Consider the following scenario: Let’s say you are shopping online for a new pair of shoes. The first e-commerce site you visit features multiple high-definition images, detailed product descriptions, extensive customer reviews, and even a video showing the shoes from multiple angles. The second site you visit has only a photo of the shoe, little information about sizes and colors, and no customer reviews.

So which website are you more likely to buy from? Obviously the first one.

The simple fact is that your detail page design can either lead to a conversion (adding items to the cart) or cause the visitor to immediately bounce off the page. While every step in the customer buying journey is important, browsing a product detail page is arguably the most important. The detail page is a decision point, the moment when a visitor decides to add an item to their cart or purchase it elsewhere.

Here’s the bottom line: your product pages are crucial, and when you ensure they are of the highest quality, you’ll reap huge rewards.

Many eCommerce website owners make the critical mistake of assuming that traffic equals sales, and that if they increase traffic, sales will increase at the same rate. But that's not the case.

If your website isn’t optimized for conversions, it’s like pouring water into a leaky bucket. No matter how much water you pour, you will never be able to fill the bucket. The same is true for website traffic. If your website is not optimized, traffic will likewise “leak away” and not convert into sales.

The fundamental secret to e-commerce growth is not more traffic, but more conversions from existing traffic.

Therefore, we need to create an efficient and optimized website to convert as many visitors as possible into shoppers.

So how should we do it specifically?

1. 9 Ways to Create a High-Converting E-Commerce Product Detail Page

In this article, we’ll provide 9 ways to create eCommerce product detail pages. These methods can keep your page conversion rates at a high level, and they are essential elements that should be tested and optimized regularly.

1. Know your product name

Generally speaking, the longer your product name is, the better. There are two reasons:

• First, every word in the name is a potential keyword for organic search. For example, the title "Nike Air Max Men's Running Shoes Size 44" is better than "Air Max Men's".
• Second, longer product names make it easier for customers to find exactly what they want. Instead of clicking through each product, they can simply scan the product name to find the one they want.

These Bluetooth headphones on Amazon are a great example of a detailed product name:

It can be seen that sellers try to include as much relevant information as possible in the title to make it easier for customers to find them.

2. Focus your product description on the consumer

When writing a product description, it’s easy to dwell on specs like size, weight, battery life, etc.

While these issues are important, the main focus of your description should be on how the product benefits the consumer.

This means you need to understand your customers — their needs, problems, desires, and the language they use to describe them — so you can write product descriptions that appeal to your customers’ needs, solve their problems, and satisfy their desires.

You should put yourself in your customers’ shoes and imagine how your product will benefit them and improve their lives. For example, if you are an e-commerce company selling knives, you should consider how your cooking knife set will make cooking easier for your customers?

In addition, product descriptions should:

• Easy to quickly browse
• No obscure jargon
• Full of necessary key information
• Help customers clear up misunderstandings
• Answer relevant questions from customers

3. Make prices clear

For many shoppers, price is the primary driver of their purchase decisions. If they can't easily find a price, they may become wary and shop elsewhere.

Place the price in a prominent place and cross out the old price if you are offering a discount. This is a classic strategy used by Amazon and one of the reasons their conversion rates are so high.

4. Provide a clear call to action (CTA)

If you’ve clearly outlined the key benefits of your product on your product detail page, eliminated potential objections, and answered potential customers’ questions, then you’ve earned the right to send your customers a call to action (CTA).

In most cases, this call to action is just an “Add to Cart” button.

The call to action should be prominently displayed and as concise as possible, and every effort should be made to make the checkout process smooth and minimize friction.

Consider all that Amazon has done to speed up checkout: they save your information, offer one-click ordering, and are even experimenting with “Dash buttons” so you can order without even being online. Why is Amazon doing this? Because they know that speed of the checkout process is critical.

5. Use multiple high-resolution images

The difference between an e-commerce website and a physical store is that potential customers cannot actually touch the products on the website. This difference makes high-definition product images essential.

Use pictures to show your products from multiple angles so potential customers can get a full picture of what they look like.

Additionally, include images that show your product in use on your detail page so potential customers know what it will look like when using it. For example, if you sell headphones, have someone wear them and take a photo to include on your detail page so your target customers can see the actual size.

6. Use Video

Videos are becoming increasingly important for e-commerce product pages because they can show more aspects of your product than images.

The data shows the importance of video to detail pages. Research results show that videos can increase product detail page conversion rates by 84%-144%.

Why are videos so effective? There are several reasons:

If you have a product that customers might find difficult to use, a video can demonstrate how simple it actually is to operate.

If a customer wants to know the difference between certain features, a video can describe it quickly and accurately.

And, perhaps most importantly, videos help customers visualize themselves using your product.

7. Introduce “social proof”

The reality is that people trust the people around them more than they trust what companies, advertisers and marketers say.

Marketers’ core purpose is to sell products, which makes them more likely to exaggerate benefits and downplay any potential problems. When discussing a product, the evaluations given by people around you are more likely to be objective.

This is why social proof, such as customer reviews, is so important. Some (perhaps exaggerated) statistics suggest that user reviews are twelve times more useful than marketing claims. While the numbers themselves may not be accurate, customer reviews are absolutely necessary for every e-commerce page.

When it comes to social proof, you can use user reviews, social media posts, expert recommendations, etc.

Your ultimate goal should be to make your potential customers feel that they made a wise choice by purchasing your product and that others around them who have used it had a good experience.

8. Make it easy for users to compare products

Potential customers often think that the first product they see is not the best option for them. They may want a different color, style, size, etc. By recommending and comparing other products on your product detail page, you can maintain potential customers’ attention and move them closer to purchase.

Ideally, a listing could use historical data (macro-buying trends across all customers), as well as retargeting (e.g. Facebook pixel, browsing history), to provide personalized recommendations that will cater directly to the consumer’s tastes.

9. Inspire Trust

There will always be a portion of your target customers who are reluctant to buy online. Maybe they’ve had a bad experience with online shopping, or they’re from an older generation who’s never shopped online.

For these people, adding an element of trust to your product pages can greatly increase the odds that they’ll buy.

What are the elements of trust?

• Clear return policy
• Money Back Guarantee
• Live chat with a customer service representative
• Warranty Policy
• Delivery Details
• etc…

These elements of trust send a signal to customers that if they have a problem, you will do everything you can to make it right. When you can build trust with hesitant customers, you increase your chances of making a sale.

2. Testing and Optimization

Once you’ve implemented some of the optimizations listed above, you can start A/B testing to determine the best layout for improving your page conversion rate.

At a high level, this conversion rate optimization process should:

• Based on data. A/B testing should never be done haphazardly or based on intuition. Using data gathered from analytics, heatmaps, and user testing, you should identify areas where you have the greatest potential to increase conversions. Form hypotheses based on the data, test the hypotheses, statistically evaluate the results, and then implement changes.

• Well organized. Start with the areas that have the greatest potential to increase conversions. Test one element at a time, evaluate the results, and make necessary changes. Then move to the next most important area and repeat the process.

• Iterate. Conversion rate optimization is not a one-and-done process. After you identify a winner in your A/B test, run another A/B test to compare the winner to another potential optimization. The more you repeat it, the more your conversion rate will increase.

3. Conclusion The compounding ability of conversion rate optimization

The beauty of product detail page conversion optimization is that it creates compound rewards. The more optimizations you implement on your e-commerce product pages, the faster your conversion rate and revenue will grow.

For example, let’s say your current conversion rate is 2% and you have 100,000 visitors per month who make an average purchase of $150. Then the website will have 2,000 conversions per month and earn $300,000 in revenue. You can then optimize your product pages and, let’s say, increase your conversion rate by 0.5%, now you’re making $375,000 per month. If you continue optimizing and increase your conversion rate by another 0.5%, your monthly revenue is now $450,000.

This shows that you can increase your revenue without having to buy more traffic. By optimizing your product pages, you can increase revenue from your existing traffic. This frees up money to buy more traffic, which in turn brings in more revenue. And so on, a virtuous circle is formed.

So if you’re the owner of an e-commerce website, don’t rest on your laurels. Every visitor that doesn’t convert is money that doesn’t go into your pocket.

Author: Jon MacDonald Source: Jon MacDonald