Colorado Web Solutions

Cyber Monday Tip #9: Are your Product Pages Selling??

Posted on November 23rd, 2009 by Matt Sampson - Colorado Web Solutions

Part 9 of our month long Cyber Monday Prep Tips Series. Every day, we have been giving you one small piece of advice to check, fix or confirm within your Yahoo! Store in preparation for Cyber Monday 2009. View Past Yahoo! Store Tips.

Cyber Monday Yahoo! Store Preparation Tip #9: Making Sure Your Product Pages are your Top Salesperson

Today we are going to take a close look at your Yahoo! Store’s product pages. Your product page is the ONE PAGE that you are guaranteed your customer will see on your site. They might bypass your home page, they could skip past the category and sub category pages, but they can’t avoid the product page. In most cases, it’s the only way to get a product added to their cart.

I mention this because I often times see very plain and or almost blank product pages on far too many sites.

So… let’s take a look at your number one selling product. Head there in your store right now. What do you see? Are all of your questions answered? Do you get a clear picture as to what it is you’re selling? How are the images? Has anyone called recently or emailed recently with a question about this product? Is that answer online now?

Let’s take a look at what the ultimate Product Page on a Yahoo! Store has in my opinion:

• Nice Layout: Product Image, Price, Options, availability and order button should be above the fold (top part of the page that you can see before scrolling down)
• Clear Imagery: At least one product image that can be enlarged for better viewing. If you have multiple images available (either alternative views or colors) be sure to add them. If you do not have the ability to display more than two images in your Yahoo! Store, you may want to consider adding a Multiple Images enhancement.
• Complete Description: This should be in paragraph form and should describe the product. Many manufacturers provide their own product descriptions, and we would suggest using those, but we would also suggest writing your own additional description for your top selling products. What else can you mention about this product that is not already included in the manufacturers description? Remember those Keywords you created in Tip #1? Make sure some of those are included in your own description. This will help both your customers and the search engines.
• Additional Information: Either as a bullet list or sentences, the Additional Information would include things like warranty info, dimensions, weight, specifications, etc. Things that your customers may want to know, but details that do not typically belong in the main description.
• Product Reviews: Product Reviews are a fantastic way to reinforce your products. We highly suggest using them if you can. For all of your Top Products, have your staff add a few initial reviews to get the ball rolling.
• Promotional Information: Remember, your customers may not have visited any other page on your site, so be sure to include any promotional items related to each item on the product page. For example, if you offer free shipping on any order over $100, every one of your products that cost more than $100 should have an icon or sentence about how “This Item Ships Free!”. We offer an enhancement that will do this automatically for you! If the product is on sale, consider adding a “% saved” or “$ saved” line so they see the value of what they’re looking at.
• Clear Call to Action: As silly as it sounds, double check your “Add to Cart” button and make sure it’s easy to see and encourages your customers to buy. Be sure there is nothing confusing about it. Does it stand out? What does it say? Add to Cart? Buy Now? Get One? Make sure it’s asking the customer to DO something.
• “You might also Consider” Items: Not every product is gong to interest every one of your customers, so when your customers do arrive at a product that wasn’t quite right, how about suggesting alternative items right there on the product page? Yahoo! Stores can do this in a variety of ways. You can use the Yahoo! Store Cross Sell Version 2.0 and automatically have your store suggest products, or your store can be coded so that you can also manually specify the exact related items for each product.
• Product FAQ’s: If you receive a lot of email or calls about particular products, consider adding a Product FAQ section on those products. This can be a part of your caption or coded as a separate field in your store. List the general questions and your answers right there on the page. This will be great for SEO as well as instant customer service. In the future as repeat questions continue to come in about products, continue to add those replies directly to the product page on your site. Your customers and sales reps will thank you.
• Recently Viewed Items: Again, in an effort to make your customers shopping experience as easy as possible, I suggest letting your customers leave “bread crumbs” of their travels so they can easily get back to previous products and compare and contrast with their current selection. This is easily accomplished with Recently Viewed items.

There are a number of additional things that can be adjusted on your product pages in order to help you sell, but I think these basic ideas will be a great start for you between now and Cyber Monday.

I’ll be back tomorrow with some thoughts on Shopping Feeds and Search Engines and your Yahoo! Store.

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