Did you know that consumers spent a whopping $3.53 trillion on ecommerce products alone in 2019 according to a report by Statista, which is higher than what was spent in 2018. And the numbers are likely to get increased for the year 2020 by its end.
So you are an ecommerce business owner and you have an outstanding product that you are sure people are going to love. You put that product out for display on your product page only to see it going unnoticed.
So where exactly did you go wrong? You had the right core audience, right product but the product page? The layout is as important as the products itself. So I have curated the best ways to optimize your product page for better sales.
According to a recent study from Baymard institute, abandoned cart ratio stands at a staggering 70% which is roughly 7 out of 10 visitors exiting without making the complete transaction. Well not all the 7 can be attributed to poor maintenance of your product page, but you can’t definitely rule out the possibilities.
According to Q3 2018, only 2.42% of visitors have been converted into customers. The numbers are too low considering the ideal traffic and audience set up for your site.
And that’s not it, I was able to generate 3X returns by optimizing Theracharge’s (one of my clients) product page. Watch this quick video on 5 simple strategies I used to rake in a 3x return
You will find a complete list of things you can do below to make your product page return more conversions
Well, we can maybe bring the numbers a little higher by focusing on the product page to suit the visitors’ behavioral pattern making the little nudge to buy a product.
Here’s a quick snippet of me talking about how to optimize your product page
Everything starts with naming the title profoundly. Imagine a person looking for a Men’s face wash and you titled the product as just ‘face wash’ even though your product is a men’s face wash.
This abruptly miscommunicates the main theme, thus taking the visitor more time to look for the word ‘men’ in the product page. This leaves them frustrated and exits from the page abruptly.
Take a look at this product title from Amazon that lists out material used for the dog tag chain, color and for the gender they are designed for. This is one great way for Ecommerce SEO to work in bringing your product to the top of the search preferences. Add relevant keywords related to the user’s search and add them to your title.
As a matter of fact out of the 70% of abandoned cart users, 20% are attributed to unclear or misplaced product titles. If you focus on writing product titles with specified keywords, you can increase the conversion by 78%.
By writing keywords related product titles, you are directly contributing to the SEO service of your product page.
Knowing the right length of the product title will help you get 51% more clicks. So find the ideal length of your title that meets with the platform’s policy that you wish to go with. For example Amazon has a policy of using 50 characters only for their products while some categories are allowed to use more characters.
Just like product titles, detailed descriptions also bring in more conversions and clicks to your product page. The average time you get to convince a user to read your description is pretty tight and the window for distraction is also quite high.
So put the description out in a way that could help the audience as a guide to get your product.
This product description for a LED HD Tv from Amazon is right on point with a clear description that talks about the TV specifications, features and more. And they have managed to keep the description to a decent size.
The best way to do so is to go with benefits and features of your product in prominent characters along with the keywords. This does not only ensure your product page pop up first in search engines but also contributes to your page SEO standards.
So what are the basic protocols in writing feature and benefits
• Basic attributes like material, size, dimension, weights, use
• Reason to choose the product
• Why your product is the best when compared to others
• How convenient it is to use your product
• How does your product work
These are some of the most sought after questions in search engines. Allowing these questions to hold a place in your page ensures your SEO standards are good.
In a survey carried out with 1000 US customers, they all agreed on the fact that product reviews were the number one source that drove them towards getting the product.
There are usually 3 types of product reviews :
Video testimonials:
The kind of product reviews that works really well in clearing any doubts a customer might have before getting the product. Works like a charm and also equally engaging.
Review:
The most common types of reviews, the old school conventional method of dropping down a simple comment or genuine feedback of your product in simpler terms.
Image review with users:
The image review is basically a selfie of the user using the product, and leaving feedback about the products.
Its 2020 and your words backing the product is not everything a customer needs to get your product. They need trusted reviews from other people with images of the product also explaining about the pros and cons of getting the product.
People spend a way more time than we think on surfing through just the reviews before hitting the add to cart options. Sadly sales of even the best selling products with no reviews dropped at an alarming rate.
Images submitted by people provide authenticity of the product. It doesn’t necessarily have to look as perfect as the one in the product page, but it shouldn’t look anything that doesn’t match what you have shown on your page.
Enabling product reviews with images leverages the authenticity of your brand to the next level.
Be ready for negative reviews also. The tactic is called ‘damaging admission’. It doesn’t necessarily have to be your fault from your end, it might be a simple case of lack of interest towards the product by the review or damages incurred during shipping.
In these worst scenarios, addressing every negative review with a question or answer addressing the concern will firm your name in the trustworthy elite league.
There are two types of reviews, short and long. Both the reviews help new customers in getting your product. Short reviews suit people who don’t want to spend more time deciding to get a product based on the reviews while longer ones are for those looking for even the smallest detail of your product.
Imagine you are selling a shirt with a printed pattern at the back side, a normal view wouldn’t do any justice to the design at the back. So offering a 360 lets them look at your product and its design up close and personal.
There are specific tools online for you to enable 360 viewing in your product page without using a code like the Magic 360 tool.
With google stating that nearly 50% of the people prefer videos related to their products, popular ecommerce sites like Everlane, Myntra have adapted this new bred strategy of models cladded in their unique fashion items thus giving the people a glimpse of what the product might look like..
Have a look at this product video from BoombyCindy,that’s a short tutorial on how to use the product.
There are many kinds of videos for products like user testimonial videos like the ones used in Boom By Cindy, or videos that explain the benefit of the product or a model wearing the suit video that explain how perfect the fit is.
They even list out the physical attributes of the models like their height, weight and even the size of the dress they are wearing making it really easy for the people to compare the sizes of the clothes to check what suits them based on the model’s height and weight.
This has resulted in an increase in the number of sales mainly due to precisely accurate representation of the items in real life. Though not every product can be used in a video preview, most of them can be fit perfectly in a real time video.
CTAs are call to action buttons that decide the action in a product page. In layman’s term this is what decides if a person can add your product to the cart or not. Having a clear CTA can help visitors to make choices quickly and account for the purchase sooner than you expect it to be.
The thumb rule of crafting any CTA copy is to keep it short in simple characters that reflect what you want your customers to do on your product page. It can be as simple and effective as ‘ Checkout Now’ Add to Cart’ etc. The idea is to keep it simple and really short that doesn’t eat into other space of a product page.
A major factor in many brands using ‘Shop Now’ instead of ‘Shop’ is because of the psychological factor that people respond effectively to urgency rather than just a blunt CTA which they find not motivating at all.
Some of the most commonly used CTAs by Ecommerce sites are:
• Add to cart
• Show Now
• Proceed to pay
• Complete the order
It’s 2020 and no one really likes to wait or get click-baited promising a quick delivery. When someone does an online shopping, they might zero in on a particular date to receive the product. For example someone ordering a beautiful gown online just so she can wear it for a wedding that’s 2 weeks away from then.
These are the cases where accurate or estimated shipping dates and delivery dates play a major psychological move. Your delivery date can be a rough estimation before which the product can be delivered which helps in ensuring a positive name to your brand but make sure it never exceeds the date you mentioned.
Many ecommerce sites like Amazon ask its users to enter their zip code to ensure they can list out the accurate date they can deliver the product. Make sure you avoid confusing stirring words like ‘3-7 business days’ at all costs.
Promote Free shipping to users or for at least users who have shopped for a particular order value. It plays a very important role in determining the conversion rate as 60% of consumers are likely to abandon their cart when they are provided with a free shipping option.
In Fact in a recent study it clearly tells how 9 in 10 people are driven by the word free shipping to get a particular product from a site.
Trust badge on an ecommerce site ensures that the site is completely safe for shopping and it is verified to be an authentic seller. In stores like shopify, trust badge plays a major role in driving the customers towards checking out.
Trust badges appearing during online transactions and payments ensure a sigh of relief for those making the payment making them trust your product page and more importantly your brand.
Some of the most commonly preferred trust badges by the users are McAfee, Verisign, PayPal and SSL Value.
Enabling trust badges has proven to increase conversions by 40%. Of the total 70% of abandoned cart users, almost 20% of users admitted that they don’t trust the sites or their services for the record.
This is mainly due to the fear of misuse of their social security number during the payment process as fraudulent incidents like these have surfaced before as well.
Hesitation is what drives every Ecommerce company to create urgency in their product pages. Creating a sense of urgency eliminates the space for hesitation in every sense. So how exactly do you create a mode of urgency without having to push your customers too hard that they intend to leave out of frustration.
Creating a scope for scarcity is another common method to provoke urgency with their users. Make the low stock availability of the products visible to the buyers so that basically triggers their need to shop the product immediately.
Like the stock scarcity for the Apple Iphone from Amazon is a good example on how to use the scarcity option in your stride.
There are some proven tactics that you can implement on your page to create urgency.
They Are:
• Free delivery for a limited duration
• Product scarcity
• Running out of stock
• Offer price for a limited time
• Reward for first time buyers
• Coupon code expires soon
• Sale ends in limited time
These are some of the popular tactics that have shown to work really well with the ecommerce brands especially the ones with the clothing industry where words like ‘only 1 left in stock’ has proven to work wonders for their products.
Show users Frequently bought together products of what they are looking for. Just in case if the products they look for goes out of stock, they can always resort back to the related products to see if they like it or not.
These are basically a pair of items that goes really well with one another. For example if you are selling a mobile phone, you can cross sell protective cases etc.
These are the frequently bought together list suggested by Amazon, for the Samsung Galaxy.
These are the best 10 ways to optimize your product page specifically crafted for the ecommerce page. It’s also about making their shopping experience blissful and much easier.
Try these methods and see how it works for your site but at the end of the day it all boils down to your product, brand engagement and communication. Try & Improve your sales