Your product pages are the most important part of your users’ experience and therefore, an ideal place to work on conversion rate optimization (CRO). Wouldn’t it be great if you could make just one or two tweaks to your product page and watch the conversions roll in?

Given that your current marketing strategies might be limited by your commerce engine, you might think that site-wide CRO improvement is out of reach. But the benefits aren’t as far away as you might think, and a few simple improvements to your product pages are all you need to seize them for yourself.

Start With Clear Value Propositions

Every product description in your catalog should have a clear, focused value proposition that ties into a specific customer pain point. In other words, you’ll want to keep the language focused on the benefits rather than the features.

Testing the first few lines of copy after the product title on your product page is always a worthy investment of time and resources. Delivered in sentence or bullet format, you’re setting down a summary of features, points of differentiation, even pricing that helps to set this product apart from others on the site or in the marketplace.

We have seen the copy referred to as the “product summary” or “product highlights”, but it’s essentially the same thing. In short, a quick snippet that explains why this product should be in your shopping cart.

For example, if you’re selling a coffee maker, avoid discussing its size, its filters, or its functionality. There will be plenty of time to go over these details later on the page, but your primary description isn’t the place for a laundry list of specifications.

Instead, focus on how those features improve a customer’s life: The large size means you can brew for multiple people. Its filters guarantee that your coffee is smooth and clean. And its timer-based functions mean that you can wake up to a fresh pot every morning. This type of benefit-oriented language helps readers visualize their lives with the product and can be a big driver of conversions.

Points to Consider:

  • Have you utilized summaries or highlights on your product detail page?
  • If so, do your product summaries convey the right message and tone?
  • Is there a schedule or process set to review and update product features/summary content on a regular basis?
  • If you’re already using summary info, how is the placement, layout and design on the page?

Include Social Proof

An easy way to increase customer trust (read: conversion potential) is to include social proof on your product pages. Set up your interface to include a section for testimonials, reviews, customer notes, or even star-based ratings. You’ll want to vet these reviews before publishing them, obviously, but their mere inclusion can be enough to assuage any last-minute fears a buyer might have. In one survey, 91% of customers aged 18-34 agreed that they trusted user reviews as much as personal recommendations.

Points to Consider:

  • If you’re already collecting reviews, are you featuring or highlighting reviews that reiterate key product summary points?
  • In reviewing the product messages posted by customers, are you finding trends or ideas that are consistent over time? Are there findings that can be pulled from the notes in order to enhance the product descriptions and summaries?

Cross-Sell at Every Opportunity

Never miss an opportunity to cross-sell related products. Every time a customer adds an item to his/her cart, you gain valuable insight into what other products might earn some attention. Include suggested purchases into your shopping cart UX, either at the bottom of each product page or during your checkout process. Be sure to make them visible! Customers don’t always know what they want until they see it, and the right push at the right time can net you some easy sales that will bump up your conversion rate overall.

Points to Consider:

  • Whether or not you’re currently using cross-selling or related products, you should be on the lookout for opportunities to improve placement or layout. As the site design changes over time, where can you add marketing?
  • If you’re already relating products and cross-selling, are you tracking the clicks and traffic they generate?
  • Lastly, if you’re already employing product recommendations, review your strategy from the top down? How are you selecting recommended products? Is it being done automatically? If so, how?

Include Focused, Supporting Imagery

It might be a given, but conversions rely on images. Most eCommerce stores understand this already and include high-resolution photos throughout their catalog, and for good reason: They’re one of the single best ways to supplement your website copy and help readers understand what they’re getting. Make sure to include these, even for products that aren’t visually striking.

Depending on your product mix, it’s also important to consider the context of your images. Imagine you’re selling a line of high end pens. I want to see what the pen looks like, of course, but I also want to see it in context. Show the pen next to a laptop on a desk or in someone’s hand. Contextual imagery adds to the description that the customer can read, but also answers questions itself.

Points to Consider:

  • Are you using product imagery to answer product questions and provide context?
  • Are there alternative uses for product imagery (beyond the simple product gallery) such a interspersed in content or else that would help the product story?

Quit Putting Off Your SEO

Customers can’t buy what they can’t see, making product page SEO an essential part of your eCommerce marketing efforts. Check each of your product pages and make sure the following areas are aligned with your company’s keyword research:

  • Product titles, descriptions, and URLs
  • Image descriptions and tags
  • Thoughtful meta descriptions that encourage clicks
  • Internal links to other website or product pages

We recommend taking a measured approach, here. Don’t change all of your SEO elements all at once—it’ll be impossible to track which are actually driving results. Make small changes over time and keep track of the downstream effects.

Include Easy Support Options

Many customers won’t be ready to purchase right when they land on your product page. And that’s okay. Your goal is to acknowledge this need and offer whatever on-site support you can to support their decisions.

Frequently, marketers set up in-depth product resource centers which include FAQs, tutorials and other information around products and product support. Unfortunately, all too often the content is classified as “support” and it stays siloed in the “Support” area of the site.

If you think of product content and resources as belonging to the entire site, you can begin to recognize opportunities to use sales-content within the support area and support-content in the sales area. Both can provide an additional layer of value when linked outside of their traditional space on the site.

Points to Consider:

  • Are there product resources that are siloed and disconnected from the product pages themselves?
  • Does the support center link to the sales page for the product?

Small Changes for Conversion Rate Optimization

The smallest changes can produce the biggest effects in CRO. Make sure you’re testing every change you make and isolate as many variables as you can. This is the best way to understand which changes are driving real improvement and which elements contribute most to your eCommerce marketing efforts.