How to design product pages that will increase conversion rates

You can have the most beautifully designed site in the world, the coolest products for sale, and A++ customer support. But if your product pages are bad, you’re going to have a tough time selling your products to actual customers. Product pages are your shopping window, your sales clerk, and your cashier — at the same time! They are the ones that make your sales happen. That’s why it is EXTREMELY important that they are designed to convert to sales .

Here are some tips for how to design product pages that will increase conversion rates & boost sales:

1. Show your company’s value proposition

The most important way to make your product pages convert is to clearly show the company’s value proposition. Visitors need to look at product pages and immediately “get” what the site and products are all about.

For instance, if I go to Victoria’s Secret , & view their PINK page, I immediately get what it’s about and what they sell.

If you check out their site, you’ll quickly understand that:

They sell cute girly clothing & accessories (duh!)
They run sales often
Their products, which run in a decent price range, are high-quality and reliable.
They are creative with their ad campaigns
They target young people

Remember: Your value proposition is what makes your company stand out from the rest! It answers the question, What’s so different from you & your company that your customers need to buy from you, & not from your competitors? This is what sets your brand apart from the rest. In the case of Victoria’s Secret, they hold the market in what they sell, and what their brand is all about. Many a company have tried to use the same business model, or copied their marketing/business strategies to get a step ahead, but chances of actually surpassing or overtaking them are slim to none.

Whatever industry or niche you or your client is in, the value proposition needs to show clearly what makes them stand out from competition. It could be unique site design, amazing customer service, or just a great user shopping experience! Like in the case of Victoria’s Secret, it could be your unique brand/product. Whatever it is, if you want your product pages to convert well, you need to clearly show your value proposition.

2. Use high-quality pictures as much as possible.

It’s been proven many times that using high-quality product photos improves conversion rates. For instance, eBay says that each professional product image that is added to a listing increases sellers’ chances of making a sale by 2%. Wait what? YES, that’s right…Each picture increases sales by 2%! What you can take from that study is the importance of adding pictures to your product pages. In order to have great product images, you need to make sure to have amazing product photography, and if that means hiring a professional photographer, DO IT. Unless you have huge product turnover (which means you’ll be changing your product’s images every few months), you need to think of photography as an investment. This all goes into the reasoning behind why product pages are the life and blood of your ecommerce store.

3. Write amazing product descriptions.

If there’s one thing that diminishes any product page’s conversion rates, it’s the quality of their descriptions (or lack thereof).

There are two problems with most stores run into with their product descriptions:

They focus on features, not benefits
They are completely boring and/or unappealing

In order to make your product pages convert better, you need to have amazing product descriptions. Not just good, or great…AMAZING.

The first problem is actually a very common copywriting mistake. Most people believe that they can just list off different features of a product, & their customers will magically understand how good it is and simply just purchase it… However, that’s usually not what ends up happening. Most customers will read the product’s description, and won’t get why they should spend their money on that specific product. A customer needs to be MOVED to actually, physically purchase that product, or they end up postponing the buy for later. Which really means, they most likely wont actually come back to make the purchase, either because they forget, or simply weren’t MOVED enough to follow through. (notice how i used the word MOVED? Yes, this is because when viewing a site online to make a purchase, everything that goes into making that sale, most importantly your product images & descriptions, has to be compelling enough to MOVE your customer into entering that credit card info at your checkout page right away and making a purchase.

Selling your products to customers online is MUCH different than how you would in the “real” world. You need to sell your product by actually selling all the great benefits of your products. Make sure when writing product descriptions, to focus on all the great things they’d get if they bought your products. Even if you sell technical products, show benefits, not features. You can do this by communicating at least one benefit from every product feature.

Remember:

Show benefits, not features. Think how the customer will benefit by using your products
Take one benefit from each feature
There’s usually one main benefit that makes a product stand out. Once you discover what that is, focus on it (although don’t forget to mention the other benefits)
If your product comes with instructions, put a link to see a PDF version of the product’s instructions
Also, leave the features for the most technical-savvy people that understand and want to read the technical details

4. Eliminate your customers’ Fuds (Fears, Uncertainties, & Doubts)

Nobody is perfect, and no one can create the most perfect customer experience ever. Things go wrong; people make mistakes; unexpected problems come about.

But, there are the times when people have bad experiences with your site, caused by something that makes them unwilling to buy from you. If it happens once, that may be acceptable. But if it happens over, and over, and over, time after time for one or more reasons, then you need to make some changes

All those bad experiences that your users may have in your site are called “Fuds”, which is a simple acronym that stands for fears, uncertainties, & doubts. Every fear, uncertainty, and doubt that someone has about your store can cause them not to buy from you. In other words, FUDs create holes in your store’s conversion funnels. No bueno.

Some common FUDs are the fears that their purchase won’t ship on time, or that they’ll be scammed or robbed while paying online. Whatever doubts, uncertainties, and fears customers may have, they’re going to happen whether you like it or not. True, yet unfortunate, because we’re talking about customers who are likely to buy from you, but won’t because they lack that extra push of confidence.

You need to attack each objection they may have throughout their shopping experience, and deal with anything that may cause friction and anxiety along the way. To do so, apply any (or all) of the following tactics:

Add security badges –

Some people may be afraid they’ll be scammed, or they’ll suffer from identity theft if they add their personal and credit card information online. You need to find a way to get your customers to trust your company/site, to ensure their user experience is top notch! Most people that have shopped online know that identity theft and any other types of online fraud are unlikely to happen, yet will still have this fear when buying online. To help counteract this fear, add security badges on every page of your store. Especially on your homepage, your product pages, and your checkout pages.

The chart provided below was compiled according to a study made by the Baymard Institute.

According to Christian Holst from the Baymard Institute, “It’s not the actual security of your page that matters the most to users as they have little to no technical understanding of TLS/SSL encryption or even how forms are submitted. Rather it is the perceived security that’s of importance to this vast majority of users.” This means you shouldn’t worry so much on what each badge stands for — instead focus on simply having a badge that has a good trust reputation.

Sometimes, not using a security badge may work best. It depends a lot on the industry, the type of customers that buy from you, among many other factors. In industries where fraud runs rampant, it’d certainly help to add security badges to prove you’re an authentic store.

Implement a live chat:

If security badges end up having a negative correlation with your conversion rates, you could display something like a live chat implementation instead . In the “real” world, if a customer has questions, they simply go to the nearest sales clerk and ask them whatever’s on their mind. Unfortunately, they can’t do that online, unless, you provide live chat! If for whatever reason you’re adverse to implementing a live chat, you can use a more hands-off approach by letting them know if they have any questions, they can contact you via email or telephone.

Don’t forget: any type of customer support that you give to your customers will help increase your conversion rates.

Here are a few quick tips that deserve to be mentioned to make sure your product pages are top notch.

Improve your site’s load speed.
Use clear call-to-actions. (No one is going to click your “Add to Cart” buttons unless you make them want to click them.)
Use video descriptions. (they can undoubtedly help increase conversion rates/revenue. Not using them is a missed opportunity to grow your company further.)
Make sure your product pages title tags are concise, descriptive and relevant.

– We hope this post helps you improve your product page conversion rates! If you need assistance, contact us here at MAKdigitaldesign!

Please share your thoughts and experiences in our comments section!