Tim Pritchard of ecommerce and shopping cart software firm SellerDeck gives his advice for getting your product pages in tip-top condition.
A large part of my job is analysing ecommerce websites. This includes everything from looking at the SEO and analytics, to reviewing the visual and functional aspects and making recommendations for improvement.
Because of this, I see a lot of websites along the spectrum of (for want of a better word) completely hopeless, to utterly brilliant.
Read On:
Products: Case study of Daniel Footwear
Using Google tools to select products
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Of course, brilliant is subjective; features that some people find innovative and wonderful, others will find tedious and unnecessary.
Your product pages are one of the most important parts of your ecommerce site. After all, this is the online equivalent of beautifully merchandised displays and well-stocked shelves.
Based on my research, previous projects I’ve been involved with and far too much spent on internet shopping, here are my top five recommendations for making your product pages stand out (in a good way).
1 Images
When you’re walking around a store, what makes you stop and look at a product? You may’ve specifically gone looking for it, but sometimes, it’s just something that catches your eye.
Of course, the benefit of shopping in a physical store is you can pick an object up, feel it, touch it and see it from all angles.
Shopping online should replicate this as much as possible. A few good-sized, sharp images from several angles are really important to show the customer exactly what they are buying.
If the image is tiny and low quality then you run the risk of losing a sale, due to the buyer clicking away to find a clearer picture elsewhere.
And for certain items, e.g. soft furnishings, it can help to have lifestyle shots, showing the product in a home setting.
2 Reviews
The ecommerce store owners I speak to either love reviews or hate them. Most of the anti-brigade who don’t have them on their site view them like a seven year-old looks at a plate of vegetables.
If you think that you’ll just get a lot of bad reviews, you need to ask yourself why. Shoppers trust their peers, and like to hear from other shoppers first hand as to what their experiences are; not just about the product, but the service too.
3 FAQ
Here’s a scenario for you. A shopper is about to click ‘Buy now’ but thinks to themselves, “Hmm… is this compatible with what I’ve already got?” They read the description but can’t find anything, so they search on Google.
Google links them to your competitor, where the question is answered and they buy the product there and then… from your competitor.
A sale relies on the buyer having all the information they need. Having a product specific FAQ will help answer those questions before they’ve been asked and avoid people clicking away.
4 Price and delivery
I was selling some old stuff at a car boot sale. A young man picked up a belt buckle and whilst I was busy serving someone else, spent two or three minutes looking it over before eventually putting it down looking disappointed.
Another person quipped “Oh, how much is that?”, “Just a pound!” I replied, and the second man bought the buckle. The first guy then commented that he’d have bought it if he known it was only £1!
The lesson for the guy was to always ask the price, the lesson for me was that often people would rather walk away from something they want, than ask just one question. Always make sure pricing and delivery options are clearly listed and that there are no nasty surprises at the checkout.
5 Make it easy
This seems obvious, but from some of the sites I’ve seen, it doesn’t seem to be the case. Just as a shop will place checkouts near the door, your ‘Add to cart’ buttons should stand out.
All too often I see small a small ‘Click here to buy’, or a tiny picture of a basket. Make your important buttons big, clear and in a colour that attracts the eye, like red.
Running an online store is very similar to a bricks and mortar shop. Whilst it’s true that we’re not all design experts, most of this comes down to common sense.
Think about when you’re in the high street, how do you react, how do others react, what do the large chains do? Transfer these observations to the web and you’ll see there are a lot of similarities between shoppers’ behaviour on and offline.
For more, visit www.sellerdeck.co.uk
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