feel out of place so the buyer is easily guided into making a purchase.
To dig deeper into the pros of simple product page design, read this fantastic post from CXL.
6. Improve site speed
Consumers have also come to expect fast load times when they visit websites. Consider the following research presented in a Kissmetrics blog post on page speed:
- Nearly half of web users expect a site to load in two seconds or less.
- Users tend to abandon a site that isn’t loaded within three seconds.
- 79% of web shoppers who have trouble with site performance say they won’t return to the site.
To make your ecommerce product pages and website as a whole load faster, follow these recommendations:
- Reduce the number of HTTP requests that occur on your site. For every file on your product page, your browser has to make an HTTP request. The more HTTP requests, the slower your site loads. Removing unnecessary files, such as images, and reducing file sizes are both ways you can lessen HTTP requests and improve site speed.
- Fix broken links throughout your site. Product page links, such as size charts or shipping information, need to be accessible to avoid frustrating users and having them abandon pages.
- Test site speed using this tool. Then identify and remedy any additional causes of slow loading times.
Quickening the site speed of your product pages is the ultimate remedy to cart abandonment. Rather than getting discouraged with slow pages, shoppers want to keep engaging with your product pages with your site’s superior performance.
7. Use FAQs to resolve shoppers’ concerns
People aren’t visiting your website or product pages to read about how great you think your company or products are— they’re landing on your website because they need help and they’re wondering if they can get what they are looking for from you.
It’s your job to convince them…
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