Creating a perfect user experience is at the top of the priorities list for basically any business.
You want your customers to be able to trust in you when they choose to go ahead with your business, whether that's clicking a 'BUY NOW' button or signing up for a long-term partnership.
Northsail's clients know from our history that they can trust us to deliver every project on-time, on-spec, and on-budget. That's because when we don't feel we can meet or exceed our client's expectations, we simply don't take the project on.
However, if you're dealing in physical product SKUs through your ecommerce business, then your potential customer may need a bit more than your word that your products are going to meet or exceed their expectations.
With that in mind, we've put together some useful tips that you can use to increase the conversion rates of your product pages.
Before we get to that though, let's talk about what a product description page is, the benefits of having strong descriptions, and the pros and cons of using a generator to assist with the page development process.
There are many different kinds of landing pages your business can utilize on your website, but if your company is offering online shopping for your SKUs, you'll need product description pages.
Online retailers typically have multiple pages set up, one for each of the SKUs that they carry through their website. This helps separate and individualize products, so that customers can take time researching specific items. And, of course, these pages are designed to entice potential buyers.
The format of these product description pages is usually fairly similar. There's a product image showing the item in question. Then there's any product variants that might exist (i.e., different colors, models, etc.).
After that, there's typically some sort of content marketing description that tells customers a bit about the product they're examining. Finally, there's an action button or cart button at the bottom that the customer can use to go ahead with the purchase process.
There are other things you can do to expand on these page offerings, but in many cases, this is the basic style of product description page you'll see in the vast majority of product page designs.
The real winner when you have strong, effective product descriptions is your bottom line.
Increasing the conversion rates for ecommerce stores can be a game changer, and there's tons of value in conversion rate optimization, especially for ecommerce businesses.
For those of you that don’t know, conversion rate optimization is the process of maximizing the number of people that make it all the way through your purchasing funnel, including taking the final action that you’d desire (i.e., sales, leads, etc.).
Conversely, weak product descriptions can result in pages with high bounce rates. The last thing you want is to spend a bunch of your marketing budget on pay-pay-click marketing campaigns only to find that you've got bounce rates between 80-90%.
Strong product descriptions grab the attention of prospective customers and nudges them further down the sales funnel towards the all-important action area.
If you're a business that's got tens of thousands of SKUs that need to be addressed and you're just starting out, you can probably benefit from using a product description generator.
Not only will it save you tons of time, but it can help you get your pages up and running much more quickly than writing them each by hand, which is essential for the success of the actual products.
The reality is that AI technology is only so advanced.
Some companies may tell you that they can provide compelling, unique product descriptions through their generators, but the quality of these descriptions can vary pretty widely from place to place.
Sure, some of these descriptions might be great, but if you're a business that's only got a handful of SKUs in your inventory, you'd be much better off to spend the time and effort to create truly unique, engaging content for each individual product.
Trust us – you can usually tell if someone has had the descriptions written by hand or if they’ve used a product description generator to speed up the process.
Showing a product in use is a great way to help potential customers understand that there's value in your products.
It can also be a fantastic way to show problem-solving or how your product can provide easy solutions to common challenges that customers face.
You can even use user-generated content as a way to show real people happily using your products. There's nothing quite like social proof to build trust signals and show customer satisfaction.
User-generated content is also fantastic, because if you were to run a photo contest for instance, you could use the winner's images as your next marketing materials. It saves you money on your marketing budget and provides valuable social proof – we’d call that a win-win.
When you're releasing a new ecommerce product, your online shoppers will want to know as much as possible about the SKU before they try it for themselves.
Including online reviews gives customers some tangible examples of other happy customers' shopping experience with you, which could be enough to convince them to convert.
Also, customer reviews may not always be positive, but if you have any issues that you were able to address and solve in a way that left the customer very happy, you could consider including them as well.
Even a bad customer review that has a happy resolution can demonstrate your business' ability to deal with issues as they arise in a respectful, pleasant way.
In turn, it will help more ideal customers build trust that if they experience an issue with your business, you’ll help them find a happy resolution.
No one wants to spend time scrolling through ecommerce pages that are poorly optimized for mobile when they're lying in bed at the end of the day.
And yet, how many times have you been looking at a company's website, only to find that their mobile optimization was garbage, so you clicked away to look somewhere else.
Don't let your business become another pit-stop on the path to their real customer journey. Make sure you're optimized for as many digital devices as possible, so that you don't lose mobile shoppers to poor UX.
As we get closer to the holidays, this is even more important. Think about how many times you've laid awake at night shopping on your phone or tablet. For many of us, it’s more than we care to admit.
Every bounce away because of poor mobile optimization is a missed opportunity in what could have been another step down your conversion funnel.
People want to know more than just the basics about your products, but they also don't want to read a 600-word essay on what drew the inspiration for the product (unless it's a major purchase like a car, in which case they actually may want that level of content to research).
What colors is the product available in? How many sizes or models are there? What changes or improvements have been made between older and newer models? Are there any customizability features offered for that product? What’s the price? Is it on sale or part of a special promotion?
These are only a few examples, but really, anything that can offer additional value or education will help build customer trust in the product prior to purchase. More trust in the product means a higher chance of conversion.
We've talked before about building brand affinity through the use of loyalty programs, but you may not realize how much you can learn from these programs as well.
Strategic planning for the information that you gather from customers when they're signing up for your loyalty program can offer a lot of valuable data for you to use in future planning.
For instance, you may want to know more about where your loyal customers live, so when they sign up, you may want to ask them to include their physical address.
You may want to know how old your average customers are, or which age groups are going for which types of products/services, so you could ask for their age in the program sign-up form.
You can glean tons of great information from these loyalty sign-up forms, and you can even update them periodically to ask for other relevant information you’re missing.
Just remember: don't ask for too much. Asking for too much information is a great way to push customers away and encourage them to opt out, which you don't want to do.
Even with the most compelling product descriptions, you won't see the kind of sales conversions you're looking for if you don't use high-quality product photos.
In fact, depending on the product we're talking about, sometimes high-quality images can actually do the heavy lifting above and beyond your actual written content.
You don't necessarily need to use 360-degree product images for every type of item, but in some cases, that level of detail can also be beneficial in convincing customers to go through with the conversion process.
This feature is particularly beneficial when the product has many different models, where the differences are based largely on aesthetics.
Remember: no one wants to buy products from a business owner that puts terrible quality product pictures on their website. It implies a low-quality buying experience, which is the last thing you want customers to associate with your website, your products, or your brand.
This may not apply to every type of product, but when you're offering SKUs for only a limited time, it's a good idea to put a countdown timer on the product page as well.
Creating urgency is a very powerful psychological principle for ecommerce products, because no one wants to miss out on a good opportunity. It’s an emotional trigger that can have a huge impact on conversions.
Putting a countdown timer on the bottom of the product description page near the social sharing buttons is a great way to build urgency and encourage movement into the final area of the sales funnel - the checkout experience.
In some cases, it can even be enough of a motivator to directly impact the customers' purchasing decision; particularly as you near the end of a limited-time offer.
It's not always about how to write a product description to draw customers into the purchasing process. Sometimes, you need to think about the end of the line as well. Namely, the purchasing options through your online store.
Not everyone has a credit card that they want to use for online shopping. Increasing the conversion rate for ecommerce businesses may require more payment versatility than that, depending on who your ideal customers are.
Some industries have customers that prefer to use PayPal or online debit options. Others may want other specialty payment options that are geared towards the industry you're serving.
In any case, you're best to offer at least a few different options. This way, you're not losing out on conversion rate optimization opportunities, because customers are reaching the end of your sales funnel and realizing they don't feel comfortable using the payment options you have available.
Are you daunted by the idea of having to spend hundreds of hours setting up product description pages for your wide catalogue of products?
Now you don't have to worry, thanks to Northsail's newest service, Horizon.
With Horizon, you can quickly and easily create high-performance landing pages for your product SKUs, without the need for a developer's oversight.
Get your next projects up and running faster, with less time and effort needed to get rolling. Plus, you can try Horizon for free for 30 days, with no obligation or credit card required. We won’t even take your payment information until after the end of your trial.
Are you ready to take your campaigns to the next level? Horizon makes managing multiple campaigns a breeze from our single, intuitive dashboard. So, what are you waiting for?
We’ll send you important updates about the early access program and your free invite when we are ready.
Your contact information will only be used for the early access program, not for future sales and marketing.