How to Make Your Products Pages More Irresistible
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Whether ecommerce is your primary business or you’re selling products to supplement your professional fees, for your venture to be successful, your products page must make it easy for shoppers to find what they need and compel them to click on that Buy Now button.
How to Organize Your Products Page
For a great example of a products page, check out Career Impressions’ shop for DIY job seekers. All the products are displayed in a grid so you can quickly see what’s available.
If you offer a large number of products, this format will require a lot of scrolling, so you’ll need to organize your online store into categories, as shown on Cool Canuck. Each category page should also be laid out in such a way that it’s easy to see the individual products.
In most cases, people will want to read more about a product before deciding to buy, so each image should link to a dedicated product page.
How to Set up Your Individual Product Pages
Once someone clicks through to view one of your products, it’s time to demonstrate why it’s the solution to their problem and convince them that there’s no need to check out other websites. You can achieve this by including the following elements on the page:
1. High quality image(s)
In a brick-and-mortar store, people can see and feel what they’re buying. We don’t have that luxury online, so it’s important to use high quality photographs, especially if you’re selling physical products.
Show the product from different angles and even up close to show the texture, if it’s relevant. Try to make the experience as similar to visiting a store as possible (without an annoying sales clerk following them around).
Even if you only sell digital products, don’t miss out on the opportunity to capture your visitors’ attention visually. Create an attractive image to represent your product using Snappa or your favorite graphics app.
2. Pricing
The price should appear prominently, ideally near the top of the page. If people have to scroll past a big marketing spiel to find out what something costs, they’ll get frustrated or even suspicious. Keep it simple sweetie!
3. Product description
Optimizing your product descriptions is one of the highest-return, lowest-investment improvements an entrepreneur or online seller can make.
Source: 10 Ways to Write Product Descriptions That Sell, Emma Ritson, Threecolts
Consider putting a concise description at the top of the page. This is all that some people will need to read before deciding whether it’s what they’re looking for.
Further down the page, provide a more detailed description. In this section, you can delve into the problems your website visitors are facing and how your product addresses them. Make it clear why your product is better than others on the market.
You can see this strategy in action on Career Professionals of Canada’s Bookstore. Each book page has a short description at the top, followed by a longer one that includes the Table of Contents.
4. Testimonials or reviews
It’s all well and good for you to say your product is great, but people are more likely to be persuaded if someone else recommends it.
Depending on the technology you use for your online store, you may be able to allow customers to post reviews right on your product page. Otherwise, you can simply add testimonials you’ve received to your page content.
If you don’t yet have any testimonials or reviews, reach out to past customers and ask! As my late father-in-law used to say, “you get little for the asking and nothing at all for holding your tongue.”
5. Call to action
You’ve come this far – don’t drop the ball now! Make sure you have Call to Action buttons in multiple locations so your customer can easily complete the transaction no matter where they are on the page.
6. Related or recommended products
If you offer a wide range of choices, consider showing potential buyers a similar item that may better suit their needs and/or something that would be a good supplement to the product they’re currently viewing.
For example, at the bottom of the page for Order Out of Chaos’ letter-size Academic Planner, you see links for the personal-size planner as well as the various accessories available.
SEO for Your Online Store
No matter how great your products are, no one will buy them if they don’t know they exist or can’t find your website!
Take everything you know about keyword research and writing high quality content and apply it to each one of your product pages. Hire an SEO expert or copywriter if you need to!
For more in depth information, check out Matthew Woodward’s Ecommerce SEO: The Ultimate Guide.
Next Steps
- Review the examples linked earlier in this article.
- View additional examples in this article from Econsultancy.
- Look at your Products page through the eyes of a potential customer.
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- How easily can they see what products you offer?
- Are your product images visually appealing? Do they show the products well?
- Are your product descriptions unique and convincing?
- Have you included social proof in the form of testimonials or reviews?
- Is it easy to find the price and the Buy Now button?
- Schedule a telephone call or Zoom session if you’d like to talk to me about your Products page.
Previous posts in this series:
Janet Barclay
I eliminate stress for my clients by hosting, monitoring, and maintaining their WordPress sites so they don’t have to worry about security, downtime or performance issues. When I’m away from my desk, I enjoy reading, photography, cooking, watching movies, drinking tea, and spending time with my family.
Thanks for reminding me to look at my product page. This is one page I don’t use as a marketing tool and I understand I am missing an opportunity.
You’re welcome, Julie! I think we owe it to ourselves to go through our entire website a few times a year. Things are constantly changing and it’s easy to forget to update certain things. On larger sites, it might be more practical to review a couple of pages, or a section, every month.
I don’t sell products online, but I can see that all of this would be so important if I did. Love your point about making the Call to Action simple and obvious. If I have to work too hard to buy a product or leave a comment on a sight, I usually give up.
Me too! Another example is if I can’t see shipping costs until I’ve created an account on the site. At least give me a ballpark figure before I share my contact details with you!
It’s so easy to forget some of these elements when creating a products page. I just took a look at my Product page (book). I follow most of your advice but, I think I need to check out the SEO for that page in order to put it in front of more ‘targeted eyes.’ Thanks for offering your readers some resources. I’m going to check out the e-commerce SEO guide by Matthew Woodward!
Good idea – you worked so hard to write and publish your book – you want to make sure people know about it!
This is super helpful, Janet! Thank you. I do not sell products but this will definitely help me when I do.
Glad to hear it, Sabrina!
Looks like I’ve got some work to do on my “shop” page, haha. I’ll be referring to this post to help me update it. Thank you!!
Always happy to help, Melanie!
I don’t currently have a products page, but all of your suggestions are great! So if I ever do develop one, I will refer back to this to use as a checklist of what to do.
In a way, your Book page is a type of product page, so think about that!
Great info! I don’t sell products now, but I’m planning to in the near future. I think this will be a great reference guide for my shop page!
That’s great! Feel free to come back here and share a link once you’ve created your page.
Like many things on my web site, I need to punch up my products page. And I not only needed your wisdom, but I need those Cool Canuck “chill tubes” — it’s 95° today!
Oh wow – that’s hot! That’s what you get for moving south – though it gets pretty hot in Buffalo too, doesn’t it?
As always, great information Janet. I do have a resource page on my blog and I need to make some changes. This is a terrific guide, thank you!
I’m glad you found it helpful and look forward to seeing your changes.
I love this. It’s so relevant for all who are pivoting in this crazy time. I just learned about that academic planner yesterday! It is so great. I can’t wait to get it.
Pivot’s the word of the year, isn’t it? I know you’re going to love the Academic Planner.