Creating The Perfect E-Commerce Product Page
A look into retailers, trends and best practice to understand the elements required for creating the perfect E-commerce product page.
The Staple Ingredients
The perfect E-commerce product page should form as part of a consistent user journey and follow brand guidelines and be in line with brand identity. Pages should, where necessary follow best practices, however remember, best practice isn’t necessarily a one size fits all approach. Design and industry trends follow this pattern too, and whilst they are important and should be acknowledged, it’s important to not get carried away with these and to use a measured approach. It’s important to stay on top of the design of your product page too, to test and use an iterative approach based on data and even key events. The final staple ingredient is the micro UX and interactions of the page, creating unique and memorable user experiences, its the little things that can make a big difference.
Images & Video
One of the most important areas of the product page is the visual representation of the product, through images and video. It’s important to have large, high quality product images and video with varied angles and views of the item and the ability to zoom. Arguably this is even more important for clothing retailers than other sectors. Some retailers are even offering 360 degree photography of their products, which is a great touch.
Newly launched sites such as Moss and Oasis demonstrate this perfectly with there product images taking centre stage, breaking traditional left side of the page placement, which is especially impactful on mobile, filling the whole screen. It breaks the old school ‘above the fold’ mentality and really showcases the product.
Taking this a step further are sites such as Fitbit (great example of micro UX) and Bellroy who are using annotations along with their product imagery to highlight key information. This is a trend I think we will see more of in the near future and works really well with parallax scrolling page for some specialist products.
Stock & Availability
Being upfront and clear with stock is an underestimated area that many retailers can improve upon. Retailers with stores should try to adopt the multi-channel approach and provide an in-store stock checker for the customers ease and options. Argos do this fantastically well and even save preferences for the user.
In terms of online stock, messaging should be upfront and clear to the user. This entails providing, in, out and low stock messaging. Also providing clear timescales and cut-offs to the customer at product page level, rather than providing any nasty surprises later on in the journey.
To take this area to the next level retailers can provide stock notifications for out of stock products, better late than never. Also, pre-ordering products could be used, so long as the expected delivery date is made clear.
Wishlist & Favourite
The ability to save products is much more important now that customer journeys are spanning across various devices. An important factor in dealing with this is providing the ability to favourite and wishlist items so that users can save items and return to them at a more convenient time.
This function should provide capabilities to create multiple lists, name these lists and the share or publish the list. Certain retailers are providing this functionality under the moniker of save for later, but the theory behind the names is the same.
USP’s & Service
The product page is a fantastic place to subtly shout about your USP’s and service options to reinforce to the customer why they should buy from you and not a competitor.
This includes highlighting any special offers on the product and being upfront about delivery options and costs, your returns policy and methods of secure payment. Again this links to being able to take care of any doubts at product page level, not surprising the customer in the bag, or worse, the checkout. A great way of reinforcing these reasons is to use iconography to keep it short and snappy.
To take this a step further, the product page can be a place to provide options for gifting, such as personalisation and gift wrap for products especially at Christmas and other key gifting times.
Customer & Social Proof
A more emerging trend, which is used largely in the hotels and booking industry is to provide social and customer proof to enforce the reasons to buy. This involves providing snippets of information and statistics on the item, as shown on booking.com without the user having to make a conscious decision to search for reviews or any such information.
Highlighting social proof such as how many shares a product has had and providing the ability to like or share the product to various outlets is a great way of building this up.
Pulling in any articles and PR related to the product can also help, it’s not a great idea to link out from your page to such items, but again pulling snippets such as the highlights of magazine review or a celebrity endorsement can enhance the appeal of a product.
Building a community is a great way of looking at customer and social proof. Providing customer the option to share their own images of a product can enforce trust as well as give the customer a look at the product in use first-hand. Made is a great example of this in the furniture world and Oasis does this very well in the fashion world.
Reviews & Questions
It’s fairly common these days for sites to provide the option to write reviews and for customers to read reviews and so it should be. Retailers can begin to up their game and take this to another level on their product pages however.
Websites such as Modcloth give the user an option to upload photos with their review. This links to my previous point about customer proof and the importance of showing items in a real-life environment and creating a community. The influence of reviews is no secret, so use the product page to entice customers into leaving a review. This doesn’t have to be through incentives, think of more creative ways, such as the wording used, like The Fragrance Shop, who use “Be The First To Review” rather than just stating that there are no reviews.
Use the expertise and knowledge of experts and your staff and allow guest reviews. Just ensure to highlight that these are from such people. The same can be used in a more obvious way, with eBay style question and answers about products on the page that all users can read through before making their purchasing decision.
Sizing & Measurement
It’s important to provide easy to understand sizing and measurement information for your products. This involves giving the customer easy access to not just the product measurements and sizing comparisons, but also to how to measure guides and fit guides.
It’s a good idea to provide comparisons to what the model is wearing, as show on Asos, to give the user something to compare to. Also providing information on whether the product is true to size, runs a size smaller etc can be a great help to the customer.
A further step, but worth a mention is the rise of third-party software such as True Fit, as used on House Of Fraser, who build a size profile based on your preferences and previously purchased products to advise on what size you will need. I can certainly see this kind of service developing in the near future with companies using preferences and building size profiles for customers which could allow them to pre-populate sizes for a customer.
Cross-Sell & Up-Sell
To squeeze that little extra from your product pages, it’s important to get your cross-sells and up-sells correct. Providing Amazon style “People Also Like” sections showing customers what people bought who were also looking at this item can be a starter. Cross-selling can also work well for certain products, promoting items that compliment the product the user is looking at, like don’t forget your batteries for example. Then also up-selling, so if your selling something for 50ml, make sure the user knows its only £10 extra to get the 100ml of the same product.
Industry specific examples that fall into this category worth a mention are including a complete the look section within fashion where the user can easily purchase the whole outfit the model is wearing or at least more that a single item at once. Outfit planners are also a growing trend that could be nice to have within this industry where the user can piece together a whole outfit to see how it looks rather than purchasing items one by one.
Subscribe and replenish services within the beauty industry can work well too, as shown with Feel Unique who make it easy for the customer to set up repeat purchases and receive products on a timely cycle to suit them.
In Conclusion
It’s obviously a bit of a myth that the perfect product page could exist and there is no set formula. Different things will suit different companies and industries. The ideas above should all be considered and thought about though and I’m sure a fair few of these ideas will grow and we will start to see them develop and new trends and ideas come in within the near future.
What are your thoughts? Anything I have missed? Any product pages worth taking a look at? Anything you disagree with?
Thanks for taking the time to read.
Gareth Starkey
