“When the product is right, you don’t have to be a great salesperson. The product will find its way to the consumer or buyer.” I have heard this several times over the years. It could be true if the product has a monopoly in the given market or addresses a niche need. However, for the rest, a story needs to be told — to the right audience, at the right time and in the right way. 

In the e-commerce world, this is something typically done by the humble product description page (PDP). Despite its importance in selling a product, it is often overlooked and deprioritized — in terms of both attention and effort — especially in favor of homepages and campaign landing pages. This effectively means the product description page is often left to do a lot of sales work without the resources it should have.

Product pages and customer journeys

Typically, a customer doesn’t start their purchase journey on a PDP — at least they don’t in the classic e-commerce journey. However, it nevertheless plays an important role in making the sale. Indeed, a lot of time, effort and creativity will have been invested in getting a visitor not only to the site but also to the point where they are about to purchase; the product page makes sure none of that effort goes to waste by essentially ‘closing’ the sale. With the industry moving towards ‘convergence commerce’ — catering to all types of customer journeys — there is now a distinct shift from concepts like ‘channel thinking’ and ‘pre-cart journey’ to a scenario where a consumer should be able to start their journey and complete it anywhere, with real time information available across all touchpoints. This makes product pages even more important in a buyer journey.

The data backs this up. Salsify’s ‘Cracking the Consumer Code’ report states that 87 percent of consumers say the content on product pages plays a significant role in whether they purchase. 98 percent of consumers have opted not to purchase a product because the product page was either insufficient or incorrect. The conversion rate for visitors who land directly on a product page averages about 7 percent, vs. the 2.5 percent from a home page. Thus a well-designed product page leads to better user experience and ensures customers are able to quickly find the information they need. This streamlines the sales funnel and makes it more efficient.

Product description pages must be built to convert

When PDPs are built to convert, the challenge is that there are no rules that apply to all brands and retailers. This means it’s imperative to understand the objectives of a given PDP and to keep them in mind in every step of the process, from design to measurement and optimization.

A high converting PDP has a few key components and if any of them is not taken care of it can cost the business  in sales. Let’s take a closer look at what these components are: