eCommerce Product Page Optimization

eCommerce product page optimization matters because most of your paid traffic lands on your product page (PDP). In this article, we’ll talk about how product pages start off converting well, why their conversion rates go down with time, and how to fix that.

Did You Know?

Every year 30,000 new consumer products are launched. That’s a mind-boggling number. Marketers know if they launch a product that claims to do too much it’ll come off as too good to be true so they launch products with a very narrow focus. This also helps break through the noise generated by the 29,999 products that were also launched in the same calendar year.

Here’s how Apple introduced its iPod:

Short and to-the-point messaging stands out.

Some of you like to read, others prefer video. This article is for both. If you prefer reading just skip the video:

eCommerce Product Page Optimization

Now, because the product has a narrow marketing focus the product page is simple because it also has a narrow focus. So the ecom product page optimization is good.

But then, as time goes by things start to change. At launch, the product page may have had a conversion rate of 3% but 12 months later that number is down to 2.5%.

What happened? I’m qualified to answer this because I’ve spent the last 15 years studying 400+ product pages for some of the biggest eCom brands. Our clients have invested over reveal$3,900,000 with us to understand shopper behavior on their sites.

What happens is this. The product is launched and does well. Over time the marketing team starts to learn new things:

– They learn that there are use cases (definition) they had not considered at launch. For example, they may realize that the product is particularly popular with older people.

– Then, they might also get feedback from customer service on questions that come often.

– They start reading the customer reviews and notice people really like a specific feature.

With all this new data they start expanding the content on the product page.

And this is when we start having eCommerce product page optimization issues because the page that had a singular focus (and thus the 3% conversion rate) now has a more diffused focus because it’s talking to multiple audiences at the same time. That always kills conversion rates.

So, What’s the Solution?

We’ve invented a clever solution that personalizes the product page sales pitch so instead of talking to everyone at the same time we ask the buyer what bucket they fall into and personalize the pitch based on their response. As you can imagine, this has a profound impact on conversion rates. The thing we’ve invented is called Active Participation.

Next Steps

This eCom PDP optimization post was an appetizer. The main course is where the magic is. Now that you’ve seen a glimpse of something very few marketers know the next logical step is to pull back the curtain. The article you are looking for is this: The Frictionless Process.