Product images are the most important component Having beautiful relevant quality images is more important than the product information, a long description and ratings & reviews.   According to MDG, here’s the breakdown of what customers said is important to them: Quality of a product image – 67% Product-specific information – 63% Long description – […]

On mobile, there are 4 main approaches No zoom feature, but users can pinch to zoom in the page, which also zooms in the product image. Allow to zoom within the product gallery area (and it does NOT zoom the rest of the page) Opening an overlay panel above the page with all the larger […]

Price is the most important factor influencing purchasing decisions. Shoppers have a price range in mind and need to know whether or not they can afford your wares as soon as possible. Clearly displayed prices also make price comparison easy. In fact, a Baymard study found that users had a strong negative reaction to sites […]

Video is one of the most beloved communication mediums of the modern era. For starters, it’s easier to digest than text.  Secondly, videos are quite easy to share. The same thing can’t be said of text pages. Video is also quite captivating, but most importantly, it works.   Video works Video appears in 70% of the […]

Product descriptions need to be comprehensive but that doesn’t mean they should be overly long. Few buyers will actually read it in its entirety. The solution is to split the description into two:  A summarized product description close to the product title A comprehensive product description lower on the product page   The summarized description […]

Why is scannability important? Text is an extremely useful communication medium. You’ll need it for your homepage, category pages, product detail pages, help page, and many more. So it’s important to make your text scannable. If your product description is 200 words long, the average customer will not really read it in its entirety. They’ll […]

The product description is where you actually sell your product if the title and images didn’t. A customer buying a 10-dollar chocolate bar or t-shirt might not bother reading a lengthy product description but someone buying a thousand-dollar computer almost certainly will. Your product description needs to convert as many readers as possible.   What […]

Shipping Time Shopping online can be stressful at times. You don’t get to immediately take your purchases home with you. With brick-and-mortar stores, even bulky purchases like furniture get delivered in a matter of hours. With online shopping, your purchases never get to you that fast.  Amazon has Prime Now but that is the exception […]

According to Baymard, 35% of ecommerce sites still display delivery information in this form: You’ll get your order in three days Or the even worse: You’ll get your order in three to five business days.   What should you do instead? Display the expected delivery date. Something like this: You will receive your order on […]

Why is clarifying what is in the product thumbnails important? Customers need to have a good understanding of what they’re buying. Customers should be clearly informed if they need to purchase extra accessories. Customers tend to assign a lower value to products that have zero accessories to similar ones that have accessories shown right beside […]

What not to do This is the strangest quantity selector I’ve ever seen on desktop. A perfect example of what NOT to do:   This dropdown list is clunky and takes up a lot of space yet it’s performing a very mundane task. And to make matters worse it’s performing it poorly.  If someone wanted […]

Aim to get 10+ reviews per product, which is enough for shoppers to make an informed decision. If a big percentage of your products have zero or only a few reviews, that can hurt your conversions.   How? Place the Write a Review button prominently in the Reviews section  Offer sweepstakes or discounts in exchange […]

Some products come in multiple variants. A lot of these variations center around color and size. Ideally, different variations of the same product ought to share a product page. Take the example of a refrigerator, a portable speaker, a phone, a laptop computer, a shirt, or a pair of shoes. If the design is identical […]

A product like a shoe, an item of clothing, a phone, a refrigerator, a portable speaker, a cell phone, or a laptop computer can come in a variety of colors. These colors have no bearing on the product’s functionality. It’s the same product design and made of the same material (s). The colors are just […]

While some product variants are virtually identical, there are some cases where the variance is actually important to the customer. Let’s look at a few cases: Television set: A 32-inch TV and a 65-inch TV from the same manufacturer may be identical in most respects but size actually matters in this case because the customer […]

Many sites offer sitewide FAQs but there are occasions when product specific FAQs are necessary. Some products like IKEA furniture and Lego bricks require quite a bit of assembly before they can become functional. If you sell such products you should offer assembly instructions in a downloadable manual or ship a hardcopy of the same […]

Product reviews are extremely important. After product images, reviews are the most utilized section of the product page. In fact 95% of customers surveyed by Baymard say they use reviews to make a purchase decision yet only about 0.5 to 3% of them ever bother to leave a review. So, how do you encourage your […]

VWO’s study A case study done by VWO revealed that removing social share buttons increased conversions by 11.9%. But that’s one of those things that you should definitely test. It will depend on your audience.   Some nuance by members One of the members of my Ecom Convert group mentioned that they’re getting a lot […]

This also goes for the “Continue to Checkout” button in the Cart: make it sticky on mobile. On desktop, you can either do the same as on mobile, or you can have a large button (or two – one at the top and one at the bottom of the Cart page) with a contrasting color. […]

An “Add to Cart” button is the most important button on the product page. It needs to be highly visible above the fold. It tells a customer exactly what to do after viewing the product images, reading the product descriptions and reviews, and seeing the product price.   How to design a great Add to […]

USP stands for Unique Selling Proposition. As a store you should have a few things that set you apart from the crowd. USPs tell a customer why they should buy from you and not the competition. Take Raycon for example. They have a free returns policy for any reason during the first 45 days after […]

A reason to bounce “Email Me” buttons or waitlists are ineffective for out-of-stock products, because users will just go shop somewhere else.   Let them buy anyway Allow instead users to purchase temporarily out-of-stock products, warn them, and increase the delivery time. Also prominently display product alternatives.   Discontinued products For discontinued or deprecated products, […]

Recommending products a user might be interested in is a cornerstone of increasing ecommerce sales.  Brick and mortar stores rely on attractive visual displays to encourage impulse purchases but an ecommerce store has something better: the personalized storefront. That’s an extremely indispensable part of your sales cycle. The average ecommerce customer is spoiled for choice. […]

28% of sites use horizontal tabs on the product page. While professionals like web developers have little issue with them, ordinary Joes are experiencing some trouble with them.   Users don’t see them According to Baymard, 27% of users overlook the hidden content in the inactive horizontal tabs. In fact, horizontal tabs happen to be […]

Spec sheets are not needed in many categories but if you sell technical appliances, their importance cannot be overemphasized. For things like computers, cameras, refrigerators, heavy duty blenders, power tools, and the like, your spec sheet may make or break a sale.   A lot of spec sheets are terrible According to Baymard, a full […]

People don’t buy Lamborghinis because they can do 200 miles an hour. It may be one of the reasons but it’s not the main one. The main reason for such a purchase is status. It’s for the same reason that the most popular Lamborghini color is light green while ordinary cars tend to be painted […]

Shoppers use reviews extensively as part of their pre-purchase decision-making but the interesting thing is that they always seek out the negative reviews. Negative reviews in turn tend to be ranked pretty highly in the review section especially if you have something like a like button or an upvote button that pushes the best reviews […]

High shipping costs are the leading cause of cart abandonment at checkout. That’s why users are highly motivated by free shipping. If you offer free shipping, mention it often and prominently.   Say it again On the product page, your shipping and return information needs to be reiterated. If your unique selling points (see BP […]

If your shipping isn’t free If you offer free shipping on all purchases, then ignore this best practice.   Some data About 21% of US online shoppers abandon orders because they aren’t able to see the total order cost upfront before checking out. And about 64% of users look for shipping costs on the product […]

Images are extremely important to customers when evaluating a product. They are the most utilized element of the product page. A lot of products require multiple images to showcase them from all angles and provide customers with enough information to make a decision. This necessitates the product gallery which customers can scroll through and view […]

One of the advantages of shopping in a physical store is that you can always know the size of every item with a single look. You never have to worry about whether that couch will fit in your living room or that carpet will fit on your floor or whether that refrigerator would pass through […]

Offering relevant compatible products is a great way to offer a customer convenience and increased functionality while simultaneously giving your sales a much needed boost.  There are two kinds of products you have to recommend: Necessary accessories Products commonly used together   Necessary accessories A number of products can’t function properly on their own. Take […]

Ads have become an unavoidable part of the web browsing experience but that hasn’t made people hate them less. For most sites (blogs, news, social media et al), users have come to accept ads as part of the experience. Even then, they still do their best to avoid them.  For e-commerce sites however, ads are […]

Ecommerce customers love reviews. That in itself is a great thing. A customer who makes a purchase after thoroughly researching the product in question is going to be satisfied and will be less likely to suffer from post-purchase regret.  Satisfied customers also tend to turn into repeat customers so you have that to look forward […]

The standard e-commerce product title usually has at least three elements following a general pattern: brand + model + a host of relevant product attributes. This lengthy title is aimed at communicating as much information about the product as possible while simultaneously contributing to search engine optimization. The more detailed and descriptive a product title […]

Due to the huge diversity in tastes, social norms, and financial capabilities, products are often sold in multiple variations. A refrigerator could be sold in three or four sizes and in even more colors. Visually focused products like clothing, carpets, curtains, and cosmetics like lipstick are often offered in hundreds of colors. This brings us […]

Hard to read One of the members of my Ecom Convert group shared some interesting research about ALL CAPS text in a comment to a mini-teardown last week: Roughly 90% of people find all-capped text to be harder to read, in general.   These two articles were given as sources: https://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/styling-text-website-research/ https://blog.prototypr.io/all-caps-on-ui-good-or-bad-2570f14dc457     I […]

Mix & match Give your shoppers the option to mix & match. Mixed bundling: products in the bundle can be purchased individually also. Pure bundling: products are only available together and cannot be bought separately.   Nintendo offering mixed bundling Timothy Derdenger and Vineet Kumar from Harvard Business School  discovered that when Nintendo offered mixed […]

Everybody has a concept of what inches and feet or meters and centimeters measure like. But we don’t think of sizes that way. When we see a sofa, we don’t think of it as an object that is four, five, or even six feet wide. We think of the sofa as a three seater or […]

While “close enough” is often good enough for the sizes of most products, clothes and shoes are different. The lack of an exact size can break a sale. In fact 46% of shoppers have returned a product for being the wrong size. A sizing chart is extremely essential in fashion due to all the contradicting […]

Avoid dropdowns Avoid having users select a color from a dropdown with color labels (‘red’, ‘black’, etc.). Make them choose the color variant from a list of color swatches (circles or squares filled with color) or small thumbnails of the product in different colors. If some of your products have multi-color design variants and some […]

Mistakes happen all the time. People might forget to select a size before adding an item to their cart. On forms, people might mistype email addresses, zip codes, city names, and credit card numbers. Sometimes, they might leave a required field blank.   Default values For items that aren’t very size sensitive, you can preselect […]

Given that 53% of global internet traffic comes from mobile devices, making accommodations for your mobile visitors is crucial for a great user experience.   Allow swiping Swiping is the second most used feature on touchscreens after scrolling. The gesture is deeply rooted in human psychology and even babies have been observed making it when […]

Online shoppers are rarely in a hurry. They can browse endlessly, leave, return, and keep browsing. They’ll even compare your prices to those of your rivals. Consequently, a sale can take days. This isn’t ideal. The faster they make their purchasing decisions, the more you can sell. This is where urgency elements come in.   […]

Cross selling doesn’t just increase your average order value, it benefits the customer by recommending additional products that they’ll probably need. For example, someone buying a TV will probably need a wall bracket to mount it. The product page provides a great opportunity to cross-sell.   There are several types of cross-sell sections that you […]

Convenient as online shopping may be, shoppers like to buy some items in person. These are mostly high value items: home appliances like refrigerators and luxury goods like handbags. Products that heavily rely on sensory perceptions like perfume and lipstick also fall in this category.  Some people might also prefer to buy certain clothes like […]

Product titles identify your product to consumers and also to search engines which helps drive organic traffic to your store. Due to this, it might be tempting to overload your title with keywords. Don’t do it. Google’s algorithm has grown sophisticated enough to notice keyword stuffing and will punish you severely for that. Besides, such […]

95% of shoppers consult reviews before buying a product online. Generally, the more expensive a product is, the higher the likelihood that a customer will spend a considerable chunk of time looking at reviews. While a 10-dollar set of salt and pepper shakers might be added to the cart without a second thought, a 600-dollar […]

Personalization is no longer just a buzzword in e-commerce. It’s increasingly becoming an expected feature. And no, you can’t just put the customer’s name in the account section and call it a day. People expect more. They want to be recognized and treated like the VIPs they believe they are. They expect personalization in every […]

A t-shirt is a unisex item of clothing. Same with things like socks and sneakers. When assigning categories, where do you put them? Under the “Male Clothing” category or the “Female Clothing” category? Or do you create a unisex category of their own? In a case like this, double categorization is the best solution. The […]

As seen on TV. As seen on Forbes. As seen here and there. These are all excellent ways to show your customer that you are legit and you’re a big deal. The homepage is the traditional location for trust badges, but what about visitors arriving from an ad? Or those who search for the product […]

Baymard and the Nielsen Norman Group, after extensive research, both agree that the best way to design your quantity selector is by using the plus and minus buttons on either side of the default value. The plus and minus buttons are intuitively easy to understand while retaining a minimalistic elegance from a design perspective. They […]

Accordion menus stack information under a series of vertical headers. The information can then be accessed by clicking the header, an act that expands the content underneath it. There are many reasons to use accordions, especially on mobile: They give a full overview of a page’s content at a single glance. They save valuable space […]

When you have multiple product variants, sometimes it’s more convenient to show a customer everything you have to offer at a glance. Let’s say you sell chairs. The two chairs are identical in every aspect except one has a headrest and the other doesn’t. Thus, these chairs are variants of each other. How do you […]

When you go to a store and they don’t have what you want, what do you do? You find an alternative or leave if they don’t have one. But an e-commerce store doesn’t have the same limitations as a brick-and-mortar outlet. A customer in a supermarket may buy an alternate product if the one he […]

Joey is shopping for golf balls in your store. Let’s say he filters by price. The cheapest golf balls you have come in a six-pack and cost $19. Then there is a 20-pack box of golf balls that goes for $59. And finally, there’s a 36-pack box of golf balls that retails at $109. Which […]