You have about eight seconds to capture the attention of the average online shopper.
Eight tiny seconds can make the difference between a customer that buys and one that moves along to greener pastures. This is why it’s so important to optimize your product pages to ensure that customers quickly understand what they’re seeing and want to read more.
Creating a Retail Experience in Cyberspace
Of course, there’s something to be said about the access that customers have to products in nearly any retail store.
They can touch, smell and see every small detail of the item before they decide if it’s a match. Although you can’t provide quite the same full sensory experience online, you can use these same elements to connect to potential buyers as they shop online. If your pages aren’t connecting with buyers, there are a number of ways to bring them back around.
Start by looking carefully at your pages and asking yourself these questions:
Is it clear what I’m selling? There’s a little room for art in product sales, but only very little. If people can’t tell what you’re selling, you’re setting yourself up for merchandise returns and poor user reviews. Make sure the images clearly illustrate what you’re trying to sell.
Are product details easy to find? If you catch your potential buyers in those vital eight seconds, they’re going to want to know the product’s specifics right away. Make sure that you have the price, options and specifications laid out logically.
Can the “buy” button and shopping cart be easily located? There’s little that frustrates shoppers ready to buy as much as a hard to detect buying system. This is not an area where you should be blazing a trail — instead, stick to the basics and keep them close at hand.
Once you’re certain that your product pages are easy to navigate, you should check your sales copy. This is where many people lose customers. Poor grammar, frequent errors and plain old bad writing can fill a customer with doubt about dealing with your company, even if they have to pay a little more to buy from your more fluent competitor.
A good product description not only informs, but also explains, exactly what it is that the item can do for the customer, or it gives them a taste of a real world experience by describing the product with sensory words. Sometimes both approaches can be useful. For example, if you sell children’s rain boots, you might explain how they protect kids from having wet feet while also evoking images of puddle-jumping in the mud.
Remember, how well you present your products to your customers ultimately reflects on so many other areas, from online reviews to your rate of merchandise returns. The better visitors connect with your product pages, the more likely they are to buy — and that’s great news for business.
