Product page UX: 22 data-backed secrets for high conversions

A great product page UX is much more than cool design elements on the page.

It’s about the content, design, layout, and how these elements work together to deliver a seamless experience.

Every dot, stroke, and letter on the product page should guide visitors closer to sales.

Getting your product page UX design right can quickly put you ahead of the pack.

Why?

82% of top-grossing US and European eCommerce sites have poor UX performance.

So, you may want to start optimizing for user experience. And one of the best places to start is your website product page design. 

22 Unconventional Ways to Optimize your Product Page UX

Here are some product page design examples to inspire yours.

1. Use visual content that aligns with your brand strategy

Using great visuals and multimedia to showcase product features is a great idea.

But not everything that is good for the gander is good for the goose in the eCommerce business.

While using augmented reality or a ton of zoomed-in visuals might seem like the best thing to implement on your product page, it may not always be the best option for your brand.

For example, when you have a clothing or beauty product, using images of customers trying it on helps showcase what it looks like in real life.

This helps convince prospective customers because they know what to expect. 

But this type of visual certainly won’t work for products such as gadgets.

Customers would prefer to see visuals that show the specifications and functionality of the product itself.

In iPhone 13’s product launch page below, Apple understands that its customers want to see what the flat edge design looks like and customizes its visuals accordingly.

What you sell determines what type of visuals you use.

For more complex or sensitive products such as baby strollers, you may need an explainer or how-to video to help convince your prospective customers into taking action. 

2. Use interactive product images 

The major reason people still love shopping in physical stores is that they can try out a product.

Now, since you can’t use this method to convince them, the next best thing is to provide an immersive experience with your product image. 

With an interactive product image, your potential customers can evaluate the product before deciding to purchase it.

This not only boosts your conversion rates, but it can also reduce your return rates by 42%.

So in addition to the regular product images on your product page, offer a 360-degree view of a product.

You can do this by either using a VR product display or a hover animation like in the example from Dossier below.  

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To set up a similar product page, you can either enable hover animations in your custom CSS or add a CSS snippet to your existing stylesheet if you’re using a platform like Shopify.

3. When writing product descriptions, stick to the inverted pyramid style

10% of eCommerce sites have insufficient details in their product descriptions.

The ones that do should try and present the details in an appealing way.

This is where the inverted pyramid comes in.

The inverted pyramid is a writing style that highlights the most important details first before slowly going to the not-so-important facts. It’s designed like an inverted pyramid. 

Incorporating this into your product description writing is a great way to help prospective users hooked into your offerings.

Take advantage of your above-the-fold to implement this strategy. Start with showing off the need-to-knows. 

Are you offering a discount or free shipping? You should add this first. Is there a unique selling point that makes you stand out from the competition? Start with that. 

Also, ensure that your CTA is strategically placed underneath these areas before proceeding to continue with the nice-to-know details. Like how Taylor Stitch has done. 

This design helps you attend to prospective customers who want to know the details of your products and also those who’d really prefer to skim through.

There are also customers who know what they want and hope to find it at a glance.

The inverted pyramid is the ideal style to help guide each of these groups to the checkout page.

4. Customize UX elements based on customer habits

Humans are habitual creatures and this affects even the way they shop.

For over 20 years, customers have formed certain habits while interacting with a website which has now become an unconscious part of their interactions.

For example, when you double click on an image, you expect it to zoom in, or when you click on a V icon beside a field, you expect to see a dropdown.

Another example is seeing a magnifying lens and automatically knowing that this is a search bar—whether or not there is a search placeholder text in the field. 

Now when optimizing your product page UX, you may be tempted to switch things up a little.

While that might be cool, remember to always consider the power of habits so you don’t entirely wreck the user experience.

In the example below, if Sports Direct changes the CTA button to red for instance, some users will definitely take a pause before proceeding with it.

However, since green signals go, prospective customers instinctively know that this takes them to the next stage. 

If you’re not sure what your customer habits are, consider using heatmaps or live session recordings to see how your customers interact with your product pages. 

5. Stick to neutral colors

If you’re unsure about the right color scheme, we recommend sticking to neutral colors— especially for the page background.

While it’ll make other elements on your product page stand out, it also makes it easier for your customers to focus on the most important things. 

For example, if you have a plain product image, you need to divert attention to it. However, if your background is a bit too bold, it can distract your users. 

Neutral in this context doesn’t mean white and black.

Rather tones like nude and similar light colors.

Here’s an example from Velasca. Here you’d see that although the background isn’t white, the product image, copy, colors, and other elements clearly stand out. 

6. Engage color psychology

In recent research, 84.7% of respondents when surveyed, said that color is one of the most important factors in choosing a product.

This is why you need to evaluate what emotions you want to evoke on your page and use the right colors to drive a positive action.

Every color has its own personality and how it makes people feel.

Color psychology helps you understand how they work and how you can better use them to drive results on your product page. 

We typically see colors in variations— shades or tints. The variation determines how we perceive these colors.

For example, tints or pastels are less vibrant schemes that evoke peace or tranquility. Shades are bolder and so they evoke confidence. 

So while you can use shades and tints for your overall product image and background, we recommend using bold colors for your primary elements.

For example, using a green button for your CTA immediately reinforces ‘GO’, so they’d be more inclined to click on it. 

Even on this monochromatic page from picky bars, they use color psychology on the CTA to encourage buyers into taking an action.

7. Consistently offer customer reassurance

The average customer will be hesitant when patronizing an eCommerce store for the first time. 

From worrying about getting the right quality to the right size, not losing their purchase during shipping, or not being able to return it if there are any defects, there can be many factors that can make them doubtful. 

Keeping this in mind, you’ve to constantly offer reassurance and guarantee them that their fears are taken care of. Only then will they be able to proceed to make a purchase.

So on your product page, make the answers to the unspoken questions by prospects very visible.

Will your customers be worried about quality? Add customer reviews that show real-life purchases and satisfaction with the said product. 

Is sizing an issue? Provide assistance with a size chart and measurements of each one. 

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Also, make your warranty and return policy clear enough. This way, prospective customers can easily know what to do if they are in a pickle.

In the end, leave links to your customer support.

Remember, your design determines how well they’ll be able to find these sections. So make the section headers clear and easy to locate on your product page. 

No more bad product pages. Check out the comprehensive product page guide.

8. Reinforce Trust by incorporating a Q&A Section 

67% of customers would purchase a brand they trust. That’s why you need multiple trust badges across your store.

However, a unique way to incorporate trust is by adding a sort of Q and A session across your product pages. 

Naturally, your customers might have questions about your product.

While some might go directly to your customer support, others might simply just scan for this information and abandon your website if they don’t get any answers. 

A FAQ section at the bottom of your product page is one way to go about this.

We recommend using a collapsible design so that it doesn’t take up a lot of screen space, especially on mobile.

Make a list of frequently asked questions about that specific product and outline the answers underneath them.

Another way to create a Q and A session is to show the questions by other buyers through product reviews.

The difference here is that anyone can see the answers you provide to that specific inquiry.

See how meow meow does it in this example below:

9. Do more with your controls and navigations

You should take advantage of directional clues that subconsciously lead your customers to what the next line of action should be.

Directional clues are visual hints aimed at making specific elements of the product page clearer. And in most cases, it’s usually the CTA button.

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In our example above, Tentree uses subtle directional clues.

The model looks at the arrow which when clicked lets you see more pictures. It also points additionally towards the product description.

You’ll also see how the color of the arrows looks similar to the CTA button. This leads us to our second point.

Ensure that your CTA buttons are clear and easy to locate. They shouldn’t blend in with other elements of your page.

And if you have other links on your page like a size guide, ensure it’s clear.

A subtle underline or a different color of the anchor text lets prospective customers know that there’s something more there.

Breadcrumbs are also a great way to show progress on the steps to checkout. It helps your prospective customers know how many steps are left to checkout.

It can also be handy in navigating other areas of the website. 

Finally, ensure you add links to important pages on the footer of your website. Pages like your contact, homepage, product categories, and so on.

You could also test with the three dash icon on the left page of a screen to find out which variation your customers prefer.

10. Leverage your sticky bar real estate to display special offers and more

Instead of using multiple pop-ups to present your special offers, you can add a banner to the top of your screen.

These days a lot of eCommerce brands use it to show off their subscription bundles, free shipping, discount offers, and more.

You can also use it for product announcements like announcing new arrivals.

You can easily achieve this directly on your eCommerce platform or with a CRM tool like Intercom.

While this is a very useful feature, you have to always prioritize your mobile experience. So ensure you run usability tests to be sure that the banner doesn’t take up too much screen real estate.

In this example from Getwelly, you’d see how they use the sticky bar to promote their quiz for personalizing product recommendations.

You’d also see how it isn’t so distracting even on mobile.

11. Design for auto-sync across devices

Shockingly, research shows that 50% of users browse on mobile but orders are, however, 24% higher on desktops. 

What this means is that your customers are most likely completing a purchase on a desktop.

In cases like this, it’s important to stay one step ahead by being able to understand specific customer shopping behavior irrespective of their devices.

One of the ways to do this is by suggesting that they create an account or sign in. Ensure you offer value for doing this. It could be a seamless shopping experience or a discount.

This is what Flos does on their checkout page. 

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Another way customers transfer from one device to another is by using a shared link. So make link sharing easier for customers. It could be one tap to copy on the URL bar or a share icon on the top of your page.

A great tactic to try out is by also adding UTM parameters or unique ids to your links.

That way, each link is unique to a customer and you can tailor your algorithm or recommendations to suit their behavior on your site whether they shop on desktop or on mobile.

12. Don’t just sell, influence

When selling your products across your store, you can do more by creating inspiration for your customers through a community.

Let’s see how.

Smart insights studies show that 77% of shoppers would like to see other customers’ photos rather than professional shots before making a purchase decision.

So, the best way to optimize your design to increase the number of purchases is by taking advantage of the influencer culture. 

You can do this by requesting crowdsourced customer pictures. See how Dune London showcases customers using its products along with an option to buy them. 

When prospective customers look through the community you’ve built from these acquired images, they get inspiration for using the product.

For example, a clothing store can have a community that shows just how other customers have worn a particular outfit.

Placing an easy-to-find hashtag on your product page or requesting crowdsourced inspiration on this page can help with further convincing.

13. Clearly depict product accessory status

Sometimes, prospective customers get confused by the accessories that come with the purchase price associated with a product.

And that’s because 31% of eCommerce sites don’t include images of the included accessories.

When optimizing your product page design, take out time to take pictures that include accessories and position them in one of the image thumbnails on the product page.

This way, customers thoroughly understand what they are paying for.

In cases where there may be no attached accessories or where these accessories are sold separately, do state them clearly to avoid a high abandonment rate.

You can also use this as an opportunity to upsell with the same accessories on the product page.

14. Offer a one-click auto-restock option 

Save marketing resources that’ll be spent on email sequences. Rather than sending more communications to nudge your customers into restocking, automate the process.

You can do this by adding an option for them to restock in the future directly from the product page. 

With this, your first-time buyers have the option to commit to your brand for a period.

In this example from Olipop, with just one click on the ‘Subscribe and Save’ option, a buyer can get auto-delivery for this same product.

They also make this option very appealing because by opting for the subscription option, you automatically save $5.

The price anchor also ensures that potential buyers are faced with the fear of missing out.

15. Allow personalized reviews to reinforce trust

According to the Baymard Institute, 40% of eCommerce websites do not allow room for user uploads. Are you too guilty of this?

Due to how heavily reliant some users are when it comes to looking through reviews, this is an opportunity to let prospective customers see what your product looks like in real life through photo reviews.

User-uploaded images aren’t just realistic pictures, but they can complement the properly shot images and encourage users to go ahead with the purchase.

So when redesigning your product page UX, consider letting room for image uploads during reviews.

In fact, you can add a nudge to help solicit user-generated images in your review section.

16. Save time with default selections

Use subtle default selections to minimize the interaction a customer has to make on a page before checkout.

When there’s a default variation, customers will spend less time on the product page and that time could be channeled towards checking out.

However, before proceeding with this design optimization, take time to research and study your audience.

You can observe popularly shopped colors, designs, or sizes and then use this to preset defaults.

In our example below, American Eagle uses default color and size charts to make the product selection faster and seamless.

17. Avoid the free shipping banner blindness

Contrary to the purpose of showing off free shipping and other deals on the product page banner, 27% of customers missed a free shipping CTA because it was located on the banner. 

Hence, image carousels are not the ideal place to place your free shipping offers.

So rather than sticking to this common design that doesn’t maximize results, insert your free shipping notice close to the buy section.

It’ll ensure customers don’t miss it and it reinforces their decision to hit the buy button. 

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When adopting this design, ensure you clearly state the conditions for free shipping.

If the text might be longer, you can add the content in a hover text or link. This is to avoid any confusion or assumptions at the checkout stage.

Remember you’re trying to get more customers, not increase your cart abandonment. 

18. Be one step ahead with your error pages

On eCommerce stores, your prospective customers will share links or save URLs for later that are susceptible to change.

Sometimes the product might be a limited edition that no longer exists on your site making these previously saved URLs void.

In cases, like this, having a generic 404 error page can be quite disappointing and make you lose customers because customers will impulsively go to another website to look for the same product.

What you should explore when optimizing these error product pages is to add redirect links to help customers navigate other areas of your eCommerce store.

You can show links to categories, other collections, catalogs or even take them to the homepage.

Another way to get more conversions by keeping your prospective customers engaged is to show product recommendations on your 404 page.

Preferably similar products to what they searched for. 

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While redesigning your error page, do ensure that the error message is still clear enough to make prospective users understand the goal of your page.

You don’t want them thinking they landed on the wrong page by accident.

19. Show all thumbnails

Using arrows to show navigation for product images’ thumbnails? You should reconsider.

In the research by Baymard Institute, 50-80% of customers don’t get to see all the product images when the thumbnails are truncated like our example below.

It’s ideal to avoid arrows like this that show more images exist.

The reason why you have so many product images is to show your customers all details of the product.

Using these arrows is counterproductive because they don’t end up seeing the images you’ve put in so much work to prepare. 

Instead, consider showing all available thumbnails underneath the image or reduce the number of images available.

This way prospective customers can see all angles available and easily choose which picture angle they’d prefer to see.

HEY! SHORT ON TIME? HERE'S A QUICK SUMMARY OF THE AREAS TO LOOK AT:

20. Group Your spec sheet for scannability

Specification sheets shouldn’t be clustered with a lot of words. Rather it should be grouped into sections.

In the sections, ensure they are easy to read by listing them out in bullet points.

‍50% of eCommerce stores don’t have an easily scannable specifications section. So you want to make your store different.

Since specifications are a way to encourage prospective customers to opt for that particular product, grouping these specifications mean there will be a title.

Now, these titles should reflect the content of the spec group. 

For example, in this group below, you know what area of the product a particular specification belongs.

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21. Expand cross-sells to category pages

83% of websites restrict their cross-sells to specific products. The issue with this design is that users are confined to only those product recommendations.

And so if they are not interested, they are likely to move on without exploring. 

In cases like this, consider adding product category links to these cross-sells.

So when customers don’t like the featured products they can check the product category pages and look for similar items they might actually like. 

BONUS: 22. Storybrand product descriptions

Storytelling increases the value of a product by up to 2,706%. And so, when presenting your product descriptions, telling a story will automatically double the conversions you already get. 

Caution! Storytelling doesn’t exactly translate to writing a long piece.

It simply means illustrating how beneficial a product can be in real life. Since people tend to resonate with benefits instead of features, telling a story helps paint a picture of how life gets better with your product.

So if you’re selling a car, you shouldn’t say it’s super fast.

Rather, you should focus on a story that says they never have to be late for future appointments when they purchase this exact car. 

Let’s look at a real-life example from colourpop

How to identify the right UX areas for your product page optimization: A case study

To optimize a product page UX for better conversions, you need to start by first identifying issues negatively impacting page conversion. 

So, start with running usability tests.

During the redesign of OLX’s product page, the designers started off with user interviews and usability tests. These gave them some very interesting insights into the problems of the initial product page. 

They quickly found out page visitors couldn’t enlarge the product images and how invisible the CTA’s seemed to the user.

And after prototyping and visualization, they were able to increase contacts with sellers by 6.5%.

You can also audit your website using conversion optimization tools like CRO360 to help highlight some design flaws that are currently hurting your product page conversions.

Before you go...

From your images, descriptions, product placement to supporting sections, all elements should nudge your customers towards one goal and that’s moving to the next stage.

To provide the best user experience for your current and prospective customers, first, start with conducting end-to-end tests so you can understand where exactly you should begin your product page UX optimization. 

You can learn more about optimizing product pages to increase eCommerce sales here.