This is a guest post by Kaleigh Moore from BigCommerce.
Kaleigh Moore is a writer at BigCommerce and founder of Lumen Ventures, which helps to educate online sellers on how to grow their businesses across the web. She’s a longtime entrepreneur, who’s run profitable businesses with zero paid advertising. She focuses on influencer marketing strategies and online marketplace diversification to grow sales on a small budget. Kaleigh’s work has been featured in Entrepreneur, Inc. Magazine, Kissmetrics, SumoMe, and more.
Product pages are often overlooked when it comes to conversion optimization, mobile experience and SEO. Sure, you might look at A/B testing the placement of a CTA button or add better product photos, but in large part, product pages remain static and under-utilized.
But what if each product page was optimized for conversions just like a landing page?
Not only would this improve mobile SEO efforts, but it would also help improve the overall customer experience.
With data from Gartner indicating that 89% of businesses will compete mainly on customer experience by as soon as 2017, it’s clear that CX on product pages can no longer be ignored.
By adding videos, user-generated content (like a stream of social media content featuring the product and/or user-submitted product photos or videos), and elements of social proof like customer reviews, you can transform the product pages on your ecommerce site into conversion-driven sales assets.
Here are few ways retailers have already started transforming their product pages into landing pages and the results these efforts have produced.
Incorporating Video & User-Generated Content on Product Pages
When examining areas for optimization on product pages, one of the first areas for improvement that comes to mind is adding more dynamic visuals.
Data shows that customers are 64-85% more likely to buy after watching a product video. And, according to findings from Liveclicker, retailers who added video to most product pages saw a 68% boost in average order value (AOV).
Liveclicker’s findings showed three themes:
- The more video the better: AOV for retailers with video embedded on 50-75% of their product pages was around $300, while it was only $177 for those with video on only 0-25% of product pages
- Video raises conversion rates. Retailers that uploaded video to most of their product pages reported conversion rates were nearly 80% higher than those retailers with product videos on less than 25% of their landing pages
- Customers spend more after watching video content. Customers who watched 10 or more videos spent 119% more than customers who watched just one video
What’s more: Retailers who include videos on their product landing pages see a sales conversion rate of around 9%, and according to WordStream, the average conversion rate is only about 2.35%.
That’s a conversion rate increase of 282%.
Curating User Generated Content, Not Just Advertising Videos
It’s not just ecommerce videos that are helping transform product pages into high conversion landing pages. Online retailers are also incorporating user-generated content (think user submitted photos, reviews, etc.) to make their product pages more effective. MarketingLand reported that more than 90% of customers’ purchase decisions are influenced by online reviews, and according to Forrester research, 70% of consumers consider product and brand recommendations from their social circles trustworthy.
User-generated content, such as reviews, not only provides validation and instills trust but also positively impacts SEO. Search engines tend to favor websites that feature a consistent flow of new content, and user-generated reviews serve as an ideal way to achieve this. You can use a video maker to create video reviews and video testimonials. Creating testimonial videos can be a smart move to highlight your customers’ satisfaction with your product.
OK, at this point you’re probably thinking, “These stats are great, but what about real life examples?” Here are some retailers who have seen actual results from adding video and additional user-generated content to product pages.
Brands Increase Conversions with Product Page Video & User-Generated Content
When outdoor retailer Kelty learned that 40% of its traffic was coming from mobile but that conversion rates for this medium were lower than average, they decided to undertake a re-design to create a more user-friendly experience on mobile.
As part of the re-design, they implemented product videos on all of their product pages, as seen in the example below.
Along with videos, they also implemented customer reviews on each page, which allowed customers to share feedback on their purchases.
The result: After the site re-launched with the contextual product page videos and user-generated reviews, mobile conversions went up an astounding 147%. Not only was the brand able to better accommodate a large portion of its customers on their preferred purchase channel, but they built a mobile experience with easy-to-use features that directly drove sales.
Other brands have taken a step beyond video to produce similar impressive results.
StoreYourBoard Simultaneously Improved UX and SEO
StoreYourBoard incorporated a customer Q&A tool, customer reviews, and user-generated photos to its product pages to create a more robust customer experience –– and to improve SEO at the same time (thanks to the additional content and keywords these assets added on each individual page).
Thanks to these new product page features, StoreYourBoard was able to:
- Answer more than 60 customer-submitted questions per page
- Earn more than 2,000 product reviews (20% of which included user-generated photos)
- Generate 1,300+ answers to FAQs across product pages
In terms of direct ROI, they found that 25% of customers who submitted a question went on to make a purchase, and that all of the new content generated by customers was crawlable by search engines, which directly boosted their SEO efforts.
More and more online retailers are discovering that by transforming product pages into conversion-driven landing pages with a mobile-first mentality, they’re earning more sales, exposure, and praise from satisfied site visitors.
Re-Examine Product Pages to Improve Experience & Drive Sales
If you’re hoping to attract and convert more of your site visitors on both mobile and desktop, it’s clear that taking a hard look at your existing product pages and making some improvements is a good place to start.
Looking back at the research and examples we’ve gone over, we can glean a few key takeaways from the information and put it to use:
- Adding video and user-generated content to product pages is an easy way to boost sales by creating a more dynamic experience.
- Optimizing product pages and product photos as if they were landing pages helps create a better online experience for the user, and drives SEO efforts at the same time.
- User-generated content like customer questions, reviews, and photos help create a more robust product page and breaks down obstacles in the way of purchase for other customers.
By creating product pages that accommodate your customers in a variety of ways, you can transform these assets into conversion-driving machines –– which is good news for your bottom line.
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