The conversion-focused product page and home page may sound a bit mercantile, especially for those beginners who are aiming to build an emotional connection with customers. It’s just the way it is in the eCommerce business. All “roads” on a good website should lead to a purchase. Moreover, they should be well-navigated and enjoyable for your visitors from start to finish.
This is where the web design art lies. According to the recent Forrester Research’s findings, a well-designed UX can increase conversion rates by up to 400%. If you feel your CR is not as high as you want now, maybe this checklist will help you improve the situation.
A product page tells everything about the product
In most cases, new customers land on your product page first, not a home page. So this is the most crucial area in terms of conversion on your website which you need to keep perfect.
When you start investing in paid ads, you must ensure a potential customer, clicking on your ad, can see what they expected within 15 sec. Elsewise, they will leave the page, which means your marketing budget is wasted.
Let’s learn more about conversion-focused web design elements.
A product description should be as comprehensive as possible
This is proved by the following statistics:
- 3 out of 10 users leave the shopping process due to poor product description;
- Almost 40% of consumers return products due to a mistake or lack of relevant text content;
- 87% of shoppers claim that deficiency of the product description weakens their confidence in the brand;
- Improving product content can increase your online sales by 23%.
We hope you know that each product page content should be optimised for your keywords so your customers can easily find them while searching online.
First of all, pay attention to your headlines. You may notice that eCommerce flagmen always use a specific formula when creating their headlines: Product name + model + (gender + material + colour + key functions)
Sometimes, headlines may look overwhelmed, like at Amazon. But the thing is this SEO approach works since it covers most of the user search queries.
Thus, to increase your conversion rate you need to improve the quality of your traffic. And one of the easiest ways to do this is to make your headlines relevant to regular search queries from customers.
What should the product description on a web page contain besides accurate headlines?
First of all, your task is to create a textual illusion of the ability to touch and hold products before purchase. We would recommend describing the following points:
- Key features in the bulleted list;
- Product size guide;
- Technical specifications;
- Components, ingredients, origins, material, warnings;
- Recommendations on the use, if needed.
We would recommend to split your text content and use tables, especially for complex information, to make it easier to understand.
Photos as a visual guide
Over half of consumers believe a product photo to be a more critical factor than the description, reviews and ratings. Thus we would recommend taking pictures of your products in a way they will answer typical customers’ questions.
- White background product photography is a good solution, suitable for any store and marketplace. We would recommend adding at least one “live photo” to give consumers an understanding of how a product will look in their interior/ on their body / in their car and so on.
- The product shot should be taken from at least 3-5 different angels.
- If you sell products with packaging and accessories, include these photos as well.
- Show your range. You can add a photo with a product mix of different colours or materials in the gallery near the end, to encourage your customers to view other items in your stock. Be sure, this solution can enhance your conversion rate.
You will already be aware that product photos should be at a high standard and quality?
Reviews as a form of social proof
The fact is that 63% of consumers are more likely to purchase a product on a website with customers reviews. Moreover, real user-generated comments on a web page are 12 timers more trusted than a product description.
Regarding conversions, statistics showed that product pages with more than 50 reviews demonstrate a 4.3% increase in the conversion rate.
You need to inspire your customers to leave reviews, both positive and negative, so they can dispute in the comments or find personal recommendations. This could be a source for creating a special product category on your home page, add a new filter or even use these insights in your marketing emails.
I know the cosmetics store, where representatives of the brands, which products are presented on the website, leave reviews to initiate a discussion. Or they send customers free samples so they could leave relevant feedback. Reviews always work, regardless of who left them.
Moreover, this UX solution is good for your website search engine optimisation, brand loyalty and finally, conversion rate.
Wish List As A Conversion Marketing Trap
Recently, I found a case study based on the analysis of 50 eCommerce stores that just had added the wish list function. In 6 months their sales grew by 19.3%.
A wish list is a perfect solution to keep your customers engaged with your brand since, in many cases, the saved items form the basis for your triggered marketing emails.
Consumers are used to forgetting about products they would like to buy, until later. And when they are informed these products are discounted or appear in stock again, they are more likely to visit your website and make a purchase.
Along with that, wish lists help reduce shopping cart abandonment and can demonstrate the popularity of products on your website if you configure the likes counter (similar to sephora.com.) This design feature may be one of the extra ways to increase your conversion rate.
CTA button is not about creativity
Yes, clear call to action is one of the crucial details of your conversion focused eCommerce website. Along with this, you should remember that CTA is a button and you don’t need to modify this into a gif, image or art object.
There are a few rules you need to follow:
- One CTA per product page. Create CTAs only for target actions; don’t overwhelm your web pages;
- A CTA button should contain 1-3 words with a verb (Buy, Order, Submit, Add to Cart);
- CTAs should be clear and easy to notice, not to confuse your website visitors;
- Use contrasting colours. By the way, SAP said that changing the colour of the CTA to orange helped them increase the conversion rate by 32.5%. Performable said that their red colour CTAs improved their conversion rate by 21%. We would recommend running an A/B test to see which CTA colour works best.
The homepage is your essence
Homepage is the second page which your new customers visit if they came from your product or category ad. And the first page for your loyal customers. Let’s check out what design elements can positively impact your conversion rate here.
Main categories on your homepage instead of featuring products
There are ongoing debates over whether products are needed on the home page, especially if a website performs within a narrow niche. But almost everyone agrees that displaying main categories on the homepage is a good visual method to motivate customers to click on an image and find out what’s inside. Simply put, this is a manipulation of human curiosity. And a perfect way to simplify your website navigation if you have a wide range of products.
Moreover, this approach has a positive impact on your SEO due to the combination of HTML and images along with the correct category naming.
Please, don’t drop everything and run to add a category grid to your home page, waiting for your conversions to immediately increase. The way of implementation should be well-thought and organised. Otherwise, your landing page may not look like the Jysk website,
but end up looking like Taiwantrade.
Eye-catching Search Box With Autofill Feature Increase Conversions
Econsultancy has found that up to 30% of eCommerce visitors use an internal website search. If your range is as wide as at Taiwantrade, which I mentioned above, this is an absolute must-have.
Over 60% of users use 3 words or more to find the product on a website. This is a good idea to configure hints on two grounds:
- Predictive search improves customer experience.
- It can increase your conversion rate by 24%, since autofill makes search queries longer, and long queries have a higher conversion rate.
Fonts Affect Website Readability and Conversions
The legibility of fonts is crucial for reading speed and the overall customer experience which is a leading eCommerce marketing goal today.
The study, conveyed by Google and IBM, has shown, that users read 12-point font faster than 10- or 14-point fonts.
The ClickLaboratory presented the results of the Numara Software case study. They increased their website fonts from 10pt to 13pt and received excellent results:
- The bounce rate decreased by 10%
- The exit rate reduced by 19%
- Pages per visit grew by 24%
- The conversion rate increased by 133%!
There are debates among web designers which font works better: serif (without thin horizontal strokes at the end of the letter) or sans-serif. However, studies have shown that there is no statistical significance between them.
If you have thumbs on your homepage, please, try to keep a line 50-75 characters long (including spaces). This is the advice of the Baymard Institute.
The Debenhams.com design demonstrates a clear example of applying this rule.
4. Easy-To-Find Contact Information Reflects Your Reliance
It’s all about website credibility. Statistics show that more than half of consumers (51%) trust companies that are easy to contact.
To improve the customer experience on your conversion-focused website, insert contact info in the footer with your email address, phone number, physical address (or city, at least) so visitors can ensure you exist. Or display the most important contact in the header which is, even more, better for your website conversion.
All these minor web design features can simplify the process of getting the right information for your customers. So they can call you to specify the availability of a product or estimate how long the delivery can take.
Along with that, create a separate “Contact” page with detailed information, map, your opening hours, and links for you social media profiles, as well as the FAQ section to minimise the number of irrelevant inquiries.
Let’s Sum Up
We really appreciate modern, attractive eCommerce web designs with full-screen product images and bright colours. But they may look as art but not the place where we will be shopping.
Sales are a crucial eCommerce goal that’s why all design elements on your website should lead your customers to purchase.
Focus on your product page, since this is almost always the first page your potential customers visit.
- Create long-tail headlines based on keyword search queries.
- Your structured product description should leave no additional questions.
- Make at least one “live photo” of a product to demonstrate its real size.
- Include the reviews section and encourage your customers to leave feedback.
- Add a wishlist feature to improve your triggered email marketing performance and customer experience.
- Do not overwhelm your product page with irrelevant CTAs.
Take care of your home page since it is crucial for your loyal customers.
- Show a product categories grid on your homepage.
- Create and update store specific categories such as “Most starred”, “New Arrivals” and so on.
- Use the autofill feature in your search box.
- Use 13- 14-point fonts for regular text content.
- Make your contact information noticeable.
The most successful websites strive for simplicity. Make your website easy for your customers.
About the Authors
Valerie Lavskaya
Marketing Content Manager at Promodo
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