8 Tips on How to Design a Perfect Product Detail Page
Are you treating your product detail pages (PDPs) as a footnote in your ecommerce store? That could be a costly design marketing oversight.
Not only are strong product detail pages valuable in SEO for driving traffic to your site, but also they play a critical role in converting customers once they start browsing. Learn how to design product detail pages that anticipate customer questions, reduce friction, boost social proof, add urgency, and ultimately maintain momentum towards the shopping cart.
Here’s how to design a perfect product detail page:
1 – Strong Visuals
Whereas you should show people using your product in advertising campaigns and design marketing, the visuals in your product details page should evoke the unboxing experience. That means clean, high-quality product photos or video that users can manipulate.
Introduce tools that help users zoom in and out, rotate, or try different colors, for example. Let them “handle” and inspect the product using just their mouse or screen. Analytics can tell you which photo type, size, or version converts the best, so that you can remove underperforming photos and concentrate resources on visuals that have the highest likelihood of driving a sale.
2 – Content and Copy
Too many ecommerce sites are so preoccupied with the design of product page detail, that they fill space on the product page with fluffy, generic copy that barely offers more value to the customer than lorem ipsum text. Ditch the superlatives and focus instead on compelling product attributes that generate SEO value and touch on customer pain points.
This requires doing research into what features and benefits are sought after by your target buyers. By consuming reviews of similar or competitive products and even reading the copy left under a photo or video by an influencer on Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube, you can get a better idea of the type of messages and information your typical buyer is curious about. The copy can be professional and informative, yet address a pain point or even add some fun.
Craft a brief but informative and engaging product description that focuses on the product’s unique value proposition. Save real estate on the page by using accordions or tabs to categorize information (ex: Description, Ingredients, How To Use, etc.) or modal pop-ups to display important details like a size guide or shipping rules.
Use your below-the-fold space to offer more in-depth detail and get creative with visually engaging elements like iconography that demonstrates product benefits and features.
3 – CTA
Website users should always have access to a large, obvious purchase button. It’s a basic principle of design marketing. This CTA should stand out and live above the fold, but in order to make sure users always have access, you can use a sticky CTA bar that scrolls with them as they explore below the fold. Remember to A/B test different options. One retailer reduced abandoned carts by 50% simply by changing the “Add to basket” button from black to blue.
The CTA doesn’t always have to be the purchase button. Other CTAs on the page might include:
- subscribe to the company’s newsletter
- add to wishlist
- “Like” or share
Measuring these clicks is still engagement and serves as an assessment of how popular the item is. However, if there are more secondary CTAs ocurring than purchases, then something could be holding shoppers from actually buying. This could be a signal that one or more attributes of the product needs to be changed—such as the price.
4 – Social Proof
What do 93% of customers check before buying a product? The reviews. Display social proof like star ratings and reviews below the product name. Embed images of customers who used the product and update regularly. Remember, out of date reviews can suggest you’re hiding something. This content goes a long way in developing the third-party validation necessary to convince many potential customers that your product is worthy of their hard-earned dollars.
While investigating the product page, shoppers might also separately visit the company’s Instagram page, or do a separate Google search for reviews about your brand or product. While buyers have come to expect customer reviews on a product page, they also know that additional reviews, photos, and videos exist off-page and are willing to search those for more information.
5 – Product Recommendations
Cross-selling and upselling are essential strategies for capitalizing on each customer visit while intent is warm. Show your customer related products and items that other customers frequently view or buy. Use data to personalize their choices too. This also contributes to social proof while encouraging users to add more items to their carts.
“Customers also purchased..” and “Frequently bought together…” are frequent sections of a product page, and while automation technologies can decide which products are pushed to the page, it’s a good idea to audit these recommendations every now and then to ensure that they are relevant for your target market. To further encourage sales, make sure some recommended products or bundles are given special pricing to make the offer more exciting.
6 – Chatbot and FAQs
Enabling self-service ecommerce doesn’t mean you’re letting your customer down. You’re respecting their autonomy. For higher price-point items, including a chatbot for live customer service can help move customers across the finish line by answering the most common queries about each item. An AI-powered chatbot will help keep customers engaged if you can’t afford to pay a customer service rep. .
The chatbot can also be a channel to share interesting, relevant links. Queue up links to some of the more compelling articles, How-To guides, or videos and populate the chatbot with these links. They could increase engagement and ensure that the shopper stays on your site.
Make sure to refresh your FAQs, too. Scour the reviews and online comments to identify the features and queries that customers talk about most (eg. shipping time and cost, returns) and give them the answers they need. Some of these FAQs might seem like no-brainers, or questions you don’t think your customers would ever ask. However, such simple FAQs are still important to include because they often include SEO-rich keywords that deliver the traffic you need.
7 – Exit Popup
For between 10 and 15% of customers you may otherwise have lost, an exit popup offering a discount closes the deal at the last minute. Make sure the popup is well-designed with compelling copy to really encourage users to change their mind about leaving your site. It’s also a great opportunity to lure engaged customers to sign up for your newsletter so that you can nurture them by email.
8 – Variants
A tip from behavioral psychology recommends that you don’t ask your kids if they want broccoli. You ask them how many pieces they would like, framing it as a choice already taken. The same principle applies in ecommerce. Nudge your customer to feel ownership of the product by giving them the interactive, dynamic tools to see it in different colors, size, type etc. It’s not just an element for design marketing. It’s a strategy to move them on from a purchase to a customization decision.
Final words
There is no single correct way of designing a product detail page. Amazon, Walmart, and the big players set the standard as to what to present to shoppers, and for good reason: they’ve spent millions of dollars in end-user research to better understand conversion. While borrowing a page from them can help, you know your own customers better than they do, so do what you know will resonate with customers. Further, always A/B test any changes, and “listen” to the analytics to better understand what’s working and what’s not. Tiny changes can have a big impact, and the faster you can iterate, the faster you can see those conversions.
Hawke Media makes great marketing accessible to all. If your brand needs help with design or any of our other a la carte services , we would love to get in touch today!
