Product Pages That Sell – Practice
This article is in two parts Theory and Practice. I hope that you will read both parts of the article to get the full picture.
In this article I use a dummy rough concept and the live site for my SynthStudio Pack software instruments as examples (no copyright issues, SSP is real and it does sell fairly well in a saturated market). Screenshots are as at 21/03/2009.
This article will show you some ideas and a formula for building successful content driven product pages to sell your products via the Web. What you learn here you can extrapolate to databases and e-commerce shopping carts (if you really need them).
 Rough Concept showing clear Nav and Product Overview
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We’ll start with making sure people can find your product range easily. The Home page should lead to your products in groups or individually via content based links. Users should be able to find where they want to go without looking at the menu items. The navigation should still show a clear link to your products, either as an overall “Products” or by naming the main ranges so that users can find your products from pages other than Home.
Products Overview
There should almost always be an overview of your products. Many people like to see an overview of your product spread. They may only have money for your entry level product but knowing that it shares lineage with a high-end version gives them confidence and a future upgrade path.
The overview page should be relatively simple, offering a quick snapshot of the products or ranges and therefore a comparison across the options. This helps users to see the best solution for themselves. It also increases the likelihood that your customers will know all the products you offer. You will be amazed how many companies tell me that their customers don’t really know what the business does!
Each product or range should be separated to establish it’s identity. Separation can be established with visible boxes, white space or other devices. Arrangement can be vertical or horizontal. Please be careful of overlapping or other complex display methods. It may look clever and creative but it will likely create confusion in users at the point you should be making your solution clear.
You will notice that in both of these examples an idea of price is included. While displaying price is an issue many debate, for many products an idea of price will generally please customers as price is always one of their first questions. Forcing people to contact you for basic information after reading your site smells like manipulation and unfriendliness. And don’t be silly and think your competitors don’t already know your prices because I am sure they have well and truly scoped you out by now.
Please ensure, if you have a drop-down menu with specific products under a main item, that the main Products item links to an overview page. Offering a menu item or button that goes nowhere is a big usability no-no as it decreases confidence.
 Rough Concept showing Product Information
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The Specific Product Page
The next layer is the specific product page. This is the page for one product. Where possible try to avoid putting different products in the same range on one page unless you are very clear over the differences. When the differences are small like variations in capacity, color or similar then that can be ok but if the products are essentially different then create separate pages to avoid confusion, e.g. if the top of the line has leather but the base doesn’t then you may put them on the same page as: main product info + leather for Version X; if the base and Version X are very have different engines, trim, colors, etc. then I think it is safest to create a page specifically for Version X.
The product page should gather all the information that a prospective customer could need to make a decision on whether this is the the solution they desire or not. Information can be arranged in layers so that the simple overview is at the top and more complex technical data is lower on the page or on spin-off pages. It is then up to the user to decide where they stop reading (to leave or to buy). If information is not there no one can read it, no matter how much they want to.
Tables of data make it really easy to take in slabs of facts. Make sure tables are nice and big and cheery. Overall you will find that larger text sizes give a feeling of openness, freedom and ease. They also make it easier for users to pan and scan – they are going to do it anyway so why not make it easy.
Again, like with price, I see no good reason to hold back information that could otherwise be passed to the customer. Forcing people to contact you so your salesman can try to nail their feet to the floor is not good practice. Let the customer decide what they want and I can promise you less stress on the sales floor.
In the rough concept you will see a clear image of the product, you could use several but don’t feel the need to get too clever or “interactive” as it is rarely necessary. If it isn’t necessary then it is at best a waste of time and money or worse, confusing to customers. The product is clearly identified along with an overview of main features and benefits. This should give every user what they need to decide if this is worth further investigation.
Beneath the image I have shown a table with fact data. This backs the quick overview and helps the analytical or technical customer get the information they need. To the side is general sales copy. This contains an expansion of the main themes and allows for tasteful sizzle sell (I don’t believe hard sell is productive in the long term even though it might sell in the short).
The SynthStudio Pack page starts with an overview and then proceeds to show all the units included in the pack. Each of the units opens up a new window with more features, benefits and sell. The amount of information means that there is a great chance any visitor will hang around long enough and see enough to think that there must be something here for them. The pack is very cheap so the list of units makes the sell price absurd and hard to refuse as surely even one of these units must be worth $7.50. All of them at once is superb value.
At the side of the SSP product page there are demonstrations of the product in action (easier to do in some situations than others). This coupled with testimonials from people that prospective customers are likely to know (from a Forum that feeds traffic to this site) helps people to see that people like them use these products and so they could do so too.
Testimonials with photos are generally better than those without. If you don’t have a photo you can always humanize an unknown person with a ‘chessman’ figure (see right) which represents a person.
 SSP page bottom with Testimonials, Call to Action & further Links |
Call To Action
Next, the page has a call to action “Demos & Purchase for $7.50″. The downloadable demos and actual purchase buttons are on the same page. That means that anyone who downloads a demo will be reminded that this is a business transaction not a gift. Also statistics show that many people simply decide that seeing the price is so low they might as well not waste time with a demo and buy anyway (especially true of repeat purchasers). The other reason I have all purchase buttons on the same page is to increase the chances of multiple purchases. Multiple purchases are very common, in many months outweighing single purchases. People think that whilst they have their wallets open for $7.50 they might as well toss in another $7.50 or $10.00 for packs II and III.
Finally offer a mini navigation to offer other locations the user might wish to visit. Don’t make people scroll to the top of the page every time when you can so easily offer some alternatives right where the person is.
These are only two examples. Each product or collection of products will be slightly different. What I hope you learn from these articles is the simplicity of the approach and the offer of: everything that is necessary to go to the next stage – either ‘buy now’ or visit the store.
If you want me to work with your business then please visit BRM Web Consulting
