Product Detail Pages that Convert

When it comes to optimizing online sales, the first things people usually think of are actions such as advertising and promotions and a friction-free checkout. While these are all significant drivers, we would suggest that even more gains can come from improving the content in your product data catalog.

Your product catalog includes attributes like price, category, GTIN, description and title. These attributes combine to showcase the product, which the customer will use to evaluate a purchase. These attributes also impact how often and for what keywords your products will show up for in google search. A product detail page filled with strong content will lead traffic and conversions to skyrocket. Without strong product content, marketing efforts will underperform.

85% of customers rate product information as the top feature they want from a website – Forrester

Below, we will talk about why getting product data right is worth focusing energy on and how to do that without spending hours on manual work in the process.

Search and SEO

Product detail page content is read by search engines as well as shoppers, so improving your titles and descriptions will improve search engine rankings and increase site traffic.

To optimize your catalog content for SEO, research keywords for your categories, brands and product types and make sure these are included on the page. This way, if a shopper doesn’t recall an exact brand name, they will still find the product by searching related descriptors or keywords. If these related keywords are not included in a product title or description, it will not be shown to shoppers, missing that sale opportunity.

Reducing product returns

Returns pose a substantial cost to eCommerce businesses – taking time and money to receive, check, restock or liquidate. Product return numbers are significant, with 30% of products bought online returned. 22% of those returns are directly due to unmet expectations caused by not enough, or unclear product information.

Giving the shopper a clear picture of a product through using quality content can have a substantial effect on decreasing product returns and improving customer happiness.

Prioritize quality images

In physical stores, shoppers are able to touch the product, turn it over, judge its size and weight or ask questions to evaluate the product. In an eCommerce store, the content featured on the product page needs to re-create this experience.

Product images are the most effective tool in re-creating that experience. Include pictures that showcase the product at different angles and with high quality resolution that allows the shopper to zoom in and feel as if they are right there with the product. Including an image in context, with a person or other recognizable item, can quickly communicate the relative size.

Product descriptions 

A product description explains what the product is (features) and why it is worth purchasing (benefits).

The test for every product description is: Can this description get the product into the basket? So, the first thing to remember is that product descriptions are written to be appealing to real people. You need to know your shopper and the value they are seeking, and then deliver it in your marketing copy.

Automate product data cleaning to be ready for your online store

With hundreds or thousands of products in an extended product range, it is impossible to manually optimize each product listing.  The solution is to use automation tools which allow you to cleanse product data and optimize it at scale. Vesta is one such automation solution that merges, transforms and validates product data sourced from each of your suppliers to get it into the format and structure you need for your online store. Automation saves hundreds of hours of work in spreadsheets automatically creating a consistent format across your whole product range.

Look to Analytics

Continuous improvement is only possible with an understanding of what is working and what is not. By reviewing often returned products and those with low reviews, you can make informed changes to your product data feed. Use analytics to identify trouble areas, such as confusing or misleading product descriptions, or search terms that aren’t performing.

The value of high-quality product data 

Through optimizing your digital product catalog to be more complete, compelling, and relevant, any merchant can keep shoppers more engaged. Using the guidelines and tips covered above, you can bring more shoppers to your site, as well as greatly improve the shopping experience leading to better conversion.  With innovative tools now available, such as Vesta, customizing unique content is no longer too time consuming to tackle, with optimization across even the largest ranges possible. Building a strong core foundation of product data content will deliver sustained improvements to many of your other eCommerce activities and help you to build a site that your customers keep returning to.