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Seven Tips for Creating Killer Product Pages

Posted on: September 20th, 2011 by Sean Work 20 Comments

If you run an e-commerce site, your product pages are the moment of truth for your business. Either they convert your visitor into a customer or they don’t. This is not new information. Everyone knows that successful product pages are important to a successful e-commerce website; so why are there so many bad ones out there?

Each visitor that makes it to a product page represents the heavy lifting and money spent to get them there. The product page is not the time to squander that hard work. It’s up to you to create a user experience that gives the visitor what they need to become a customer.

So what’s the definition of a good product page user experience (UX)? Simple: one that provides the information, assurances and motivation the visitor needs to become your customer. This definition will vary from site to site and industry to industry, so it’s up to you to test and find the mix that works best for your business.

To help you get started, we asked the UX pros at digital-telepathy, a user experience design company, to identify things you can do right now to improve the user experience of your product pages. Below are seven ways to get more from your product pages, with examples from some of their favorite e-commerce product pages and insight into what makes them work so well.

Note: What works for these sites might not work for yours. It’s up to you to test features and functionality against your existing product pages to determine what works best for your business.

Tip One: Cut the Clutter

Whether it’s because they’re not sure what page elements drive sales, or because the website owners can’t agree on what’s important, businesses end up cluttering product pages with dense text and frivolous functionality. It’s up to you to fight for simplicity on these pages. Sure, it often makes sense to have recommendations, reviews and other functionality; but they shouldn’t muddle the call to action that helps move the sale forward. Jessica from digital-telepathy likes Abercrombie & Fitch for just this reason.

Abercrombie & Fitch – “Abercrombie & Fitch has a great minimalistic and clean product browsing experience. Only the essential browsing elements (such as search bar, navigation, and product color variations) are visible. Even the color theme is simple and optimal for easy browsing.” ~ Jessica

Tip Two: Clear Calls-to-Action

At this stage of the game confusion can kill. Make the “Add to Cart” and “Proceed to Checkout” buttons clear, consistent and highly visible. And please, these calls to action (CTA’s) should be a button. Online shoppers have been conditioned to look for a button – text links and other non-standard UI will create confusion at exactly the wrong time. Dan from digital-telepathy likes Zappos for their clear calls-to-action, that stand out from the other page elements.

Zappos – “Zappos uses bright orange to clearly distinguish CTA’s and other important information like price and the shopping cart.” ~ Dan

Tip Three: Think Speed

Product pages need to be snappy and responsive. Laggy pages can kill confidence and breed impatience, both conversion killers. Ditch the overly designed pages for ones that load fast and respond even faster. Nordstrom is one example of a site that takes product page speed seriously.

Nordstrom – Nordstrom’s pages load very fast because of the economical use of CSS styles for background and border elements.” ~ Orville

Tip Four: Awesome Product Photos

Product photos, particularly for physical goods like gadgets, apparel and home goods are critical for building confidence and giving the user a strong grasp of what it is they’re actually buying. Invest in good photography up front, and be sure to highlight and provide access to multiple views and photos in the UI. Matt thinks that the combination of pro shots and customer photos make American Muscle a great example of using product imagery the right way.

American Muscle – “American Muscle not only has a great collection of photos for almost every product from every angle, on and off the car, but also allows customers to upload their own pictures. These customer shots are often better than the corporate shots and include angles that customers really want to see.” ~ Matt

Tip Five: Concise Copy with Conviction

You can’t get very far without copy on your product pages. So let’s make sure that the copy you put on each page is top notch and working hard to help your potential customer. The table stakes for great product page copy are things like price, shipping options and information, availability, sizes/colors, sizing charts, and more. Make sure you’ve got the basics in place. Keep copy concise and highlight the high points. Use bullets to help visitors read and digest them quickly. In other words, do as Ikea does.

Ikea – “Ikea uses nice typography and is short and sweet with the item information and descriptions. It offers a “read more” link for users who want to dive deeper into the product.” ~ Dan

Tip Six: Build Customer Confidence

Reduce anxiety and build confidence by communicating product quality, sizing, return policies and customer service commitments that will make your visitor comfortable buying from you. Provide product reviews and testimonials from other customers who have purchased the product and surface useful reviews to the top. Adding more social cues to the user experience lets visitors know that they are not alone in their purchase. Hotels.com plays off this social dynamic:

Hotels.com – “Hotels.com has a pop-up that shows how many times a specific hotel was booked in the last 24 hours. It creates confidence through social proof; other people are actually booking this hotel. It’s also valuable because it creates urgency. Only so many rooms are available, act now.” ~ Matt

Tip Seven: Provide Options

Close but no cigar is never an outcome you want at purchase time. What if your visitor would’ve bought the digital picture frame if only it had a rechargeable battery, or 16 gigs of memory instead of 8? Providing related items in an easy-to-locate manner will let more visitors complete their purchase without having to exit the funnel completely. BustedTees does a good job giving their customers options when shopping for a tee shirt.

BustedTees – “BustedTees has a great recommended products section just below the individual item content. Related t-shirt styles/humor are typically along the same line.” ~ Dairien

Putting it All Together

Product pages can make or break your websites. It’s up to you as a UX professional to create an experience that converts as many visitors into customers as possible. By experimenting and testing with these seven tips you’ll be able to identify the main conversion drivers on the product pages for your website. Have more great tips or sites that have best-in-class product pages? Let us know in the comments. And if you test out any of these tips on your site, come back and let us know how they worked for you. We hope you’ll find that your conversions increase right along with your customer satisfaction. Mission accomplished!

About the Author: Jason Amunwa is a Product Manager at digital-telepathy, a user experience design company that aims to improve the web by introducing new design standards.

Box It Up – The Rise of Subscription Commerce

Posted on: September 8th, 2011 by Jason Caldwell 33 Comments

Subscription based ecommerce businesses (“subcom” for short) are on the rise. In a typical situation, a subcom business will send their customers (“the subscribers”) a box full of products on a regular basis. Very often these businesses try to attract customers with specific needs. For example, a subcom appealing to new mothers may send their subscribers a box of baby care items each month.

Is subscription commerce here to stay or is it a passing fad? Does it really address a meaningful need? In this graphic, we’re going to briefly look at some of the current players in the subcom industry—how they’re growing and how the market is divvied up. Special thanks to Sean Percival.

Click on the image below to view an enlarged version of this infographic.

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Click here to download a .pdf version of this infographic.

Want to display this infographic on your site?

Simply copy and paste the code below into the html of your website to display the infographic presented above:

<b>++ Click Image to Enlarge ++</b><br /><a href="http://blog.kissmetrics.com/subcom/"><img src="http://blog.kissmetrics.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/subcom-sm.jpg" alt="The Rise of Subscription Commerce" border="0"></a><br />Source: <a href="http://blog.kissmetrics.com/subcom/">Box It Up – The Rise of Subscription Commerce</a>

21 Resources to Help You Build a Company Website in Less Than an Hour

Posted on: August 18th, 2010 by Nathan Hangen 39 Comments

Come on. Is it really possible to build a company website in only an hour?

Not if you want a custom design, custom programming, and a custom marketing plan, no. You’ll spend weeks, maybe even months, designing your website, and unless you’re doing it yourself, it’ll cost you thousands or tens of thousands of dollars.

But sometimes all you care about is getting something up in a hurry. You want it to look good, sure, but it doesn’t have to be entirely unique. It just has to work and buy you some time.

If that’s the case, then yes, you can absolutely build a company website in less than an hour. All you need is a hosting company with the right software, a Content Management System (CMS) to keep you from having to write any code, and a nice template to make everything look good.

Here are 20 of the best resources from around the web to help you put it all together:

Hosting

If you install a Content Management System (more info on this below) by hand, you have to download the code, unzip it, upload it to your server via FTP, create a new database, and then install everything. If you’re familiar with the process, sometimes you can do it in 30 minutes or so, but if you’re brand-new to Content Management Systems, it can take you hours to figure everything out.

In response to this, many web hosts now have tools that install your Content Management System for you. Downloading, uploading, unzipping, databases, usernames, passwords — they take care of it all. All you have to do is click a few buttons, and you’re ready to go.

Look inside your control panel for these two tools, in particular:

1. Fantastico

For a long time, Fantastico was the gold standard for auto installers, and some people say it still is. It has about 50 different scripts it can install for you, requiring you to just choose the script, click install, and you’re done. It’s quite common to find Fantastico with web hosts who use cPanel, so if your host is one of them, login and take a look.

2. Softaculous

While not as widespread and well-known as Fantastico, Softaculous is quickly gaining a lot of fans. It has an expanded library of 164 scripts it can install for you, as well as a fresher and easier to understand interface. Once again, many hosts who use cPanel automatically include Softaculous with your account.

Content Management Software (CMS)

By far, the fastest way to set up a powerful, well-organized website is to use a Content Management System (CMS). Developers love to argue about exactly what constitutes a CMS, but in practical terms, it boils down to this:

With a CMS, you don’t have to write any code.

You can login to your website, create new pages, categorize them in different ways, edit them, add pictures, pretty much whatever you want to do. Each CMS has different features and limitations, as you’ll see below, but they all give you a foundation that allows you to start adding information to your website in minutes, not hours or days.

If you’re not a programmer or website designer, they are indispensable. In fact, most programmers and web designers now use them simply because they work so well, and they see no reason to reinvent the wheel.

Here are several of the most popular Content Management Systems:

3. WordPress

WordPress is the CMS of choice for bloggers around the world, and it’s an incredible piece of software. It’s flexible, supported by a passionate developer community, and best of all, free.

The only downside to WordPress is, it’s focused primarily on helping you set up a blog. You can use various plug-ins to make it do almost anything, including running an e-commerce store or building a regular corporate website, but out-of-the-box, everything is going to look like a blog, and it can take some time to change it.

Of course, if you want to have a company blog, that’s not a problem. And even if you don’t, WordPress is so simple and powerful that many of its fans refuse to use anything else.

If you’re not familiar with it though, or you don’t want to have a company blog, some of the other options here might suit you better.

4. Drupal

Although Drupal has a somewhat higher learning curve than WordPress, it’s a powerful and customizable CMS, and it’s also totally free.

Like WordPress, Drupal also has an active developer community that builds plugins and themes for your use. Although the framework is slightly more advanced, Drupal still works similarly to other CMS platforms in that it allows you to “mod” it with add-ons.

The upside of using Drupal’s more advanced platform is that it’s extremely flexible and dynamic, which is perfect for developing more advanced websites and applications, such as communities, e-commerce stores, and almost anything else you can imagine.

The downside is it doesn’t include much functionality out-of-the-box, and if you’re not familiar with it, it might take some time to make it do what you want. In many cases though, it’s worth the learning curve, especially if you’re planning to use it for multiple websites.

5. Joomla

Joomla is Drupal’s closest competitor, and it’s also a great platform for anyone looking to build anything from a simple static website to a robust online user community. Like the others, it uses plug-ins, also called extensions and templates, to expand the functionality of the base platform, and it’s totally free.

The advantage of Joomla is that it does a lot straight out of the box, and you can be adding pages to your website and fiddling with the design within minutes. It’s easy-to-use, powerful, and with the right modules, you can make it do almost anything.

The downside is sometimes you can’t find the modules to make it do exactly what you want, and if that’s the case, Joomla isn’t quite as easy to customize as Drupal. If you’re looking for an ultra-simple website, you might also be overwhelmed with everything Joomla gives you, making one of the other Content Management Systems here more appropriate.

6. Squarespace

If you want something that’s even easier than the options we’ve shown you thus far, then consider checking out an all-in-one, hosted CMS, such as Squarespace.

I like Squarespace so much that I built my website with it, and I was able to do so without any knowledge of code or Photoshop. Although hosted CMS platforms like Squarespace aren’t as flexible or as easy to expand, they do eliminate the need for hosting, software installation, and theme purchasing.

With Squarespace, you simply buy an account and start building your website. You can have it up and running for less than $20/month, and you don’t have to install anything.

The downside: it’s not free. For many businesses though, it’s more than affordable.

7. Expression Engine

Expression Engine is the new kid on the block that is quickly making it’s rounds and asserting it’s newfound influence in the CMS Market.

Like Squarespace, Expression Engine is not free, but it differs in that it’s sold as a one-time purchase, rather than as a monthly cost. Like other CMS platforms, Expression Engine is downloaded and installed to a self-managed web host and is easy to use and customize. In fact, it’s becoming so popular that many WordPress developers and theme sites also offer Expression Engine Themes.

Although I’ve yet to try EE, I’ve yet to hear anything negative, and it seems to offer a growing number of plugins and advanced business solutions.

8. Tumblr

Granted, Tumblr isn’t going to get you a fully functional website, but if you don’t need one, then it might be the perfect solution for you. Tumblr offers a large selection of free and premium themes, but also allows you to modify or create one of your own.

Unlike the rest, Tumblr does not allow you to upload files to their servers, but you can fix that by obtaining an inexpensive hosting account. If you don’t need to do much other than to blog or embed multimedia content, then you can have a Tumblr website up, complete with as many pages as you need, in less than 15 minutes.

Did I mention it’s free?

9. Concrete5

I’ve not used Concrete5, but I keep hearing about it from blogging and developer friends. It’s free, open source, features WYSIWYG editing, and is developer friendly. However, unlike other open source platforms, Concrete5 is not “designed by committee” and is much more discerning with the code they allow into their core.

Interestingly enough, Concrete5 boasts of being enterprise friendly and stable at 1 million+ pages, which is where many CMS systems get slow and unstable.

Shopping Carts and E-Commerce

Technically, shopping carts and other types of e-commerce software are another type of CMS. They are such a specific type though, and they’re so essential for many companies, that I decided to put them in a separate section. If you’re selling any type of physical products or services with your website, you might want to consider some of these packages:

10. osCommerce

osCommerce is an open source e-commerce solution based on the popular GNU General Public License. It’s a solution that was created in 2000 and now used by over 10,000 web shops worldwide.

While immensely powerful, a potential drawback to using osCommerce is that it can be complicated for novice users, but luckily, there are plenty of online resources that explain installation, setup, and upgrading, including an active developer forum on the project’s website.

11. CubeCart

CubeCart is no slouch, in fact it’s so popular that it’s used by over 1 million E-commerce sites across the world. The great thing about CubeCart is that they have a free version, and a free 30 day trial for the premium version. As a one-time purchase, this is much cheaper than a hosted eCommerce solution.

The downside is that you must install and manage this software on your own, but if you have a handle with HTML and CSS, then you can probably find your way around this one just fine.

CubeCart features a “plug and play” module system capable of working with Paypal, UPS, Google Checkout, and more.

12. Magento

Magento claims to be the world’s fastest growing e-commerce platform, weighing in at over $25 billion in transactions, 60k merchants, and 2 million downloads.

It’s open source and offers everything from free to enterprise solutions that include warranties and support. What’s impressive about Magento is that it features some of the most dynamic tools, user options, and management features on any open source platform, and is likely to have a scalable solution that meets your businesses’ needs.

You can view their comparison chart to see which version is right for you.

13. PrestaShop

Yet another free open source e-commerce solution is PrestaShop, which features everything from catalogues to shipping modules. Using this software, you can take payments, manage customers, track important metrics, and handle customer orders with ease.

What’s nice about PrestaShop is that both their website and software are easy to navigate and use, which is something sorely lacking with the competition.

14. ZenCart

Most people are familiar with ZenCart because it’s one of the oldest and most trusted e-commerce solutions on the market today. It’s also featured as a quick installation module within most Fantastico control panels, which means you can install it onto your CMS with ease.

ZenCart is template based, and it’s simple to use. The downside of course is that it’s less flexible than other platforms, but since we’re looking to build a website in under an hour, this might be the way to go.

15. WP E-Commerce

This is a WordPress plugin that installs in seconds and although it cannot be used with other CMS platforms, it bears mention because of it’s popularity in the WP community. Although many WP themes do come with built-in ecommerce features, WP e-Commerce tops 99% of them.

Theme Marketplaces

Content Management Systems all come with built-in designs and themes, but you’ll probably want one that’s better suited to your business. For most CMS’s, there are thousands of free themes available for you to download and use, but in general, the premium themes have the nicest designs and offer the most functionality. Also, because premium themes cost money, less people are using them overall, meaning it’s usually less likely someone will see your design on someone else’s site.

Here are a few marketplaces that offer themes for multiple Content Management Systems:

16. Theme Forest

Owned by Envato, Theme Forest is an enormous marketplace of themes and templates for all types of websites. Currently, they have themes for WordPress, Joomla, and Magneto, as well as HTML and PSD website templates that don’t require a CMS.

17. Template Monster

Perhaps the largest collection of high-quality templates and themes on the web, Template Monster is another place you should look, if you’re shopping for a quick design. They have templates for WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, osCommerce, Magneto, and ZenCart, as well as half a dozen other Content Management Systems. You can also buy logo templates, turnkey websites, stock music — everything you need to get a website up and running fast.

18. RocketTheme

Taking the prize for the most energetic and exciting theme marketplace, RocketTheme offers solutions for Joomla, Drupal, WordPress, and phpBB3. Their themes are sold as a membership, meaning that for $50, you get 90 days to download up to 2 themes, or for $250, you get a year to download as many as you like.

19. WordPress Specific Marketplaces

Since WordPress is the most widely used CMS, I thought it would be worthwhile to list a few WP specific theme shops to choose from:

WooThemes – Single, Developer, and Subscription licensing
ElegantThemes – Subscription and Developer Licensing

Logo and Identity

If your company doesn’t have a web-ready logo, then you’ll need to pay someone to create one for you. With logo houses, there are essentially two choices, ready-made design or from scratch.

These companies offer both, with quick turnaround times for service:

20. 99 Designs

99 designs is one of the first websites to bring the concept of “crowdsourcing” to graphic design. You can post a design contest, and designers will compete for your business, submitting different designs for your approval. Or you can buy one of their ready-made logos and have them customize it for you.

Either way, it’s an easy way to get a logo made fast.

21. Inkd

I recently discovered Inkd while shopping for a custom logo service, but they also offer website-ready design and identity packages. Their prices are extremely reasonable and they often run sales, giving you anywhere from 15-30% off.

I’ve used both custom and ready-made services and have been extremely satisfied with the results.

How Do You Know What to Choose?

So many options and so little time, right?

I’ve tried to provide a few of the pros and cons for each CMS, but to really get a good idea about which might be a good fit for your website, take a look at these more in-depth comparisons:

What Have I Missed?

Did I leave out your favorite CMS or a great site to get templates and themes? Have other tips for getting a website design fast?

Tell us about them in the comments, and we’ll compare notes.

If you enjoyed this post, click here to bookmark it on Delicious.

About the Author: Nathan Hangen is an entrepreneur and founder of Soundtrackster, which offers premium royalty-free music for media publishers.

What Google’s Nexus One Can Teach Us about E-Commerce

Posted on: August 9th, 2010 by Cameron Chapman 9 Comments

The Nexus One might be Google’s most extraordinary flop yet.

The phone itself was great, with excellent hardware and functionality, but the e-commerce strategy Google attempted to employ failed miserably, with their online store closing less than eight months after opening.

But as with any great success or failure, a lot can be learned by studying what they did. There’s plenty to study too, given the intense media coverage the Nexus One got from the time it was announced until after the store closed last month.

Here are some important lessons Google has offered through their own process of trial and error.

Excellent Customer Service at Launch is Vital

When the Nexus One (N1) came out, Google only offered customer support online, primarily through their user forums and online knowledge base. There was no phone number or other contact method available. It was the same system they offered for most of their products, and it seemed to be working fine, so they figured, "Why change it?"

But most of those products didn’t cost $530.

When you’re using a free app, or even one that costs $50-$100 per year, you may be content with only email tech support or live chat. But you’re going to shell out 10 times that amount, you want the ability to talk to a live person.

Besides, what are you supposed to do if your phone breaks down? You don’t want to wait two or three days for someone to get back to you by e-mail or in the forums. You want to call somebody and take care of the problem right now.

They tried to fix the problem and deliver phone service a month later, but it was too late. A lot of potential customers had already bought a different phone or lost faith in the N1.

And who knows how many millions it cost them?

A Big Brand Doesn’t Solve Everything

The N1 was released in the beginning of January of 2010. At that time, the first really big, mainstream Android-based phones (the Motorola Droid and the HTC Eris) had only been out for two months.

Sure, there had been other phones running on Android prior to that, but they hadn’t gained much market share. Your average smartphone consumer still hadn’t heard of Android.

Google seemed to believe it didn’t matter. They assumed the strength of the Google brand would be enough to make the sale, that people would buy something just because it was from Google.

But it wasn’t true. In the early days, Android was still a relatively techie platform and most people weren’t even aware Google had anything to do with it.

Without the name recognition Android now has, they were fighting an uphill battle. Combined with their poor initial customer service and support strategy, it was just too much doubt for a lot of consumers to overcome.

You Shouldn’t Revolutionize Everything

Always the revolutionary company, Google openly claimed they wanted to reinvent the way cell phones are sold.

They wanted to eliminate distributors. They wanted to end the tyranny of long-term contracts. They wanted to bring cell phones directly to the consumer.

There was only one problem: without subsidies from carriers, the unlocked version of the phone was over $500. There was only one mobile carrier in the U.S., T-Mobile, that offered any kind of discount.

And that made the phone look expensive.

We don’t view smartphones as being worth $500+, because we rarely pay that much for them. We’re used to signing contracts with carriers and getting subsidies, which make the phones much cheaper.

What Google was trying to do was definitely revolutionary, but the problem was the customer couldn’t find a benefit. In fact, from the view of many customers, the new system was inferior to the old one. They were having to pay a lot more for the phone.

What about Other Expensive Smartphones?

I’m sure some will argue that the unsubsidized price of the N1 couldn’t have hurt its sales that much. After all, the original iPhone was priced at $499 or $599, depending on the storage capacity. And that sold just fine.

The big difference here comes down to reputation.

Google obviously has as much name recognition as Apple (probably more in some circles), but they’d been associated with a hardware release before. Sure, they had hundreds of millions of users worldwide, but those were users of free and low-cost products.

Apple, on the other hand, had a proven track record of both hardware and software releases. They had a fan base that was used to paying premium prices for their products and had no problem doing so. Apple was able to leverage this to overcome the high initial price of the iPhone.

The other thing Apple had going for it with the original iPhone was how revolutionary it was. Previous touch screen phones hadn’t worked very well, and none of them had the functionality of the iPhone. Plus, it looked and felt like a premium product, which helped it justify the higher price tag.

The Nexus One, while a great phone, didn’t have the name recognition and wasn’t that revolutionary. It had the best hardware of any Android phone released to date, but besides being more powerful, the overall package just wasn’t that different from the Android phones already out there..

What Could They Have Done Differently?

There are a number of things Google could have done differently that would have greatly increased the chances for success of the N1.

The first would have been building up more recognition for the Android platform prior to trying such a radical strategy. With more name recognition, the N1 would have been starting from a much stronger position and would have had an easier time gaining market share.

A better-thought-out customer service strategy also would have been a big help. Google has a long history of offering primarily web-based support, but that doesn’t carry over well to such an expensive product, as they found out. If they’d offered phone support from day one, they likely would have had more success.

They should’ve also paid more attention to the pricing preferences of their customers. Sure, most people would prefer an unlocked phone, but only a tiny fraction of them are willing to pay double or triple for their phone to get it. If they’d offered partnerships with mobile carriers from the beginning, things might have turned out quite differently.

Is Google Doomed for Failure with Cell Phones?

I don’t think so.

If there’s anything we’ve come to expect from Google, it’s that they learn from their failures as much as anyone else. I wouldn’t be surprised if they make another attempt in the future with a revised sales startegy that addresses the issues covered here. Maybe they’ll even attempt to revolutionize a different part of the industry.

But what do you think?

Have other insights into what Google could have done to make their online N1 store more successful? Anything else they did wrong? Are there features you’d like to see?

Share your thoughts in the comments!