How good is the content on your product display page?

I think it’s safe to say that the majority of online shops sell products. Yes there are a few online retailers that sell services. Regardless, each product and service or whatever you are selling online needs it’s own product display page. It’s important to note, Google doesn’t index sites it indexes pages.

Before you begin to upload a product online get as much content as you can. This includes more than one image. Images are important for a UX perspective because the customer in reality would like to pick up the box and read to better understand what it does. This is especially the fact if this is a new to market product and customer trust hasn’t yet been established.

What a good Product Display Page will have

  1. Product Name

Obviously you need to tell the customer what the product is but where some companies trip up is by using abbreviations. For example 12 pack of Strawberry Candles becomes Strawberry Candles – 12PK. I understand convention and the way it looks on a product tile page looks good but this is actually hurting your SEO. It would be better using a title like Strawberry Candles – 12 Pack.

Keep the naming convention of the products as close to something a human would search for. In other words, if you were searching for a product that you didn’t know much about what would you punch into Google? Using the example above DO NOT ever make Strawberry Candles – 12 Pack, S/berry Candles – 12 Pack. Yes, I have seen this happen so many times. At my last job merchandise managers gave me ranges of products with abbreviations that I removed.

  1. Short Descriptions

Short descriptions are usually a quick one liner to get the attention of the customer in the product tile page. Personally, I’m not a fan of short descriptions as I think 255 characters isn’t really enough to capture a customer. Please, correct me if I’m wrong. Short descriptions I like to use for informing of conditions associated with the product. For example, maximum purchase of 3 units per order or will not ship internationally.

Try not to clutter product tile pages with overly long sentences. From a UX perspective it looks far too busy. Product tile pages are for glancing. Short descriptions on a product page do look good but anything you want to say in the short description can be said on the long description of the product display page.

  1. Long Description

The meat and potatoes of any product display page. This is where the majority of the product content should live. Things like sales blurbs, benefits of using the product and general info should be added. This is where most of the content on the product display page will be indexed by Google. Take full advantage of it.

Getting content for your products should be fairly easy if the brand is well recognised. Using supplier websites a wealth of content can be extracted. But be careful, by just copying content you are not setting yourself up for success. At the end of the day you are just duplicating content so if you have the time and resources it is better to re write supplier copy. In an ideal world content from supplier websites would go to a copywriter and a more tailored content will be provided to your site. But at the end of the day I know that costs money and not every company can hire a full time copywriter. I myself had this issue at my last role hence why I re wrote the product content for the top 50 products onsite. I saw the benefit of having unique content, especially for our top sellers.

  1. Brand Name

Brand name is important to include in the product title but when you are setting up an online shop consider also briefing into the developers a brand page. A brand page lists all the brands you carry online. This can allow customers to easily go to this page and find the brand they want to shop by; particularly if they have a certain product in mind. This also provides great SEO benefit to the site as the google picks these brands up as juicy keywords.

Most e-commerce platforms have a field for the brand to be added. This is something you do not want to leave blank. Depending on how your site is configured the Brand name will appear on the product display page. Another small but important element when the google bots crawl the page.

  1. Images and alternate images

When getting content together for products it is important to source images. Bear minimum is a front shot of the product that is of high quality. No a faded pixilated image. My rule of thumb when gathering content for products is to have a main image and at least one alternative image of the back of the product or package. Why? Products that come with a package usually has warnings, ingredients and dosage listed by the manufacturer. From a customer perspective having the ability to see that provide confidence and boosts conversion.

Images are also important for Google merch centre feeds. If a feed has been set up for Google product listing advertisements for your online range if a large sup of products are missing images or have image coming soon Google will penalise you. I have seen this first had! Suspension of an account will happen usually after a warning from Google prior to taking effect.

  1. Prices was and now – merch center feed

With pricing a fair bit of research is needed to drive the best value. If you are carrying products that are listed by your competitors, do some research. See what they are selling it for and what their listed RRP is. Having a RRP crossed out and displaying a reduced price prompts the consumers thought patterns to getting them to think that they are saving. The display of price reduction drives value and if the shopper is shopping for value this is enough to get the sale over the line. This is one of the first methods I implement to boost conversion on site.

  1. Attributes

This is the second most important section of the product display page. Actually, this is just as important as the long description. Attributes lists are super important to give the customer all the facts prior to purchase. In some cases with vitamins and pharmacy medicine it is compulsory to list warnings.

So what are attributes? Examples of attributes are: Warnings, Dosage, Weight, Dimensions, Colour, Size and Instructions to name a few. Basically attributes are something descriptive about the product. More attributes you can include in the product display page the better. Remember, all these get crawled by the Google both which adds weight to the product page.

  1. Cross sells (people also bought)

Ever order a burger and get asked if you would fries with that? That is a cross sell. Something else that can be added to the product purchased to make the experience better. For example, buy this dinning table and you might also want a dinning table cloth or coasters. This is a great way of boosting average order value. Not really a boost to SEO but by adding cross sells it completes the page and not missing out on an opportunity to boost sales on site.

There are other cool things that can be added to a product display page to boost conversion. More of this I have discussed in the article “5 Cool things to do online to boost conversion”. In the article I discuss implementing things like a 360 rotating view of the product with a zoom functionality. Also, product ribbons to highlight to customers that a product is new online.

By targeting the 8 steps to optimising product display pages you should see boosts in organic search and increases in conversion in a matter of months. Take particular note of your customers behaviour and how much time they are spending on products display pages. Customers tend to browse so ensure that the content is eye catching and builds the customers trust to make the purchase.

Thanks for reading the article if you have honest feedback or something that you believe I should add to this article please use the comment section below. If you thought this article was useful please share it using the social media icons.