Categories
Digital Marketing E-Commerce SEO

How to Create Perfect Product Pages

How do you create a perfect product page?

Your product pages are of critical importance on your website. Naturally, then, you want to create a perfect product page. Great product pages help convert browsers into buyers. They lower your paid search costs. Also, importantly, they provide your customers with the information they need to make a good purchase decision.

It’s notable that Google is transitioning from pay-to-play to more organic results on Google Shopping. Updates to the merchant feed also seem like a nudge to make your eCommerce product pages effective “organically” and win more clicks without paying for them. When Google trusts the brand and its product information, it is easier to gain a product knowledge graph. This means that our overarching product’s digital data has increased power for organic eCommerce sales.

What is a product page?

A Product Detail Page (PDP) is a dedicated page that outlines everything customers and buyers want to know about a specific product.

The details to include vary by product but typically include color, sizing, material, pricing, shipping options, etc. Many products have unique features. For example, lawn fertilizers have application rated and surface coverage, mattresses have firmness ratings and coil types, and medical devices have appropriate use specifications. Other items must post warnings per instructions from the FDA, like for the use of tanning beds.

Selling a retail product online takes more than simply securing a domain URL, uploading images, and publishing an online store. Creating an effective product page for each item you intend to sell is a way to drive sales volume while also providing your own space to incentivize buyers. This page will showcase product highlights and features. The product page you create to promote your product is one of the most important aspects of providing helpful content to market your business online today.

There are many ways to build e-commerce product pages. Seldom does one land on the ideal structure on a first effort. Listening to your consumers combined with A/B testing is the best refinement process. When developing your product page template, experience has taught us what to aim for. It is not just about what you write and the page elements you use. This article will be more comprehensive in covering what it takes for a product page to really sell items well and be competitive.

Table of Contents

Let’s look at the anatomy of a high-converting product page design. Suppose Google understands a site’s structure, products are easy to find and data is trusted – then there are more ways to gain sales on the SERP (search engine result pages) than the average business owner knows of.

If you wrap “Product specifications” within an H2 tag and include a specifications table as a standalone section, this highlights the importance of your product content. Google Shopping results may improvement in rankings and organic sessions for the page.

Additionally, you can give Google more understanding of the hierarchy of information on the page and by using semantic triples in page titles and product schema markup. This also surfaces important information when accessible is especially important to the user.

A foundational definition is a great place to start this conversation.

What is a product page?

Selling a retail product online takes more than simply securing a domain URL, uploading images, and publishing an online store. Creating an effective product page for each item you intend to sell is a way to drive sales volume while also providing your own space to incentivize buyers. This page will showcase product highlights and features. The product page you create to promote your product is one of the most important aspects of providing helpful content to market your business online today.

There are many ways to build e-commerce product pages. Seldom does one land on the ideal structure on a first effort. Listening to your consumers combined with A/B testing is the best refinement process. When developing your product page template, experience has taught us what to aim for. It is not just about what you write and the page elements you use. This article will be more comprehensive in what it takes for a product page to really sell items well and be competitive.

How to Create an Effective Product Page

Users’ purchase behavior on the SERP provides key insights page of results.

  1. Write an excellent, unique product description.
  2. Add your own correctly-sized, high-resolution product images.
  3. Include videos that answer buyers’ questions.
  4. Include shipping, delivery, and return information.
  5. Align On-Page Product Details with the Google Merchant Center.
  6. Leverage Advanced SEO that Provides Product Context Cards.
  7. Add a sense of value and urgency.
  8. Ensure the layout is intuitive and reduces friction.
  9. Include helpful customer reviews.
  10. Include recommended products and variable products.
  11. Implement product schema markup.
  12. Ensure technical aspects are great and load performance is excellent.
  13. Demonstrate brand authority.
  14. Include social sharing buttons.

With the above points in mind, you can plan your product page by mapping out all elements you’ll add to your product page. Each element should serve a purpose, provide a specific piece of helpful information, and play a role in moving visitors deeper into the buyer’s journey. You can add correctly-sized, high-resolution product images increasing the resolution of the photos by AI.

1. Write an Excellent, Unique Product Description

A great product description tells your story of who the product is for and how it helps the buyer get what they want.

Your product description should be concise and compelling. Think of your ideal buyer and what they look for. Get straight to what the product is with no above-the-fold fluff, then explain the features in more detail beneath the product images and specifications. Your descriptions need to be sufficiently unique, which is harder the more products you have. Lead with benefits. Avoid “hype” phrases; however, it’s good to appeal to your reader’s imagination. Use conversational paragraph-long descriptions to engage interest and ideal customers.

Your product details can be one sentence, a short paragraph, or provided in a bulleted list. Generally, it’s safer to have a serious tone. Some people pull off funny or quirky details – but it can easily backfire. You can place them right next to or underneath product titles and product images. Both scannable selling points and strong readability elements can work.

This is a great opportunity to be creative and establish a brand voice (personality and tone) for your business. Just imagine you are conversing with someone you’ve just met about the product. How would you describe it so that they grasp how great it truly is? A lot more goes into it than simple copywriting. Always A/B test your results and embrace agile marketing that can help you appeal better to your audience.

ChatGPT or other Generative AI tools can assist and refine your writing descriptions. We just don’t advise going with a bot’s ideas for something so important and then just cutting and pasting.

2. Add Correctly-sized, High-resolution Product Images

Seek to provide the most accurate product images with the fastest recognition performance. E-commerce businesses have a disadvantage due to the absence of sensory product experience that shoppers get when making an in-store purchase. 3D product images make it easier by creating an experience with near-tactile engagement with products. Consumers love these lifelike visuals.

Online, where customers cannot physically handle items, product images, and visuals can literally make or break a sale. Use good lighting; dark, drab pictures don’t sell products. We also like to tie in color accents that represent your brand or logo. Be aware that if you are an affiliate seller, and use the parent company’s images, they are already canonicalized to someone else. Unless your agreement limits you to using them, you can gain a seller’s advantage by using your own images on your website.

It’s best to optimize (compress) images for the web before uploading. If you rely on a plugin, remember that plugins add weight and may slow load time. The same is true for image sizes; create the right size for your application instead of relying on a plugin to do the work for you.

Additionally, well-optimized location-specific unique product pages help improve your ranking in local SERPs. If you have brick-and-mortar stores, you want to go for foot traffic. How well you manage your Google Business Profile has a significant impact. Have an experienced search marketer add products to your Google Business Listing. There is a strategy to it and someone needs to be keen to follow updates and new opportunities for how they are added.

Hear again, both the URL structure of your product page will be repeated; and the images will be re-used. This means that knowing how to create ideal product images matters both on-page and offsite. Otherwise, you may be missing sales unless you are paying for clicks. Images have a huge role as well for service-based businesses winning SERP visibility.

3. Include Videos that Answer Buyers’ Questions

Actually, there are many good reasons to add owned video media to your product pages.

Video content can:

  • Explain your product’s features.
  • Answer the questions in buyers’ minds so they are confident of their purchase.
  • Provide how-to instructions.
  • Offer product comparisons.
  • Identify and address customer pain points.
  • Share a compelling story about why you are excited to offer this product.

Adding an FAQ section that they can expand and get answers that relate to this particular product. Additionally, link to your FAQ Page that answers broader sales questions. Including FAQ markup to your pages helps those answers appear on Google Search. Someone with questions about your products, payment methods, store locations, or your delivery options, can find these answers directly on Google Search.

4. Include Shipping, Delivery, and Return InformationInclude Shipping, Delivery, and Return Information

Let the buyer know whether you provide “free shipping”, “next-day delivery”, “store pickup”, “expedited shipping”, etc. A few simple words on the product page suffice along with a link to your shipping and return policy page. You can also empower the consumer by letting them select delivery times. For example, I ordered Wagyu Corned Beef from Snake River Farms and selected to have it delivered Saturday morning. This way, I didn’t have to worry about creating room in my freezer, it was simply there just when I wanted to prepare it.

If you are running Google Ads, you are required to “Provide clear and conspicuous refund and return information on your website.” A link in your footer is sufficient at this time, but it needs to meet advertising requirements.

Google provides the following examples for return policies that work:

Return scenario How you’ll configure return policies

If you have one standard policy for all items you sell

 Create a single policy.
If you have one standard return policy for domestic sales, but you don’t accept returns on international sales Create one return policy for the country in that you accept returns to. Then set up another policy for “international” countries that you sell to but don’t accept returns to.
If you have one standard return policy for most items, but certain others can’t be returned

Create a single standard return policy that applies to all items. Then, create an exception policy, in which you’ll indicate that returns are not allowed for certain items. In the exception policy process, you’ll be asked to create a label, which you’ll apply to exception products in your feed.

Some products which commonly can’t be returned are personal care items, safety equipment, and customized production like engraving.

If you have one standard return policy for most items, but some items have to be returned sooner than others

(for example, premium electronics)

Create a single standard return policy that applies to all items having 30 days to return. Then, create an exception policy to indicate items with the exception applied that will need to be returned within 14 days.

In the exception policy process, you’ll be asked to create a label, which you’ll apply to exception products in your feed.
Combination You may have some combination of any of the above, which means you’ll need to create a standard policy and multiple exceptions. Then, you’ll apply the proper label to relevant products in your feed.

“Return policy is a key factor for people who are making a purchasing decision, and showing your policies on your ads and listings may help the performance of your products.” – Google [1]

5. Align On-Page Product Details with the Google Merchant Center

Whoever writes or designs the product page needs to enlist a Google Partner or semantic SEO’s help to build your product knowledge graph from your product feed. Products without errors in the Google Merchant Center can vastly gain better visibility in search engines and Google Shopping.

Knowledge graphs have been a lead advantage in downstream retail applications like search, recommendations, and question answering, among others. In modern eCommerce, this has become a fundamental component in online retail and e-Commerce sales. Meaning, obtaining a Product Knowledge Graph is becoming essential and requires key enabling technologies. Shaping a high-coverage knowledge graph for products requires more advanced skills than generic knowledge graphs.

Your product knowledge graph-building process should be:

  • Highly scalable to accommodate dynamic aspects and product expansions and types.
  • Leveraging quality training data.
  • Ensuring that taxonomies support versus hinder a clear understanding of your products.
  • Ensuring that cross-channel applications affirm the same product details (GTINs, SKUs, etc.).

6. Leverage Advanced SEO that Provides Product Context Cards

Experienced eCommerce SEOs can drive more organic web traffic to your product page by adding Product Context Cards. We can place them in your description and in relevant content on your site. After this implementation, every time a product is mentioned, a direct link to the product page is included. In this way, you will capture the attention of the reader and suggest a product to buy even on informational pages.

This improves your chances of selling a specific product across your entire site. It assists click-through rates to pages that matter the most to you.

7. Add a Sense of Value and Urgency

Including the benefits to the buyer that they will gain by owning this product creates “value”. Your professional consulting advice adds value. A retailer who stands behind their products, who is there if they have questions post-purchase, who is simply “friendly” – all add value to the consumer’s experience.

Seasonal products that are selling out fast can show limited availability – which creates a sense of urgency. Or you can offer one-time deals. Google has a “Popular products” feature on the SERP and you can use wording that relates the same. Sharing numbers, awards, or repeat order volumes create a sense of scarcity. You are giving the buyer good reasons to complete the sale while on the page versus coming back later.

8. Ensure Page Layout is Intuitive and Frictionless

This includes providing superb UX and accessibility.

You want to ensure it’s simple and fast so users can make friction-free purchases. The writer has the role of using both descriptive text and yet avoid cumbersome sentences and thoughts. Then the developer has an important role to play in how fast the page loads so that you don’t lose the potential sale. The page’s logic should flow with how buyers make decisions.

Calls to action (shopping cart) buttons need to be properly placed and stand out in an appealing manner. Make it super easy for them to buy. I’ve audited shopping carts and landing pages and actually found that the “buy” button link was actually broken!

A slow or overly complex user experience can both hurt and benefit your digital brand. The answer “it depends” applies because it varies by product and your audience’s needs. For example, a youthful buyer will need a simpler page structure. A more expensive item needs details that support that spend. B2B buyers often have a unique purchase intent.

Your web pages should have performance checks to ensure they load fast and issues that can be addressed are identified. You may write the most perfect product page, have better product images than your competitors, and still have another hidden issue.

According to a MailChimp study, on average “55% of people spend less than 15 seconds on any given website”. This means that if a potential buyer arrives on your product page, you’ve only got a few seconds to spark their interest. To do so quickly, display the most important information, like: description, product images, price, and your “add to cart” button prominently. [2]

Then use jump links that will take them directly to the information they are seeking.

9. Include Helpful Customer Reviews

When a buyer leaves a review that is specific to a certain product, this can be “gold” content. A new perspective buyer will want to hear what they have to say and often trust their opinion over the seller’s statements. This also helps you provide information about the product in terms and phrases shoppers are comfortable with. Typically, it will always be unique content, as it comes directly from the purchaser and relates directly to your products and the shopping experience your business offers. The number of reviews you have per product can be added to your product schema markup by someone who knows how. It’s awesome when your review stars show up on the SERP!

Leverage published reviewers’ positive feedback by incorporating their reviews and testimonials onto your product page. A glowing review of your product might be the final trigger for a potential customer to decide to buy.

Additionally, you can write high-quality product reviews to help shoppers decide on the right product for them. Normally, this would be a separate page that offers expert opinions and an unbiased perspective. They can then link to your product pages, which assists the buyer in completing their purchase journey.

By displaying related product options, you are empowering “buyer choice”. This is especially helpful if they didn’t find exactly what they were looking for. Or they may discover additional items to purchase. How you add Recommended Products and Variable Products depends on your CMS, theme, or tools at hand. We’ll quickly cover this for sites using WooCommerce as that is so popular.

To add a variable product, create a new product or edit an existing one:

  1. Navigate to WooCommerce, then Products.
  2. Select the Add Product button or Edit an existing product.
  3. When the Product Data displays, select Variable product from the Product Data dropdown.
  4. Select Save attributes.

If you have the skills, you can also manually add these entities.

11. Implement Product Schema Markup

There are multiple product-related rich results that help you win featured snippets. Generally, a business owner or content writer leaves this responsibility up to a true semantic SEO expert. For example, they will know how to add metadata and schema to your page before publishing so that you have a greater chance to win visibility in visually-rich Google Product Carousels. Also, you should try for a Product Knowledge Card and other emerging eCommerce type SERPs.

Product schema markup helps your eCommerce store products stand out in search engine result pages. The product markup has multiple properties that assist both users and search engines in understanding the information on your product pages. For example, a skilled semantic coder can customize and leverage ProductCollection for a collection of products. By Implementing new and robust schema types and properties, you can add product size-related attributes, colors, and more.

“Google crawls and indexes your eCommerce website as it does other websites, applying algorithms to understand your content and its intent. Structured data is a standardized machine-readable format for providing information about a page.

The following types of structured data are particularly relevant for eCommerce websites. Remember that shoppers may be at different stages in their shopping journey and looking for more than just product pages.” – Google

Google lists the following schema markup formats that benefit eCommerce sales:

Ecommerce structured data types

LocalBusiness

 Tell Google more about your business on your business information pages, such as their location and opening hours, with LocalBusiness

Product

 To tell Google more about your products, follow correct Product structured data documentation.

Review

 To assist Google in understanding Product reviews assist Google in understanding your site and when reviews appropriately add descriptive value with a Review snippet.

HowTo

 To help Google display a rich result for “how to” guides for products you sell on your site. There are very specific qualifications for your how-to pages with structured data.

FAQPage

 To tell Google about an FAQ page you provide, mark up your FAQs with structured data and be sure to validate it.
To help Google understand the hierarchy of pages on your site, use Breadcrumb on Google Search Central. This can help Google display a more meaningful breadcrumb trail in product-related search results.

WebSite

 Have someone who fully understands eCommerce markup add WebSite structured data to your home page to help Google understand how site search is implemented on your site and assists people looking to buy your products.

VideoObject

 Video is becoming increasingly important for eCommerce. Appropriately marking up pre-recorded videos (such as on a product page) or live stream events can help Google present the videos appropriately in Google Search results.

12. Test Technical Aspects and Page Load Performance for Excellence

Writers have a significant job just writing. They often don’t think of how to inform the search engines of things like what language the page is written in which order to load supporting JavaScript and CSS files. For example, unless someone publishes the page who knows these technical details, hreflang conflicts within a page’s source code may exist. Another example is using too many supporting files. Web designers are schooled to focus on important visual aspects and appealing page features. However, for eCommerce success, it’s important to work in partnership with am eCommerce technical SEO expert.

Things like duplicate title tags and/or duplicate meta descriptions confuse site visitors and search engines. Each page is more than just the content on it. How it is added to your website involves understanding ontology. How it is “optimized” can be a highly skilled SEO task.

Technical SEO assists in qualifying for the following beneficial selling strategies to gain:

  • A Product Knowledge Graph
  • An On-page Product Card
  • Mobile SERP Product Carousel

Additionally, a bad server or improper page rendering can ruin an excellently worded product page. It’s best to have a full team in place to ensure that buyers reach your page in the first place.

13. Demonstrate Brand Authority & Trustworthiness

With consumer fraud and phishing is on the rise, eCommerce product pages that provide your visitors with trust factors help avoid abandoned carts. You can assure them that they will get the item they are purchasing when parting with their hard-earned money. The BBB trust seal says a lot. (And today, Google Business Profiles are asking business owners if they have verified BBB status.)

Apply for e-commerce awards and recogniations. Place them on your product pages – they can offer just enough trust to tip the scales in your favor and convert that pending sale. Think of assurance factors, such as adding an environmental safety certification symbol, or a quality controlled or quality assured symbol.

14. Include Social Sharing Buttons

Once a prospective buyer has discovered your amazing product, make it easy for them to share this information with others. Social sharing buttons may be sitewide, for example, in your footer. You can add a quote that readers can share on social with one click. But be careful where they are placed so that they don’t interfere with the “Add to cart” action button. A VWO study reported that click-throughs to the main CTA (add to cart) button increased by 11.9% when social sharing buttons were removed from the landing page – especially if placed above the purchase CTA.

The best marketing strategy when making changes to your effective evergreen sales funnel is to A/B test. Don’t leave sales up to a “guess strategy”; test, tweak, and improve to ensure a maximum revenue stream.

Later, you can embed a favorable and helpful tweet that someone shared right within your product page’s content. Your SEO or developer can manage this feature for you without adding the weight of a plugin. To know what consumers like and do, Google Analytics can identify the social media sites that send the most visitors back to your website.

Over time, every product page benefits from updates. Maybe you add a new review, change the price, or find more descriptive wording for your text. All of these may break or cause product structured data drift. Having an expert manage regular audits is the best way to protect yourself from your product pages dropping in rankings; or worse, even being indexed.

For new stores, it might be a good idea to wait to add social sharing buttons. Once you’ve built an audience and have significant traffic to your product pages, it may be time to add them. Test whether social icons are better or if including specific numbers works well for your store.

Your sales pages produce your revenue income. Before you publish them, visually check how your content displays on mobile devices as well as desktop.

Common Product Page Mistakes to Avoid

  • Forgetting to focus on mobile optimization: According to Lena J. Weiner, “28% of US consumers used a mobile phone during their last store trip“. The May 6, 2022, The Data Point: 28% of US Consumers Used a Mobile Phone During Their Last Store Trip article reports on mobile shopper habits.

    Weiner’s study also discovered that “12% of U.S. consumers are using smartphones while inside stores to “look up coupons and discounts for the items they seek to purchase in-store, for example, and 9% use them to compare prices with other merchants … and 10% use their smartphones in-store to look up product information or reviews.”

  • Making them too much like your competitors: You need to provide unique content and do so better than anyone else. That means really knowing your customer and being able to relate to them in their own language. It means answering the questions that they ask. Your text is comprised of words that convey emotion, assurance, and positivity, and set your brand’s tone.
  • Making them too similar to your other pages: Repeat page formats or elements with little change can fall into the “duplicate content” category. Shoppers often want multiple points of contact. If they come back to the page, can they quickly identify it as unique? While this is challenging, it also is an experienced retailer’s opportunity. When you really know your product and your consumer, you are the best one to add personality and unique content to your landing pages.
  • Keyword stuffing: One common mistake businesses tend to make when creating their landing pages is creating a spam-like page stuffed with keywords. This may have once worked, but it can make search engines avoid surfacing your page. Provide helpful content that is meant for people.
  • Lack of knowing how each product impacts your sales funnel: Using product pages can help streamline your sales funnel – if your site’s ontology is correct and allows you to easily direct your visitors through the process of learning more about a product. This includes adding an item to their cart, seeing variable products (if they exist), and checking out without hassle.
  • Providing confusing product category pages: If you site’s ontology is great and your schema markup matches the intent of each page, it helps shoppers immediately find the specific product landing page they are seeking. Both content and markup for eCommerce category pages is quite different. Consider adding the amount of text that a user will probably want to read on product category pages in order to guide them in a streamlined process to their ideal purchase.

“Our goal with category pages should be then to feature information that confirms the features/functionalities/USPs of that particular set of products, clarifies any common doubts about them, informs about any existing offers and why/how the user is in the best place to buy them, as a salesperson would do at a physical store at that point in the customer journey.” – Aleyda Solis[3]

Anton Shulke, Head of Influencer Marketing at Build With Duda“When adding features to a product page, Duda’s rich web design features allow consumers to create robust product pages. One great feature is enabling the consumer to add an item to their wishlist. If they are not ready to make a purchase decision at the moment, it’s a real timesaver for the buyer. It allows them to save items that they are interested in purchasing without needing to search for it later.” – Anton Shulke, Head of Influencer Marketing at Build With Duda

Ready to Invest in High-Converting Product Pages?

Your product pages can instantly convey the value of your items. They can be compelling to potential customers. They can provide shoppers with the information that builds confidence to move ahead with the purchase. See for yourself, if you take a close look at the best-performing retailers in your niche, you’ll find them on the top of their eCommerce game. Someone will dominate both the paid advertising market and the SERPs – that can be you.

If you feel in need of giving due attention to your product page designs, we are here to help you significantly improve the conversions they bring. We offer Google Merchant Center Management service; it is a great way to ensure maximim reach to get your items in front of the right buyer. Stay tuned, we’ll add more tips on how to create create perfect product pages as they emerge.

Call 651-206-2410 to partner. We specialize in Heathcare-Related Product Sales

References:

[1] https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/10220642

[2] https://mailchimp.com/resources/design-a-product-page-that-sells/

[3] https://www.aleydasolis.com/en/search-engine-optimization/optimizing-content-in-category-pages-while-keeping-its-commercial-nature/