Chances are you’ve purchased something from an ecommerce site.
Amazon is the most popular ecommerce site. The last time I checked I think they accounted for something like 25% of all ecommerce sales. That’s not pretty impressive, that’s incredible.
Amazon does a good job with content, but many ecommerce sites have traditionally had lacking content. It’s not that ecommerce sites don’t want to have great content on every page. There are just so many pages on ecommerce sites that it’s nearly impossible to create amazing content for every page.
But I think ecommerce sites can take a few cues from successful blogs to create better content on their sites. We’re talking mostly about product pages, but every page on any website is really open to these tips.
So if you’re an ecommerce manager – steal these strategies.
1. Create Sections
Long content is scary.
People look at a page with lots of content and figure it’s going to take a lot of time to read it and they just leave. However, if you take the same word count and break it into sections you’re going to make the content a lot less scary. People will visit the page, scan it and go back and read the entire thing.
Bloggers have learned this lesson. Check out some of your favorite blogs. Chances are that most or all of them use headings and sections to break up the content.
We like a lot of content that is thorough and provides value, but we like to be able to scan it and know what we’re getting into.
You can do the same with your ecommerce pages. Bullet points of content work well. Use them as kind of a table of contents early on in your content, but then go into detail later on in the page. Create sections and give shoppers all the content they need to make a good decision.
Amazon does a good job of this with their Kindle sales page.
2. Optimized, Short Titles
Some ecommerce titles get incredibly long. When the product has a brand name, product name, gender, size, width, color, etc. etc. you’re going to have a long title. I realize that most of these titles are created with automatic coding, but not all of that content needs to be in the title of the product.
Whenever possible, use shorter titles.
Bloggers know how to do this. There have been a few suggestions in the past that you need to get as much information into your title as possible because that works well on search engines.
Well, people don’t like a lot of clutter in life. They don’t like clutter on web pages. It cuts down on conversion. People also don’t like a lot of clutter in their titles. It cuts down on clickthroughs.
Use the most important words in the title, but cut it off after those few. That’s an optimized, short title. Look at popular blogs… Some have a few titles that get long and that can work sometimes, but most blog titles say a lot with a few words.
3. Quotes And Studies
This one is not used all the time or really at all on ecommerce sites, but it’s used quite often on blog posts.
If you read a lot of blogs you’ll see that bloggers mention other people all the time on their blogs. This does a couple things.
First, it adds credibility to what is being said on the page. It’s one thing to talk up your own product, but it’s another thing to have an expert or someone else talk about the product.
Second, when you mention people you give them a reason to promote your page. They won’t be going crazy with promotion of your ecommerce page, but they might share the page on social media or something like that.
Product reviews are kind of like this, but brands could take it even further.
Have featured reviews. Reward the best reviews even if they’re not entirely positive. Reward people that really give descriptive reviews of the products.
Also, cite studies on your product pages. If the New York Times said that walking helps peoples health then mention that on your walking shoes page.
When experts and studies say things related to your industry, use that information to your advantage.
4. Call-To-Action At The Bottom Of The Page
When people read blog posts they read through to the bottom of the page. At this point it makes sense for the blogger to put the main all to action at the bottom of the page. Usually it asks the reader to subscribe to the email or to visit the services page or something like that.
On ecommerce pages, however, you have the main call-to-action at the top right, which is perfect, but the bottom of the page is another great opportunity to repeat this call-to-action in some way.
You don’t need to have the entire “But” button area down at the bottom, but if you have a longer sales page then you should have something at the bottom so the reader doesn’t have to scroll all the way back to the top to add the item to their cart or to clickthrough for more information.
Make it easy on your visitor and call them to action when it makes sense – when they’re done reading all your great content.
5. Stories
Finally, bloggers are really good with telling stories and making things personal. This is harder for ecommerce sites, but there is no reason that ecommerce managers and copywriters can’t work in some storytelling on their product pages.
I think more ecommerce sites are doing this with videos and that’s awesome. You hear the entire backstory of how the product came to be, the people that have loved using it and everything about the product.
Have your video. Turn that content in text and you have a great story that will sell your product even more to your visitors.
Bloggers do it all the time with blog posts. You can do it too on ecommerce pages.
Conclusion
These are just a few ways ecommerce managers can improve the content on product pages. It’s difficult to write content for all those pages, but follow the strategies here and it should lead to better conversion.
People want to read about products and services. They want to feel comfortable with what they’re buying and these strategies have proven to earn trust for bloggers. It can work for ecommerce sites too.