If the purchase of your product depends on visual appeal make sure it’s presented in the most visually compelling way possible. Herbco.com product page:
The 2 Most Important Details on a Product Page
Your product page design should be based on the type of product being sold. If a shopper is buying a technical product, complex product, a product they aren’t familiar with, a product that’s very expensive, then they are going to focus on your product description. But for all other cases product image + customer reviews are the most important details. Here is how nuts.com does it—
Compare and Contrast
Few facts about online shoppers—
1: They are impatient and unexcited about reading your 2,000 word product description.
2: They hate making a bad purchase decision, but the alternative of comparing multiple products on multiple sites isn’t ideal either.
To solve for 1 and 2 consider adding an infographic like this on your product page—
Unique About Us Page
Cadence is a watch brand. Here is a screenshot of the top section of their About Us page—
I love 2 things about it—
1: As you scroll down the page the brand story is revealed, and it’s written really well and presented in a highly readable way.
2: As you scroll down to read About Us content, from the left and right hand sides (in well balanced sequences), watch designs slide into focus. They aren’t missing any opportunity to show off their watches.
One really needs to see the page live to get the full experience— http://cadencewatch.com/r/about/
Actual Size
One of the downsides of shopping online is that it’s hard to know product size dimensions. Some retailers place a coin next to product image so we can visualize relative size, but even that approach isn’t perfect.
I was looking at a Shark Mug on uncommongoods.com and noticed this curious link (red arrow in screenshot below)—
On click this appeared on screen—
Then I just selected my screen size and was shown a new product image where mug was displayed in actual size on screen (the size I’d see if I was looking at mug in person). Very cool. This service is provided by a third party tool called lifesizer.com.
Gift Ideas
MetroKitchen.com is a site that specializes in cookware. They have a simple, yet very effective Gift Ideas page …
… where shoppers select a relevant option and see a list of highly targeted gifts.
Opportunity: On “For wine fans” page (for example) MetroKitchen.com just lists products–
Which means I have to click the first item, read description, hit back button, click the second item, etc. I wish they had presented Wine Gifts in this format …
… so the shopper could read a short description for each product and then visit product page to make purchase.
Adding Punch to Product Images
The standard product page consists of product image followed by product description. However, to support product description if you can repeat the most important/differentiating points from your description into product image you will dramatically improve effectiveness. Posted below are some e-tailer examples. As you can see, this strategy works for all types of items- from diaper changers to ballet shoes:
Selling 18th Century Items Using YouTube
Every e-tailer (big-small, broad-niche, impulse buy-pricey stuff, PPC-SEO, single purchase-lifetime value) has a definite set of strengths and weaknesses. The key to success is focusing on your strengths.
Jas-townsend.com is a niche e-tailer that is good at making product videos, which they use abundantly throughout their site. I wonder how many conversions can be directly attributed to these clever videos? Some examples-
Anchor product
Most shoppers click in and out of search results quickly, making it a challenge for the e-tailer to tell their story. We already know landing pages, content and site design play a role in slowing shoppers but I think retailers can do a better job using their anchor products.
An anchor product is a product that does a really good job grabbing the browser’s attention. This is not to be confused with a top seller, which both grabs attention and gets purchased. An anchor product is like a great assist, it lifts the team’s performance. In Google Analytics terms an anchor product would be a product page that has a relatively low conversion rate with a relatively high $ Index.
Harry and David is famous for the distinctive way in which they cut their pears:
This would be their anchor product.
But even a site like umbrellasusa.com can use an anchor product:
Visual Merchandising
Typetees.com has figured out a way to maximize screen real estate. To enjoy their cool interface head over to www.typetees.com. Here are two screenshots:
Will this make me convert the moment I land on their site? No. Will it improve the odds of my remembering the site when considering buying a tee shirt in the future? quite possibly, and in a world made or broken by fractional percentage points that’s a big deal.