Did you know that next to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Valentine’s day is the second most commercial sales-heavy celebration of the year? With this high traffic holiday around the corner, now is the best time to audit your current website experience. Your product detail pages are a great place to start. Why? eCommerce PDPs represent prime real estate for brands to convert their highest-intent shoppers.
A recent study from Conversio supports this, finding that product detail pages convert at nearly 8%—almost three times higher than the average eCommerce conversion rate at just 3%.
As you re-evaluate your marketing tactics for the new year, optimizing your PDPs offer a relatively low cost and low lift tactic. In this blog, we’ll unpack everything you need to know to audit and optimize your existing eCommerce product detail pages, including:
Your product detail pages (PDP) are the pages your shoppers see when they want to discover more in-depth information regarding specific products on your website. The job of your product detail pages is to tell the consumer everything about the product to feel educated, confident and informed to make a purchase.
In fact, your product detail pages are just as important if not more important than your homepage. Why? As the eCommerce customer journey becomes increasingly complex, your product detail pages represent a critical, yet often overlooked conversion point in the highly engaged middle of the funnel (MOFU).
However, most brands are focused heavily on top of funnel (TOFU) tactics like paid advertising or bottom of funnel tactics (BOFU) like loyalty and subscriptions.
But in reality, 98% of your shoppers are in browse mode—and optimizing these PDP’s will empower your brand to convert more of this high intent “MOFU” traffic into future sales.
There are core components that eCommerce PDPs must have to satisfy the needs of your users and ensure your pages are built with SEO and CRO in mind. Without these elements in place, you risk losing your highest-intent visitors to a poor UX. Use the following best practices as a guide to audit your current product pages and ensure they are built with the browser’s experience in mind.
Recent data from Shiprocket found that 98% of shoppers discontinue a purchase if the information about the product is incomplete or incorrect.
1. Seamless Navigation - Ensure your website menu is easy to navigate and contains breadcrumbs to help your shoppers jump from one page to another without losing progress.
2. High Quality Images - A picture really is worth a thousand words. Be sure to highlight your individual products but also consider imagery that shows the product in action or in a real life setting or highlighting real consumers. Try to include a minimum of 4-8 images per product.
3. SEO-Friendly Product Descriptions - Focus on the top level features, benefits, functions and limits. Using the right keywords based on your shopper’s intent is key here. This section is also critical to address any objections or concerns your shoppers may have.
4. In-Depth Product Details - It’s important to be detailed here, but not too in the weeds—use bullets to break up the text. Here is a great section to address common FAQs regarding size, comfort, quality, etc.
5. Clear, Concise & Enticing Pricing - Ensure pricing is clearly displayed above the fold. Play to the psychology of your shoppers and consider “price anchoring”all of your product detail pages (i.e. $19.99 $29.99) giving them the perception of a discount.
6. Social Proof - Incorporate product reviews and testimonials on your PDP - ideally above the fold.
7. Trust Signals - Cruelty free, vegan, gluten free, sustainable - whatever your value proposition is, lean into it across your PDP. Try to keep these signals above the fold for greater impact.
8. Shipping & Returns Policy - Be transparent about this from the start. Incorporate text throughout the page that makes this clear for shoppers so they feel more comfortable buying from you.
9. FAQs - Understand where your shoppers have friction in the buying process and supplement with a FAQs section. Consider creating product guides or “how it works” tutorials to make this section more engaging.
10. Videos - Video is no longer a nice to have in today’s ecomm climate. If you aren’t telling your product’s story with video, you’re missing out on major opportunities to educate and convert your browsers.
1. Cross Sell & Upsell Conversion Paths - Incorporating product suggestions is a great way to increase AOV and provide more value to your shoppers. Consider adding “pairs well with”, “bought frequently together” or “best sellers” across your PDP to increase upsell and cross sell opportunities.
2. Scarcity Signals - We all want what we can’t have. Creating scarcity around product availability is a great way to increase conversion on your PDP. Consider showing stock counts (i.e. in stock—only a few left), or call out the number of people viewing that product at the same time.
3. Dynamic Social Proof - Level up your traditional testimonials and consider incorporating live video reviews of products. Virtual try-ons are a great way to showcase your product.
4. Real-Time Support & Chatbots - Offer your shoppers timely assistance to guide them through your funnel and provide a more seamless experience.
5. Alternate Payment Methods - Services like Klarna give shoppers the ability to explore flexible payment methods and indulge in higher ticket purchases without the buyer’s remorse.
6. User Generated Content - Your shoppers are your best sellers, show them off! Share images or videos from your social feeds, using the product in real time.
7. First-Party Data Capture Tools - Did you know that websites with first-party data capture components capture up to 15% product page traffic? Email/SMS opt-ins, data collection tools and lead generation forms are different methods you can try.
8. Free Product Samples - To entice repurchase and drive retention, offer free samples for products that pair well with your shopper’s purchase. Brands like glossier have seen great success with this tactic.
Now that you understand the core components your eCommerce PDP needs, let’s break down these product detail page best practices and see them in action.
What We Love: Doe’s branding and social proof is on point throughout the entire PDP. Infusing trust badges above the fold reinforces the quality of their products. Offering a “lash quiz” is a great way to reduce churn and capture more top of funnel traffic to educate them towards a purchase. Highlighting influencers using their products and offering a lash tutorial gives shoppers a virtual “try before you buy” experience.
What We Love: Nola’s PDP does a fantastic job at keeping their value propositions front and center. The brand voice is strong throughout, using language like “Why Babes Love It” speaks directly to the shopper. Trust badges reinforce the quality of the products and reduce “sticker shock” as they illustrate the product value to the shopper. Their subscription offer provides an alternate path to purchase with immediate savings.
What We Love: Sok-It’s PDP is clean, concise and to the point. This page does an excellent job at addressing friction points in the purchase process specific to the sizing of the product. Their product details are descriptive, but easy to digest. Seeing is believing and incorporating video reviews with these lifestyle-specific products helps shoppers see these items in a real-life setting. Finally, providing their shoppers with the option to text themselves items is a great middle of funnel call to action.
You’ve optimized your product detail pages for conversion—but what about those high intent shoppers who aren’t quite ready to buy? How can you keep them engaged, without forcing them into an action they aren’t quite ready for? By capturing their purchase intent through first-party data collection tools.
First-party data is information a company collects directly from its customers on its own site—giving them full ownership over the data.
Some examples of first party data include opt-ins (blog, newsletter), customer reviews, lead generation forms on your site and data tracking tools. As you navigate a cookieless eCommerce world, investing in tools to capture this high value data is crucial.
Whym’s Visual Browsing Bookmark is a first-party data collection tool designed with the savvy social shopper in mind. When brands install the bookmark on their eCommerce website, shoppers enjoy a personalized buying experience that gives them the flexibility to browse, without losing track of their progress or new products of interest. Sellers benefit by capturing their shopper’s intent data at the product level, arming them with insights for strategic retargeting campaigns.
When you install the Visual Browsing Bookmark on your eCommerce site, shoppers will be greeted with this small tab with a counter that follows them throughout your site. Each item visited across your product detail pages will automatically be collected through the bookmark.
As your shoppers wrap up their browsing experience, they can click into the Visual Browsing Bookmark to review their browsing history on your site and the items collected along the way. Here they can select their favorite products and text themselves items to save for future purchase.
Once shoppers text themselves their products, they will be sent a SMS with a link to download the Whym mobile app. Seamlessly using their phone number to login, all products selected via the Visual Browsing Bookmark are saved to their Whym inbox.
As you explore new tools to increase conversion, it’s important to keep these first-party data collection methods at the forefront. Intent data marketing is the future of eCommerce and tools like the Visual Browsing Bookmark will help your brand improve personalization, and create more strategic remarketing strategies to overcome the challenges of a new cookieless world.
ABOUT WHYM
Whym is an intent to buy platform transforming the way we shop and sell online. Brands trust Whym’s tools to capture more first-party data and shopper intent across their selling channels. For shoppers, Whym’s wishlist provides an organized and personalized shopping experience—helping browsers collect, save and rediscover their favorite products anywhere online. No matter how your shoppers find you, Whym makes sure they don’t forget you.
