Over the last decade, and especially in the past five years, eCommerce has taken over the internet. Due to the rise of the digital era, most companies have embraced a “store-less” approach to doing business. This new trend has rapidly taken over most industries, and online shopping has become the new norm.
As a direct result of this process, most digital businesses that sell products online and offer services on the internet have built their websites around a strong product page. If you’re wondering how to attract new customers to your website, these pages will help.
Prospective buyers with a pre-established interest in a company’s service or product are called leads. So, when you stop and think about it, a product page is essentially a sales page.
Product pages are the milestone of online shopping, and they are specifically designed to convert leads efficiently. Lead conversion is a term used to describe the process that entices website visitors to buy or purchase something.
As you may have already guessed, having a high-converting product page is the ultimate goal for any eCommerce business.
However, having a high conversion rate is not as easy as most business owners would wish. Whether you offer an internet-based service or are looking to sell products online, boosting the conversion rate of your product pages will let you take your digital business one step further and boost your website’s performance.
With the obvious out of the way, let’s cut to the chase; if you’ve read this far, it’s because you want to know what features make for a high-converting product page. We’ve come up with a list of nine essential elements.
An intuitive design
It may seem like a no-brainer but having an overly complicated product page that’s difficult to navigate will not help you boost those conversion rates. The best product pages are those that have almost seamless navigation that helps visitors to get where they want.
The key to ensuring your website is built and designed according to what your customers need is making sure your website design and graphic design team are on the same page. This, however, is no easy task.
Although we’ve been conditioned to believe in so-called ‘specialists’, the reality is that website designers are online architects capable of marrying technical skill and creativity. Fortunately, even if you’re not an expert, there are convenient website builders that are user-friendly and optimize user experience.
If you’ve already started to build your product page and have multiple teams working on it, don’t despair; there is project management software that can tell you who’s working on a specific task at any moment.
Customer reviews
Customer reviews are another essential feature of a product page. According to sources like Statista, the vast majority of online buyers (a whopping 78%) trust online reviews in some capacity.
Ideally, a product should have as many reviews as possible, since this data also shows that a quarter of shoppers prefer to read multiple reviews of the same product.
This statistic shouldn’t be a surprise to eCommerce businesses. Letting customers post their own reviews adds credibility to a company’s reputation. Additionally, this type of transparency shows a clear trust in the product’s quality, which positively impacts a brand’s image in the eyes of leads. It is also handy to showcase positive reviews as part of part of your retail social media marketing strategy.
Upsells
This section of product pages allows businesses to offer higher-end products related to the item leads came looking for. A well-planned upsell strategy allows an eCommerce company to display relevant products that add value. These items tend to be displayed as ‘you might be also interested in’ or ‘usually bought together’.
Let’s use a common example of upselling to illustrate this. A company that sells digital devices or internet-connected devices might want to include IT support as part of the upsell services advertised on their product page. If you’re selling a high-end laptop, for example, it’s recommended to include IT support software as part of these extra features.
Wish lists
Even though it may hurt to hear this, sometimes leads are just not ready to purchase an item. The reason may vary – maybe they can’t afford to buy right now or are waiting for the price to be reduced.
Another reason wish lists are popular is that they allow prospective buyers to “cross-reference” and compare different products and prices.
No matter their reason, giving leads the option to come back later is always a good idea. It will make your product page seem more accessible and not overly aggressive. ‘Add to cart’ features are essential but ‘add to wish list’ buttons are just as important.
This feature will help you boost engagement and SEO rankings and ultimately get better conversion rates.
Proper product descriptions
Giving potential buyers the chance to truly know what they’re buying is essential for any product page. A robust product description will help leads to find what they’re looking for.
Remember, whether you’re selling a product online or services like software development, graphic design, or phone service over internet, you must always provide your audience with proper descriptions of what it is you’re offering.
Additionally, it’s useful to include an FAQ (frequently asked questions) section for every product. In the case of VoIP phones, having questions like “what is a virtual phone number?” may help leads to understand how your product works and why it could be useful.
Put simply, if an online shopper is not quite sure of what they are buying, they won’t spend their hard-earned money on it.
Visual support
Although text-based product descriptions can be really helpful, visually engaging information like images and videos can be even more important. Certain targets and age groups, like Gen Zs, tend to absorb information better when it’s formatted as a video.
This strategy is really useful for more complex products like smartphones, video cameras, or video game consoles, and it is an essential part of online retail store merchandising.
Moreover, when dealing with inherently visual products like clothing, giving leads the opportunity to compare different sizes, colors, patterns, or models of a product can help product pages to keep them engaged.
In the long run, an engaging sales page will noticeably boost conversion rates.
They know their audience
This entry on our list of essentials is more of a strategy than a specific feature. In essence, implementing user-focused analytics can help eCommerce companies better understand their leads. Using these will help you refine your product page according to your leads’ interests, pain points, preferences, and habits.
It’s important to embrace a holistic approach to data. Both quantitative and qualitative intel are complementary and equally important. One cannot simply trust numbers and statistics without understanding the reasoning behind where those figures come from.
A good way to combine both forms of data is to measure the number of visitors a page gets, interactions with it, and the amount of time spent looking at items. Then, once those numbers have been collected, automated questions like “Is this what you’re looking for?” can give leads the chance to explain what did or didn’t work for them.
They provide excellent shipping options
According to eCommerce experts like the Baymard Institute, most product page abandonment rates are caused by shipping-related issues. Half of online shoppers think shipping costs are too high, and 18% of almost-buyers claim delivery time was too slow.
For these reasons, shipping options should be a priority for any digital business when optimizing an eCommerce checkout page. Ideally, online companies want to include multiple shipping options: cheap but slow, quicker but more expensive, and a premium pricey version that allows buyers to track their product and offers a maximum of 48 hours waiting time.
Live customer support
Last but not least, there’s the ever-important issue of customer service and support. In the digital era, with the implementation of technologies like live chat, automated dialer software, and videoconferencing, eCommerce businesses can give excellent service remotely.
These tools have become even more important in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Although these features may seem costly and reserved for big-time corporations, smaller businesses with more modest budgets can implement this strategy too. VoIP phones are excellent for customer service in the digital era, and software like Grasshopper may be useful in this regard.
Grasshopper offers basic VoIP features like business phone numbers, SMSs, and voicemail routing. However, it doesn’t provide video conferencing, and as we’ve discussed, some leads are more comfortable with video-based options. Thankfully, many other VoIP phone providers offer services similar to Grasshopper’s that include more features.
Additionally, companies that sell digital devices or internet-connected devices might want to include IT support as part of the services advertised on their product page. If you are selling a high-end laptop, for example, this is recommended.
How will you apply these insights to your own product pages?
