A great product page does several things at once. It shows off your product, sticks to your brand and makes it easy for customers to click “add to cart.” This is the Complete Guide to building a Shopify product page that converts.
How to Build A Shopify Product Page That Converts
- What Makes A Product Page Convert?
- [Instruction Manual] How To Build Your Shopify Product Page
- The Best Apps To Add To Your Shopify Product Page
- How To Design Your Product Page
- How To Write Irresistible Product Descriptions
In a 2018 survey of American consumers, the research group eMarketer asked people which parts of a product page influenced their decision to buy. Unsurprisingly, product images and descriptions were some of the most important features…
However, whilst the product page templates for most Shopify Themes include images and a descriptions by default, using the right kind of content can make a huge difference. Around 20% of abandoned purchases are due to a lack of information early in the process. That means your images and descriptions need to be clear and honest. The importance of Social Proof features like star ratings and reviews also highlights the need to show consumers they can trust your site.
Building the ultimate Shopify product page is tough, but it can give your conversion rate a huge boost. It can also reduce your bounce rate and even place you at the top of Google’s results page. So, how is it done?
Once you have picked a Theme, there are two ways to edit a product page on Shopify. You can stick with the Template that comes with your theme, or create a new one by editing your code.
- What is a Shopify Theme? Every Shopify store uses a Theme. This changes how your store looks and what features it has.
- What are Shopify Templates? To turn your theme into a page, you need a Template. Every page in your store follows the rules of a particular template, which says where each feature goes. For example, your product pages follow a Template that includes a “buy” button.
1. Building a Page Within A Template
No matter which Shopify Theme you pick, there are plenty of ways to customise the look of your product pages. To start with, you can upload unique product images and write your product descriptions in the “Products” section of the workspace.
To edit the layout and appearance of your pages, you need to go to the Themes section of your workspace and click “Customize.”
Choose “Product Pages” from the drop-down menu. The “Sections” tab allows you to adjust how Sections are displayed for all of your product pages. Using the “Theme Settings” tab, you can edit the appearance of pages throughout your store.
There is a limit to the changes you can make with the default Template for your Theme. If you want to make more significant changes, there are two options. You can either edit the relevant Liquid file, creating a new Template, or install a plugin that provides the feature you want (such as product reviews).
- What is a Liquid file? Liquid is the language Shopify uses to build themes and templates. Liquid tags describe how elements are ordered and what they look like. They are always bookended with {% and %} and can also be used to load dynamic content.
2. Creating a new Template
By creating a new template, you can build custom product pages within your Shopify store. This is quite simple to organise, but it will require some HTML editing. Shopify provides some guidance for this, and there are a number of online tutorials.
3. Installing An App
87% of Shopify store owners say they rely on the platform’s apps to run their business. Shopify websites have an average of 6 apps installed, and your product pages are an obvious place to use them. Like creating a new Template, Shopify apps will sometimes require you to edit the code for your Theme. However, this is usually much more straight-forward than creating a new Template.
Trust Sign Apps
Cart abandonment is huge issue in e-commerce, with multiple studies estimating abandonment rates as high as 80%. A recent study by the Baymard Institute suggests that 17% of abandoned carts are due to concerns about security. Apps like Trustpulse allow you to display symbols on your web pages that guarantee the security of their transactions. Trust signs include:
- Security software
- Industry certifications
- Quality guarantees
- Returns policies
Gamification Apps
Apps like Swell or Spin To Win enhance your product page by using gamification. Gamification is engaging customers through the application of certain types of elements you would find in games, including rewards or point-scoring. The fun of gaming incentivises certain behaviours. Gamification can help optimise your product page by encouraging purchases by providing rewards for certain behaviours:
- Discounts for spending a certain amount
- Points for sharing a page
- Encouraging the purchase of a particular product
Gamification ranges from overt play (such as the examples above) to more implicit “soft” gamification (such as the validating green tick mark after successfully completing a webform).
Social Proof Apps
Social Proof is one of the most powerful tools in the marketer’s arsenal. When a potential customer is unsure how to act, they will often look to others for clues. Social Proof Apps provide a way of harnessing this effect automatically, increasing your conversion rate.
Apps like Nudgify, Fera and FOMO use live data from your store to display persuasive information about recently viewed and purchased items. One of the major obstacles to online sales is trust. By showing recent sales, product reviews and ratings on your Shopify product page, social proof apps increase trust in your store.
One of the first insights produced by consumer psychological research was the speed with which customers make their judgements. Within 0.25 seconds of seeing your product page, important decisions are already being made…
Not only do consumers make decisions quickly, but they also tend to stick to them. Cognitive effects such as Anchoring and the Halo Effect describe how the first stimulus people receive shapes their evaluation of subsequent information. That means that the things people see in the first few moments have a disproportionate impact on their decisions.
Designing a Product Page For First Impressions
- Load Speed: The first thing to check is the loading speed of your page. The longer people have to wait for a response, the quicker their interest fades. In 2012, Amazon famously estimated that if their pages were to load one second slower than usual, they would face an annual loss of $1.6 billion. It is worth checking your loading speed on Pingdom or Google Page Speed to make sure your Theme is performing as well as it should. If you do spot a problem, it’s a good idea to check:
- Your tracking tags with Google Tag Manager
- Your Pop-ups and Plugins
- The size of your images
- Problems with your Liquid code
- Animated features like image sliders
- Engagement: Whilst loading speed is key, you also have to make sure that what loads is worth seeing. That starts with choosing the best product images for your Shopify product page. Because customers are not able to see your product in person, photography acts as your product’s ambassador. High-quality images go a long way in leading visitors along the customer journey as our brains are wired to better process visuals than text.
- Cognitive Ease: The less you make your customer think, the better they will rate their experience. Cognitive ease, which describes the fluency with which our brains processes information, is enhanced by structuring your page in an organised and digestible way. Visual cueing and a clear visual hierarchy improve the coherence of your page, facilitating trust, comfort and pleasure.
Truth is, people judge a book by its cover, and quickly. By designing your Shopify product page for speed, engagement and ease, you can make the most of your customers’ attention.
Everything you write on your Shopify product page should be chosen carefully. You need to communicate with your audience, give them enough information to make their mind up, and still leave time for them to buy your product…
The Devil In The Details
Some information might seem important, but it won’t affect your customers’ decisions. Other information might seem irrelevant, whilst actually making the difference between making a sale and losing a customer. Telling the difference between these two is tricky, and it requires you to get inside your customers’ heads. Some of the less obvious, but still important, details you might want to include are…
- Your product’s dimensions: The size of an image can be deceiving, so including the actual dimensions will help avoid misunderstandings.
- Materials: This doesn’t always matter, but in some cases it is essential. If you’re working for a sustainable brand or an ethical company, you need to be specific about your materials.
- Care instructions: This is something retailers often forget about. It’s particularly important because it encourages your customers to picture themselves in possession of your product and that triggers a powerful Endowment Effect.
“Benefits” vs “Features”
Marketers often separate product descriptions into two categories: “features” and “benefits”. Features are the qualities and selling points that makes your product unique. Benefits are the way these features affect your customers. To create a great Shopify product page, you need a bit of both.
For example, Chilly’s (a brand of water bottle) are masters of the product description…
On their product pages, Chilly’s explain that their bottles keep a drink hot for up to 12 hours. Great. So what? Well, Chilly’s puts that benefit into context…
Keep your tea or coffee hot for up to 12 hours. Perfect for those cold morning commutes.
By listing both features and benefits, Chilly’s creates a far more persuasive pitch. Their product images often take advantage of the Visual Depiction Effect; if a customer can picture themselves owning your product, it’s a much smaller step for them to buy it…
How To Build A Shopify Product Page That Converts
Your product is like a ring in a jeweller’s window. What makes it sparkle is the way you design your page. Product pages give store owners the advantage of controlling everything the customer sees. By managing this display, you can leverage aspects of consumer psychology that make a product irresistible.
