As the internet evolves and user expectation becomes increasingly sophisticated, creating and maintaining a successful e-commerce business has become a challenging task. When it comes to shopping online, usability is arguably as important as the product itself.
Product pages form a key component of the user experience, and as such a little extra short term investment can pay long term dividends with winning – and retaining – new customers.
In the first of these two articles, we’ll look at the key components that make up the ‘perfect’ product page.
1. Love Your Product? Love Your Copy
More than a simple description, your product copy should retain the reader’s interest. Remember – the secret of effective copy lies in understanding why the reader wants a particular product or service. Think benefits before features. Don’t forget your keywords too.
2. Do You Have This In My Size?
A golden rule of ecommerce is keeping your customer informed. Whether it’s size options, available colours, your returns policy, delivery charges or up-to-date stock levels – an informed customer is a happy one.
3. Painting a Thousand Words
A picture paints a thousand words – and nowhere is this more true than in the realm of ecommerce. Shopping is a visual experience, and a selection of high quality images is a great way to engage customers and sell your product.
4. Close Up and Personal
When shopping in a conventional sense, people love nothing more than to pick a product up and study it. An image zoom feature is a great way to help your customer to get a ‘feel’ for the product – in a virtual sense at least.
5. Injecting a Human Touch
Using models to demonstrate or interact with your product provides a nice finishing touch. It’s also a great way of demonstrating functionality.
6. What Do I Do Next?
The web is all about usability. After all, how can you expect your customer to buy from you if their ‘journey’ is unclear? Think of each visitor as a first time online shopper – as if they need to be taken by the hand and guided through the process. When it comes to the ‘add to basket button, think large and simple.
7. If You Like This, Then You’ll Love This…
Related items are not only helpful to your customer, but are a great way to increase revenue by cross-selling. Place these at the bottom of the page in a prominent position. It should be easy for people to buy your products. If they have to figure it out or work at it, chances are they won’t.
Look out for part two next month when we’ll continue to look at more tips for achieving the perfect product page. If you would like help improving your ecommerce website site, call 01454 261111.