product pages | Brandignity

If you run an e-commerce store, the heartbeat of your website is your product pages. People turn to each page to get details about the items they’re considering purchasing. Without stellar details, images and layout, you risk them bouncing away to a competitor’s site.

E-commerce sales account for about 14.1% of global retail sales. Statista predicts the number will reach 22% by 2023. With increased revenue comes more competition. You have to be on top of your game if you want a piece of the digital retail pie.

The best place to start is by redefining your product pages to match the brand image you’d like to project. Here are our favorite things to focus on to make sure yours are the best they can be. We also include a few examples of businesses with excellent ones. Here is what your product pages say about your business.

1. You’re Focused

Stellar product pages don’t have a lot of unnecessary clutter taking up space. They offer only what the user needs to make a decision on whether or not they want the product. While there are elements that improve the shopping experience, there are some things you don’t need.

Hone in on the item you’re trying to sell. Put yourself in the shopper’s shoes. What information would you most need to make an informed decision? How can you best share those details with them?

Bjork and Berries is a Swedish hand and body cream company. On this product page for their White Forest hand cream, they list the price, ingredients and highlight key benefits such as organic and natural ingredients. They also include several relevant photos. Notice the abundance of white space around text and images for a streamlined look.

2. You Value Users’ Time

How quickly does your website load? The average person will only wait a few seconds before bouncing away. If you don’t focus on how fast your pages pull up, you risk telling your audience you don’t care about their frustrations.

Invest in the fastest web hosting you can afford. Optimize images and run tests through sites such as Pingdom to improve site speeds. Make changes until your product pages load in milliseconds.

3. Filters Matter to You

Does your site give off the vibe that you care about how hard users must work to get to your products? Filters make it easier for them to navigate exactly where they need to go. An excellent product page only helps you make a sale if your site visitors can navigate to it easily.

Rvinyl does a fabulous job of helping users narrow down options by providing intuitive filters to direct them to the right products. Note how you can narrow down the choices by vehicle make, model and then year. Once you put in all the variables, you’re taken to the available options to make a selection.

4. Headlines Matter

Your headline is one of the first things customers see on your site. You have a chance to make an impression and confirm they’re in the correct location. Think about every word in your headings. Can you remove any without changing the meaning? Is there a more powerful verb to drive engagement?

Think about the subtle differences between two words. Is your product helpful or life-changing? You may even want to rearrange the wording and run A/B tests to see what resonates best with your customers.

5. You Want to Engage

Your product pages must grab the attention of your site visitors. Think about all the other things they could be doing rather than visiting your page. Not only are there online activities competing against you, such as social media and video streaming, but everyday life exists right past the computer screen.

Use animation, videos and relevant information to keep your users moving through your sales funnel. Think about what your competition isn’t doing and go a step beyond.

Lunya offers sleepwear. As you scroll through each product page, the site utilized parallax scrolling and some subtle animation effects to keep you engaged. If you hover over the call to action (CTA) to “Add to Bag,” the background changes color to grab your attention and encourage you to move forward.

6. Customers Can Trust You

People landing on your site may not have heard of you before. They may search for trust factors before choosing to place an order. Some of the things you can do to show you are trustworthy include adding reviews, testimonials, contact information and clear return and exchange policies.

You can also add badges for any organizations you belong to in your industry, links to awards you’ve won and your Better Business Bureau rating. Before a person clicks on the CTA, they want to know they’ll get what they’re promised.

7. You Know Your Stuff

Your product pages can also show consumers whether you are an expert in your industry or just throwing up a sign and taking online orders. The more authority you have, the more likely they’ll trust your recommendations.

There are a few ways to showcase your knowledge on product pages, such as linking to content on your blog or guest blogging and linking out. You can also add reviews that highlight why you’re the best choice when it comes to a particular product.

Maple From Canada has a unique take on showcasing their products. In addition to beautiful images and glowing descriptions, they add links to articles on each product, recipes and resources to teach kids about real maple.

Get Feedback

You may be so familiar with your product pages you don’t get a clear picture of what they’re telling viewers. Ask for feedback on what works and what doesn’t. Have customers highlight what’s unclear so you can tweak the language. Add anything they feel is missing but don’t go overboard. Get feedback on your product pages so you can better meet the needs of your customers.

Author

Eleanor Hecks is the editor of Designerly Magazine. Eleanor was the creative director and occasional blog writer at a prominent digital marketing agency before becoming her own boss in 2018. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband and dog, Bear.

Product pages have come a long way in the years of online retail. At first, a short write-up and grainy picture sufficed. Today, you not only need brilliant photos and vivid descriptions, but the entire site must also come together in a way that engages the user and makes them want to move through the buyer’s journey.

Emarketer reports the COVID-19 pandemic has been the “biggest disruption to consumer retail spending” in recent history. Because of forced closures and quarantine orders, the pace Americans shop online has risen 18% in 2020 for a total of $709.78 billion.

More people shopping online is good news for e-commerce stores, but it also means retailers must be ready to meet increased demands. One way to ensure your site hits the high notes is to study how other brands present their products online. The best way to improve your website is by learning from the cream of the crop in various industries.

Here are six of our favorite product pages and why we think you’ll see more examples like this moving into 2021.

1. Know Your Buyer

You don’t need a flood of traffic to your site. You need the right buyers. Every business has specific people who tend to buy from them. If you sell books and stationery, people who like to read and write are your audience. If you run a restaurant, most of your patrons will be local families, seniors or young singles.

Once you figure out who your buyer is, study demographic information, then dig into what makes them tick. Learn the psychology behind why they visit your site and create buyer personas to represent your average fan.

BirdRock Baby sells baby moccasins. They understand their typical buyer is looking for shoes, so they present four options on their landing page. Visitors can navigate to classic, Mary Janes, fringeless, or cotton booties. They also make sure they highlight a few of the features customers love about them, including free shipping and a lifetime guarantee.

2. Use Relevant and Ample Photographs

Advances in smartphone technology and internet connection speeds via 5G and fiber-optic networks makes the use of plenty of beautiful pictures more critical than at any time in the past. When highlighting products, it’s essential to show them from different angles and include images of every feature users might need to know about.

Kitsap Garage Door does a fantastic job of highlighting their products in use. They take photos of their doors on different homes to show how each line looks on various architectural styles. View images up close, from a distance, and even with a selection of options.

3. Showcase Benefits

Every brand and product has a unique value proposition (UVP) that makes it stand out from competitors. Spend time studying others in your industry and figure out what your UVP is. Once you know the UVP, you can highlight it on your landing pages and product pages.

German-based Pfeffer & Frost packages their goodies in environmentally friendly packaging. By highlighting their unique way of reducing users’ carbon footprints, they showcase what sets their brand apart. They describe each product on individual pages, then explain the compostable foil and recycled paper used to wrap the food. They also have a section titled “Material” to detail what the “foil” consists of.

4. Add Video

According to Statista, about 27.2% of online viewers watched over 10 hours of video each week. The number of hours people view videos online grows annually. If you aren’t already incorporating videos into your product pages, now is a great time to begin.

Use videos on landing pages to highlight products, and place 360-degree videos on individual product pages to put the power of observation in viewers’ hands.

Japanese skin care company Waphyto takes photos of their products in natural settings to create a sense of organic purity. The video shifts from a babbling brook to a bottle of one of their products in the water. They present a powerful message without using any words.

5. Pay Attention to Typography

E-commerce stores sometimes ignore the typography hierarchy idea behind websites. They tend to focus on legibility, which is essential, but neglect to plan out heading, subheading and body text levels.

You also need striking typography on your landing page to engage users and capture their imagination. Don’t be afraid to experiment with different looks for special sales and seasonal offers.

DressUp is an online women’s retail clothing store. One thing they do well is to create an aesthetically pleasing typographic hierarchy on all their pages. They use a bold, eye-catching font to present sales information and highlight products on their landing pages.

Individual product pages have a familiar look, as the headings and body text stay within the same family. Users can find what they’re looking for quickly once they’ve viewed one or two items.

6. Offer Custom Options

One recent trend we’ve seen a lot is customized and personalized options for customers. People don’t wish to feel they are another nameless face in the crowd. They expect companies to cater to them.

Think about how to target users with your descriptions, and look for custom solutions to meet their needs. While it isn’t possible with every product, there is usually some way to offer a more individualized experience.

The Knotty Tie Company sells a wide variety of neckties, bowties, pocket scarfs and face masks. Because their target audience is grooms and groomsmen, they offer custom solutions for nearly every product, such as changing the colors or matching the tie and the mask for a complete look.

Test Your Product Pages

The way users interact with websites will continue to evolve and change in the future. More sites will use augmented reality to let consumers try before they buy. Sellers will find ways of engaging buyers.

Each time you see a design you love, take note. If you try something new on your product pages, test it and see how your users respond. Keep the ideas that result in higher conversions and nix the ones that don’t work. With a little effort and attention to trends, your e-commerce site will be one of the best around.