6 Bulletproof Ways to Improve Conversions on Your Product Page

Your product page is where the majority of your customers will finally make the decision between buying your product and leaving your store. Unfortunately, it’s an often-neglected part of the sales funnel.

While most store owners tend to focus on improving their checkout page or tweaking what happens after a visitor adds a product to their cart, customers won’t get that far unless you have a solid product page that converts.

Product pages exist to tell customers why your product is awesome and which of their needs it fulfills or problem it solves before they finally make a buying decision. Beautiful photos of your product and well-written product descriptions are important. However, there’s a lot more to a great product page than just that.

A great product page contains elements that inform potential customers, show social proof, highlight all the features and benefits of your product, and build trust between your visitors and your business.

To help you beef up your product pages, I’m going to share six simple-but-bulletproof ways to help increase conversions on your product page.

Free Bonus: Download this free PDF where I show you four awesome product pages and provide a complete breakdown of why they work. This PDF will give you the inspiration and ideas you need to improve your own store’s product pages.

1. Add a Frequently Asked Questions Section

When customers are on the fence about purchasing your product, oftentimes it’s because they have unanswered questions. Including a list of frequently asked questions and answers on your product pages helps get them off that fence.

According to Optimizely, Roller Skate Nation increased their conversions by 69% when they added a FAQ to their product page. If you need inspiration on what a good-looking FAQ on a product page looks like, take a look at how Skinnyfatties, a tie slimming service, does it:

via Skinnyfatties

Look at the common questions you often get in your inbox and start saving some of the most frequent ones in a spreadsheet. You can even make up your own questions if you anticipate they’ll come up later on. This will also help decrease the amount of questions and emails you receive.

If you have many products on your website, consider adding a FAQ to the most popular ones, or those which you receive the most questions about. To add an FAQ section to your product page, check out the Shopify App Store or add your common questions with answers in the product description.

2. Integrate Live Chat

According to a case study by Forrester, Wells Fargo saw a double-digit increase in conversions when they added live chat to their website. Just like an FAQ on your product page, a live chat allows potential customers to get their questions answered, making it easier for them to make an informed buying decision.

Plus, a live chat lets your visitors know that you’re easily and quickly accessible, making your business more trustworthy. Even if your visitors don’t use the live chat, just seeing it can give them that added peace of mind.

via Leesa

When your visitors do choose to use your live chat, that’s your opportunity to help them make a buying decision. You don’t have to be a salesperson; just be as helpful and transparent as possible.

For a more in-depth look at live chat integrations and how they can help your business, read our blog post about live chat.

If you’d like to add live chat to your product pages, be sure to check out the Shopify App store.

3. Display Product Videos

One of the biggest downsides of shopping online is not being able to to touch, feel, or physically examine a product you’re thinking about buying. When you go down the street to your local mall, you can touch products, better judge their size, and get a better sense of what owning the product will be like.

Pictures on your product page can only do so much. Often, a well shot video that gives a thorough look at your product can help potential buyers make those missing connections.

According to Internet Retailer, online housewares store StacksAndStacks, saw customers were 144% more likely to add a product to their cart after watching a video.

Your videos don’t need to be anything lengthy or complicated. Just look at how SlideBelts uses simple videos, with no audio, to show off their product better than images can:

via SlideBelts

If you want to learn more about how video can help your ecommerce business, check out our comprehensive blog post on the topic. Adding videos to your product page could be as simple as embedding a video you uploaded to YouTube or using an app from the Shopify App Store.

4. Allow Customer Reviews

When a visitor has never heard of your business and lands on your product page for the first time, two things might come to their mind: 1. “Can I trust this website?” and 2. “Does this product deliver on what it promises?”.

Sometimes, simply allowing customers to leave reviews on your product pages helps ease these fears. When a new visitor hits your product page, they can read the reviews other customers have left about the product and be reassured of its quality. Plus, seeing that your business allows for reviews lets your visitors know you have nothing to hide.

Reviews on your product pages also gives your store social proof. It not only shows that people are buying and using the product, but that they care enough about it to leave a review. Here’s how MVMT Watches includes customer reviews on their product pages:

via MVMT

Ultimately, customer reviews on product pages are a good idea because they can help increase conversions. In a case study by Bazaarvoice, adding customer reviews to Figleaves.com’s product pages resulted in a 35% higher conversion compared to product pages without customer reviews.

If you want to easily allow customers to add reviews on your product pages, head over to the Shopify App Store and choose from one of the many review apps. As a bonus tip, follow up with customers a few weeks after their purchase and ask them to leave an honest review.

5. Prominently Display Badges or Seals

If your product is endorsed or certified by a reputable firm, let visitors know with a badge or seal.

Any certifications or important characteristics of your product (such as safety, legitimacy, officiality) should be included on your product page. It’s easy to simply write these things into your product description, but it’s far more effective if you can make these stand out as badges.

via Holy Crap

These badges and seals allow you to borrow the trust they might represent. This trust makes it easier for potential customers to want to do business with you. For example, in a case study by Internet Retailer, an online furniture retailer saw an increase in conversions by nearly 8% when a security seal was added to their website.

In some cases, you might need permission or need to receive an official letter/certificate to use specific seals or badges on your website. However, you can get creative and create badges for features of your product. For example features such as “Made in Canada” or “High Quality” would work better as nicely designed badges than simple bullet points in a product description.

To add badges and seals to your product page, insert images into your product description using the rich editor.

6. Offer a Rock Solid Money Back Guarantee

What’s your return policy? What’s your customer satisfaction policy? Is it hidden away on a separate page for no one to see?

Proudly display your money back guarantee and policy on your product page. If you’re willing to promise your customers that your product is the best, show it. If you put the risk on yourself, and give visitors more confidence, they’ll be more likely to trust you and in turn, purchase your products.

Neil Patel, co-founder of Crazy Egg and Hello Bar, claims he saw his sales increase by 21% when he added a money back guarantee. Here’s some inspiration on what a great money back guarantee on a product page looks like:

via Slyde

Slyde, a handboard store, is not afraid to dedicate an entire section of their product pages to their satisfaction guarantee. They understand that if they want first-time customers to trust them, they need to show visitors that they have a lot of confidence in the quality in their products.

You don’t need to be a designer to create your own eye-catching guarantee badge. Check out sometemplates over at Creative Market and make them your own so they fit your branding.

Your Turn

These are always things you should split test. It might be unwise to assume every suggestion offered in this blog post will always increase conversions on your product page. Each product, business and customer is different. Implement and test what you think makes the most sense right now and then evaluate after a sufficient length of time.

But don’t let that discourage you either! Sometimes, the smallest or simplest change can have a significant impact on your business. That’s why it’s so important to test things.

How about you? What’s the smallest or simplest change you’ve made in the past few months that has had the biggest impact? Comment below. If you have any comments or suggestions regarding this blog post, leave them below as well. I engage with and respond to everyone.

Mobile Now Accounts for 50.3% of All Ecommerce Traffic

Last week represented the first time in history that more people used mobile phones and tablets to visit online stores than using computers. Looking at data from over 100,000 ecommerce stores that use the Shopify platform, we saw 50.3% of traffic coming from mobile (40.3% from mobile phones, 10% from tablets) and just 49.7% from computers.

We have been watching and talking about the mobile commerce trend for years, but now there’s no disputing it: mobile commerce is now the default way that people shop online.

The rise in mobile phone traffic to online stores is partly being fuelled by the overall trend of social-fuelled discovery becoming a major marketing channel. For example, while Facebook accounted for less than 5% of traffic to ecommerce sites on desktop, that number jumps to 7% when looking at mobile phones. In comparison, search based traffic from Google represented 18% of traffic from computers, but just 12% on mobile phones. This data seems to show that computers are being used to search for more commodity-type goods, while social media and mobile are used for more spontaneous, discovery-based purchases.

The rise in mobile shopping also brings about another fascinating trend, what we’re calling “always-on shopping”. Computer-based traffic to ecommerce sites traditionally peaked between Monday and Friday and trailed off during the weekend. Mobile traffic has somewhat opposite behaviour since shoppers use their phones most during the weekends. So when you combine mobile, tablet and computer traffic to ecommerce sites, you no longer find any discernable spikes when people are shopping online. In other words, shopping is no longer something people go and do anymore; it’s something they are always doing.

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5 Psychological Design Tactics that Make Brains Tick and Visitors Click

First impressions can make or break your business.

The layout of your website, the colors you use, the copy on buy buttons – design is everything when it comes to first impressions.

That’s why it’s important to tap into what make brains tick, and why certain design aesthetics persuade visitors to take a desired action on your website.

1. Use Human Behavior as a Catalyst for Design

Perhaps overlooked when building your website is the idea of designing for humans first. More importantly, designing for your target market first. Just because something makes sense to you, doesn’t mean it makes sense for a visitor – or your business.

What does that mean? Well, let’s take a look at one of the most popular websites on the internet.

Craigslist has an infamously…interesting design based on today’s standards. In fact, a few people have taken a crack at redesigning it. But why haven’t they changed it?

The purpose of Craigslist is to do two things: post an ad, or find an ad. They’re a data driven company that’s based their business on familiarity and ease of use. They know what their target market is, and the purpose their website needs to serve.

And, they do it perfectly.

It’s almost the same premise with Reddit. Yes, it’s quite barebones – but the visitors don’t need (and in most cases, don’t want) a beautiful design experience for what they’re doing.

How can you implement that simplicity, and notion of designing for humans into your website so that it’s easier for your visitors to use?

Consider this: Take a look at The User is My Mom for some fun user testing. See if your website is designed with humans in mind. Don’t want to pay for someone to test your website? Why not have an older friend, relative, or colleague give it a shot and get their feedback!

2. Color Can Influence Shoppers

Color theory is one of my favorite topics when it comes to design and marketing. The fact that certain colors can convey so many different emotions and actions is fascinating.

There has been a lot of fluffy theories about color – mainly because a lot of things like personal preference, history, and more, can influence what certain colors mean. What red means to me, might mean something totally different to you.

That being said, it’s important to understand the fundamentals of color theory when it pertains to marketing.

Take a look at this informative chart from The Logo Company that analyzes what different colors brands use, and what each color means.

via The Logo Company

In a study by the team at KISSmetrics – they found some pretty interesting information regarding the psychology of color.

Red: Increases heart rate, creates sense of urgency, often associated with sales.

Blue: Creates the sensation of trust and security, often associated with banks.

Green: Often associated with wealth, easiest color for the eye to process.

Something else that I thought was worth mentioning, is that in that study, KISSmetrics found that 93% of shoppers consider visual appearance to be more important than any other senses when looking at marketing material.

Furthermore, they found that men prefer bright colors, while women prefer softer, more pastel-like colors.

via KISSmetrics

Is there anything here that you might be able to apply to your website?

Consider this: Be sure to take a look at the Shopify Theme Store for a new design that might pique your visitors interest based on a color preset.

3. Hick’s Law Says Too Many Options Means No Decision

How many times have you found yourself at the grocery store trying to decide what type of chips to buy? You’re staring at a wall of colors and the thought of picking Miss Vickies over Lays is panic inducing.

The same thing happens to a visitor when you give them too many options on your website.

Too many navigation links, products to pick from, images to look at, or even shipping options to consider can be too much for a visitor to handle. They’ll get overwhelmed, and will leave without completing a purchase or taking the desired action.

When it comes to web design – think of some of the most popular websites and how they’re designed. How many options do you have when you visit Facebook, Twitter, or even Shopify? You’re most likely given very few things to click on – and the most prominent thing on the page is what the desired action is. Whether that be a signup form, picture, or buy button, it’s all done with purpose to minimize options.

Using the Wayback Machine, you’ll notice that these companies have gone through many iterations of landing pages and have now become a very stripped down version of what they once were.

Here’s an example of Shopify in 2010:

And here’s an example of how it looks today:

Notice how there’s far less clutter on the page, and it’s much simpler to navigate?

Consider this: Remove the noise from your website. Too many navigation links, photos, or collections? Do a quick purge and take out whatever isn’t absolutely necessary.

4. Think Mobile and Ease of Use

Okay so we now know that mobile is taking over the world. Who knows how long it will be until desktop and laptop computers are totally obsolete.

That might be a bold statement – but in the design world, designing for comfort and ease of use knowing that people are using their thumbs and fingers to interact with your website is essential.

Take a look at this great infographic from 9to5mac – it helps explain the idea of mobile comfort.

via 9to5mac

The goal here? Make it easy for someone to use your store with their thumbs. Make specific call to action buttons or copy within “thumbs-reach” depending on whether someone is browsing on a mobile device or tablet.

Consider this: Play around with your website on different mobile devices and see if there are any important buttons or links that are not within “thumbs-reach“. Make edits where necessary.

5. Faces are Humanizing and Sincere

You like to see a smiling face. Who doesn’t? It’s probably one of the most familiar and pleasant things in the world. It’s one of the only things that everyone understands – no matter what language you speak, or what your background is.

A study from Caltech showed that our brains have cells that respond only to faces. This part of the brain is called the Fusiform Gyrus – and no other object, form, or item could get this part of the brain to spark. Pretty cool, right? Now, how can you get that part of a visitors brain to start firing?

Take a look at how SkinnyMe Tea has used this to emphasize their call to action in their main hero image.

via SkinnyMe Tea

There are so many other ways to use faces in your website design too. You can visualize and elicit emotions, create trust (using employee pictures), engage your visitors (with someone staring at them), and so much more.

The best practice here? Have a picture of someone looking directly at (or pointing towards) whatever it is you want the visitor to pay attention to.

Consider this: Try finding some free stock images that include faces in them. See if there’s anywhere that you can include them on your website.

Conclusion

Now that we’ve taken a look at some design tactics you can implement into your website, it’s up to you to put these tactics into play.

Let us know in the comments below if there are any other design tips and tricks that will persuade visitors to take action, and click!