The product page. The unsung hero of ecommerce.
While your Facebook Ads creative and your Google Shopping feeds might get all the plaudits, the product page quietly does all the real heavy lifting.
If you think about it, the product page has the most important job of all – turning customers’ potential interest into cold hard cash.
And you too, can be like Mr Krabs.
It used to be different.
Five-ish years ago, potential customers would land on your site almost exclusively at the home page, usually from a Google search.
From there, Mr. Customer would travel neatly down the category page, and then finally onto a product page – where they may or may not add something to the basket.
By the time the customer got to the product page, all the hard work, all the selling, had been done. Like an ultimate goal poacher, the product page was there to simply score the tap in.
In 2020, mostly due to the uptick in Facebook Ads and Google Shopping, the buying journey has been accelerated. Now, the product page is the landing page. Making its job more important than ever.
A good product page:
- Sets a hell of a first impression.
- Gives the customer plenty of reasons to buy.
- Addresses any objections the customer might have.
You never get a second chance to make a first impression. If Mr. Customer arrives on your site for the first ever time, to a shitty product page, you might ruin your impression with Mr. Customer forever… It’s a risk you should not be willing to take.
The good news is, you don’t have to. Fixing product pages is easy.
When designing a product page, rather than to try and be excellent – why don’t you follow this checklist, and simply avoid being shit instead.
By all means, if you’ve got nothing better to do, try and copy Apple’s products pages, but for 99% you’re wasting your time.
So with that, here’s your checklist:
“How To Not Have Shit Product Pages”
- ‘Add to Basket’ button above the fold?
- Delivery information accurately and clearly displayed?
- Good reviews? Get them in there too.
- Are your images good enough? (I’ll come to this one in a sec!)
- Stock declaration? Have you got enough in stock? Can you display when there aren’t any left?
- Is your product page a “dead end” page? This is usually a bad idea.
- Product description easy to understand and fun to read.
- Do you address the customers objections?
- What’s the “Job To Be Done”.
Take a moment to rattle through those, then come back and I’ll explain why each one of those is important.
‘Add to Basket’ Button
Your Add to Basket Button is absolutely crucial. In a perfect world, you want EVERYONE who visits your product page to hit that button, so make it the clear and obvious next step.
The Add to Basket Button should have it’s own colour, and be prominently displayed. If your ATB button is below the fold, you’re adding unnecessary friction to the shopping process. Bad idea.
Buying from your website should be stupidly easy.
Imagine your buyer is on your website, it’s Friday Evening, they’re two gin and tonics down, they have a friend over and kids are running about their place…
Is it “whoops, when did i buy that?” on Saturday morning – Or “i couldn’t even find the add to cart button”?
Delivery Information
The downside of buying online vs real life shops (Hate you, COVID) is that you don’t get your items straight away. You have to wait a few days while your item is picked, packed, shipped and delivered.
Let your customers know what to expect. If I have to go digging around for the delivery information, there’s a fair chance you can kiss your sale goodbye. No one wants to fall at the final hurdle.
How fast should delivery be? Well. obviously the sooner the better. But if delivery will take a couple extra days, just make sure that it’s clear and give a good reason why.
Food for thought: How do you feel about shipping costs? Would you rather pay: £25 + £5 for shipping, or £30 with free shipping. Connect with me on Linked In and let me know.
Good Reviews
Are you crazy?
Do you like to work harder than you have to? Well, if you’re an ecommerce store trying to sell without Social Proof, you’re not doing yourself ANY favours.
If you’ve got good reviews, you should display them very prominently on your product page. Ideally, close to where you display the price. After visitors flick through the product’s images, they view the price. The next thing they want to see is the reviews.
Here’s a great example of using reviews from one of my favorite Product pages.
Images
Right then, images.
Arguably the most important part. Would you buy from a product page without images? No of course you wouldn’t.
- Are your images big enough, clear enough and well lit? Your iPhone will do a great job here if you pay attention, but you might want to get them professionally done too.
- Do you need a “scale” image? If you’re selling something like furniture where size of the item could be a concern, you might need a scale image to help your customers out?
- You need MORE THAN ONE image. Have at least one close up shot that shows off the product, and one lifestyle image that sells the “job to be done” a little better. More on the JTBD in a sec.
BONUS: if you’ve got the balls, you can go a bit wacky with your product images. EVERYONE was talking about this effort from ZARA.
Stock Declaration
Scarcity is one hell of a sales tactic.
If you were shopping in the real world, and you could physically see that there was only one dress left in your size, you’d be more likely to buy it, right?
Let your customers know how much stock you have left, because you know, “when they’re gone, they’re gone”.
Don’t Be A Dead End Page
When customers arrive on your product page, but the item isn;t perfectly what your customer was after, they may well just hit the back button and go back to idly scroll their feeds for back to the search results on Google.
UNLESS, you offer them more places to go.
Dead End Product Pages lead to a higher bounce rate, and high bounce rate means your ad spend goes up in smoke. Try a “you might also like section” Like this one from Boo Hoo.
Product Descriptions
Okay, so there a few schools of thought on this one.
If the purchase is more of an emotional / lifestyle purchase – like fashion, for example, because you don’t need another pair of shoes – you can afford to be a little more fun and light-hearted with your product descriptions. Have a laugh, because why not. Have a laugh at the descriptions from check these out from Palace Skateboards.
If you’re selling something that’s more of a rational / problem-solving purchase, then go ALL IN on the product description. Spare no details. Answer EVERY question, DETAIL every feature. Your buyers want to know. Shout out to Tiger Sheds who do a great job of this.
Address the Objections.
Okay, so think about when YOU buy something.
There is a tipping point where you have mentally decided to buy the thing, but before you part with your cash, you have to overcome all of the reasons you might have NOT to buy the item.
So what reasons to your customers have NOT TO BUY from you? Come on now, be honest, there’s plenty. Whether it’s your prices are too high, or your delivery time too slow, you have to address the objections in your product pages. Leave no stone unturned.
The Job To Be Done.
Why is your customer ACTUALLY buying from you?
Do you need a drill, or do you need a hole? Or even, do you want to hang your pictures and have a pretty living room?
Are you buying a dress because you want a dress, or do you want to look beautiful next time you’re at the races? Do you actually want to smell nice, or is that perfume just so that boyfriend fancies you more? Are you really selling dining room tables, or is it more that you are selling a lovely, happy family get together.
When you ask a customer why they bought from you, they always give you a fake answer. They’ll say they needed a new dining table, what they really wanted was to get the family together again.
The ‘Job To Be Done’ is the real reason customers buy from you.
Okayyyy, so how does that list sit with you?
It’s by no means complete, and there is an awful lot more that you could potentially do. But if you work through that list, you’ll have a good product page, pretty quickly.
The general rule is that you should increase the reasons to buy from you, while alleviating all the concerns that a customer might have. Increase trust, remove friction.
I’ll leave you with some inspiration. I asked the squad at BFBC to pick out some of their favoruite product pages. so here’s a list you might enjoy:
- The Manta Sleep Mask. (My personal favoruite)
- Apple Iphone 12 – this is how to sell a phone
- Boohoo’s are good. I like their use of payment options: Clearpay, Klarna and Laybuy.
- MyProtein For solid ecommerce, look no further than The Hut Group. The Masters.
- Gymshark. On this one I love the use of GIF / video to improve the shopping experience.
- Nuggs. A creative example from the Tesla of Chicken.
- Manscaped. Because their ball hair trimmer is call The Lawn Mower 3.0. Love it.
- Lola’s Lashes. Simple, effective. Great use of Social Proof for demographic where it matters.
- Amazon. I hate to say it, but amazon’s product pages paved the way for the whole internet. Thank’s Mr Bezos.
Are you sat there thinking your product pages are fine, but you ain’t making the cash you thought? Well something is going wrong mate, hate to break it to you. We should talk pretty quickly. However you like: LinkedIn, Tweet me. Or do an old fashioned email to: guy@befoundbechosen.co.uk
We’ll have you like Mr Krabs in no time:
