How to Create a Good Online Shopping Experience Part 1: Product Page Design

Online shopping has evolved considerably since its beginnings a few years ago. More and more people worry less about giving their information to online retailers, making e-commerce sites more viable. However, in order to be successful, you have to gain your customers’ trust by offering a credible and user-friendly place to shop. In this first part of our two-part feature, we will share a few tips to help you develop good product pages:

• Display your product! Provide clear, quality pictures of your product with different viewing angles. Your customers can’t touch your product so the least you can do is properly show it to them. Provide a complete description of the product. Don’t skimp on the details, they matter. There’s nothing less reassuring than a blurry picture and only a few lines of text! On the flip side, don’t drown your user with unnecessary information.
• Define product categories. You need to subdivide your products into defined categories, especially if you sell a vast variety of them. That way your customer will easily find what he’s looking for, the same way he knows in what aisle a pint of milk is found at the grocery store. It’s also recommended that you display breadcrumbs to let your customer know where he is.

Apple has a great product page.

• Invite your customer to take a look at your other products. Show related products, top grossing products or what customers bought on your site after buying your product. Amazon has been one of the pioneers in this regard and it definitely contributed to their success.
• Suggest products in your search field. Suggesting products or categories as your customer is typing will help him find what he’s looking for. eBay does this flawlessly.

eBay’s search suggestions.

• Provide search filters. This will help your customer discard unwanted results.
• Highlight crucial information. Clearly show the products’ price and give an estimate of the shipping costs. It’s also of utmost importance to display your return policies and product warranties. You need to build customer trust. Make sure your customer is completely satisfied with his purchase. Provide several contact options, including a telephone number: a human voice will reassure hesitating customers. Finally, put a big Buy or Add to cart button, your customer shouldn’t have to search for it!
• Help your customers compare products. Provide comparison charts to help your customer choose between two products or more.
• Provide user reviews. It has been proven that peer reviews greatly influence the customer’s purchase.
• Provide incentives for your customer to revisit. Whether it’s regular sales, new products or fidelity rewards. You can also invite your customer to subscribe to a newsletter but don’t force him using cheap tricks, this will only annoy him.
• Organize your content. Amazon has implemented many useful features to help their customers but their product page is really cluttered, making it overwhelming for first time visitors.

Amazon’s product pages offer lots of useful information but they’re too cluttered.

Having a good product page is the first step to a successful ecommerce web site. Stay tuned for part 2, where we will discuss how to design a good shopping cart and checkout process.

Suggested Reading

• The secret of making money online
• 11 tips on creating great user experiences