📆 Tuesday, 28th May 2024
Hey — It's Rhythm. Thrilled to have you back in Ecom Circle, where I spend my time scaling ecom brands & finding best growth strategies to share with you.
DEEP DIVE 💡
Imagine browsing a new webshop for the first time, especially if you're accustomed to shopping in physical stores.
The online products look appealing, but you can’t touch, smell, or try them on.
This makes online product information crucial. In fact, 87% of consumers consider product content extremely important when making a purchase.
Additionally, 83% of shoppers need to see product images, and 82% require detailed product descriptions before they buy.
So, what makes a great eCommerce product detail page (PDP)?
Is it one loaded with options, images, and quirky design elements?
Actually, no.
The best product pages we’ve seen are the most seamless, clean, and beautiful in terms of UX design. They strike a balance between familiarity, innovation, and informativeness.
These 10 examples showcase why they stand out, according to our team of consumer psychologists.
Understanding consumer psychology during this consideration phase is vital. It will help you create the best product pages for your webshop and execute excellent marketing campaigns.
We have a lot to cover, so let’s dive in!
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1. Buffy Sheets
What makes it great:
Size and color options: Provide enough options to choose from on the PDP without inflicting choice overload.
Reviews: Show reviews on the product image to leverage word-of-mouth Social Proof. More People trust their peers more than organizations, so you can boost the appeal of your product by showing how many people liked it or at least reviewed it.
Option for a “free trial”: This leverages the Endowment Effect, which explains that people attach more value to something that “belongs” to them (something that can be achieved simply by touching a product). Providing free trials will give customers the chance to touch, smell, and see the product in real-life, which will make them feel closer to it.
2. Glossier
What makes it great:
Tone-of-voice: Shine your brand tone-of-voice through your product descriptions to appeal to your target consumers. The more authoritative your voice, the more people will trust the information you give in your PDP.
Emulate the in-store experience: Use your product descriptions to show ways of “trying-on” the product. Especially if you’re selling makeup, try using video tutorials or TV-shopping to show ways the product can be used without the customer having to visit your brick-and-mortar store.
Product badges: For highly rated products, use the product badge “Top Rated” to leverage Social Proof. This reveals what’s appealing about the product on a psychological level.
Product information subsections: Sections like “why it’s special” and “good to know” break up the products’ attributes and benefits. Describing both in your PDP gives more reasons why the customer should buy the product on both a rational (attributes) and emotional (benefits) level.
3. Manitobah
What makes it great:
PDP tells a story: For Manitobah, the further you scroll down the PDP, the more of the customer can digest the story of the product, from its origins to the material used in its manufacturing.
Company slogans and taglines: Reusing your brand tagline in your PDP will reinforce your brand ethos and how your products are in line with this (i.e., “International Production. Local Commitment.”, “Art Meets Technology”).
Close-up product: High-quality images are great extra pieces of information on the PDP, especially close-ups of a material that maybe isn’t mentioned in your product description. They set the scene while showing all the nuanced details of your products.
4. Cult Beauty
What makes it great:
Increasing autonomy: Allowing customers to add a product to their wishlist is another way to increase autonomy on the PDP. In addition to this, the shopper can choose how many products they want to add-to-cart before checking out, which streamlines the buyer’s journey and increases autonomy straight from the PDP itself.
Haptic imagery: Tactile experiences of a product will drive purchase behavior. How do you make something sound like you can touch it in your copy? Use haptic imagery. This is when a product is described in such visual ways that the customer can almost feel the product in real-life!
5. Urban Outfitters
What makes it great:
High-quality product photos: Urban Outfitters’ high-quality product photos are key to a great PDP.
Zoom function: Any functions that allow the shopper to zoom, pinch, or customize the product will immediately leverage the Endowment Effect. If you want to minimize the product images on your PDP, this function is a great alternative.
6. Sephora
What makes it great:
Product recommendations: Sephora also leverages product recommendations on their PDP in terms of what the product can be paired with. Normally, product recommendations should be shown further down the page, or at a different stage of the funnel. But since Sephora is selling makeup, it helps the shopper see what the product goes well with.
Product information subsections: Having subsections of product information means you can track which areas of the PDP your customers click on. And gathering this kind of behavioral data will help you see which areas of your product page should be optimized. Plus, it’s a good way to split the information up to make it easier to read and establish processing fluency.
Like/love buttons: Increase autonomy by having like buttons work the same as a wishlist. Like buttons or “save for later” also generate data back to the retailer about which products are being saved but not bought, for retargeting or further on-site optimization.
Live chatbots: Use live chatbots so your customers can ask specific questions to members of your team. This will personalize the customer journey, and emulate that in-store experience most webshops are lacking.
7. Marucci
What makes it great:
Customizable solutions: Marucci is a baseball webshop - pretty niche, huh? But they’re not the only ones who leverage customizable solutions. Lacoste, Ray-Bans, Converse, and many more retailers do the same. This is a great way to let your customers engage with your products and make them more personal. Providing your customers the option to customize products also leverages the Ikea Effect.
Easy, engaging, and seamless CX: Remember that too many options can inflict choice overload. Don’t overdo it.
8. Sun of a Beach
What makes it great:
Lifestyle product photos: Splitting up the PDP into product photos and lifestyle photos shows what product information different segments are looking for when they shop.
Hover-text: Placing a description over images can show your customers information like how to wear the product, price, product names, or different patterns without having to take up space elsewhere on the page.
Product categories based on attributes: You can also split your product categories based on attributes to streamline the customer journey - Sun of a Beach does this on their PLP, for example (IKEA is a good example of a webshop that has a huge product taxonomy. By splitting their categories into subcategories using product attributes, IKEA makes the buyer’s journey less complex and more streamlined).
9. Beatific
What makes it great:
Knowing the audience: Beauty/makeup brands all have a different target audience who shop for products based on different things. Beatific, for example, split their PDP into scientifically proven sections, tips, usage, caution, and reviews, instead of showing ingredients like Lush does.
Leveraging Authority: Leverage Authority on your PDP by giving expert tips, scientific statistics, proven results, etc.
10. Allbirds
What makes it great:
Bullet-points: To make your product information or features more digestible, use bullet points. This will also break up the text to make the design easier to process.
Iconography: Go one step further and provide icons to visually demonstrate the product’s features. If your brand is product-attributes-focused, then things like materials, shape, sizes, etc., should be highlighted with care on your PDP, and icons could be a good way to demonstrate these.
But there’s a caveat to the last point! Too much focus on your products’ attributes will lose sight of how the product is customer-centric. A good way Allbirds balances this out is by showing the product in use in one of their product photos and uses the second person “you” in their product descriptions.
It’s the little things that count, don’t you think?