This is a guest post by Conversion Rate Expert Rishi Rawat, Founder of Frictionless Commerce. You can connect with Rishi on Linked In, where he’s constantly posting quick examples you can easily implement on your site.
It Took me 12 Years to Figure Out This Secret to Product Page Optimization
Your product page is the most important page on your website. Here’s how we help our clients tell the right product story in the right way and get them at least 20% boost in conversion rate.
It’s a dark alley. No lights on. The marketing world version of a mugger has a gun to your head. He says, “you can only focus on one thing to optimize conversion rates for the rest of your career. Pick.”
For me, it’s easy: the product page.
The product page is where we ask shoppers to part with their hard-earned money in exchange for what we offer. It’s where they make their decision to buy, or not to buy.
Bluntly put: the product page is the moment of truth.
Shoppers enter your site looking to buy one item. As far as they’re concerned, your entire site is one product page.
Here’s what 12+ years, 80+ websites, and over 340 product pages have taught us about how you can best take advantage of that fact.
Table of Contents
- Where is your customer’s buy/no buy decision point?
- The product story: the single, most effective way to turn shoppers into buyers
- The two aspects found in every successful product story
- How to shape your product story to make it irresistible to your ideal customers
- Summing it up
Where is your customer’s buy/no-buy decision point?
Like I mentioned before, as far as your shopper is concerned, your entire site is one product page long. They come to your site looking for one item, and when they find that item, it is as if time stands still.
We see it time and again when we analyze buyer behavior on eCommerce websites. A shopper lands on your site. Immediately they turn into a demon-possessed speed scroller. They fly through your homepage. They briefly pause as they enter your shop. But once they land on the product page they were looking for, the shopper comes to a complete stop.
This is no fluke accident. I’ve learned from my years of studying buyer psychology and behavior that this is the point in time when you have captured the largest share of their attention you’re ever gonna get.
You absolutely have to take advantage of that immediately.
The product story: the single, most effective way to turn shoppers into buyers
The single, most effective, data-backed way you can take advantage of your shopper’s attention is by telling them a story.
If your reaction to that is, “I run an eCommerce site, why the hell will I care about stories? I sell products,” you are not alone.
But, as it turns out, there are well-researched, biological reasons for this:
- Stories are more memorable. 22 times more memorable than facts & figures alone.
- Stories activate the visual cortex. It’s impossible to hear the story about the fox and the sour grapes and not see a fox trying and failing to reach the grapes. The story is instantly converted into a visual narrative; and visual narratives embed more deeply in our brains.
- Our brain waves start synchronizing with the storyteller as we’re digesting a story, says Uri Hasson, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Princeton University. We experience what the storyteller is experiencing.
Stories are powerful. Stories are how humans make sense of the world. At Frictionless Commerce, we love telling our clients’ stories. Here’s how you can capitalize on their power.
Tell the right stories
Remember, in your shopper’s mind, that product page they’re on might as well be your entire website. That’s the only thing they’re focused on right now. And now that they’ve slowed down enough to focus, they have questions you absolutely must answer.
Think of your site as a hurdle race where the shopper has to overcome hurdles before they are ready to use their credit card.
The first and biggest hurdle to clear is: “who are you and why should I care?” We call this the unfamiliarity barrier.
The single, most effective way to clear that hurdle is by telling your shopper your…
“Why we exist” story
We live in a world where shoppers have more choices than ever and their attention has never been more fragmented. You need to break through that clutter. Reach out of their screen, grab them by the collar and demand their attention
(metaphorically speaking, of course — I would never advocate literally grabbing someone by the collar)
Your “why we exist” story really matters. A KoMarketing survey asked the question, “Once you’re on the homepage, what information do you want to see available?” 52% of people surveyed wanted to see About / Company Information. (Source)
When you tell your buyer the story of why your business exists you are forging a bond. Establishing a connection. Building trust.
“Why this product must exist” story
Your buyer has now read your “why we exist” story. You have started establishing that connection. You have started forming a bond. Your buyer now trusts you.
You might even say that they like you.
Of course, liking someone and handing over your hard-earned money are two completely different things. Your buyer has another important question. One that you must answer for them if they are ever going to complete that transaction:
“What makes your product the best possible solution to my problem?” More simply, “why should I buy your product?”
And the most effective way to answer this question is by telling your “why this product must exist” story.
These 2 questions are central characters in the product page optimization saga. Nail them and experience a 20% sales bump.
How to extract your “why we exist” and “why this product must exist” stories
In my experience, working with clients, I find that each of them has a truly compelling story. Often they are unaware of it. They are too shy or too modest. They have poured so much of themselves into their product that they want that product to speak for itself. Or they are too close to the product. They sometimes assume everyone knows what they know. They forget to mention some of the most important benefits. Benefits that turn buyers into shoppers.
I have found one of the best ways to overcome these perfectly natural tendencies is a role playing exercise.
Imagine that, at the end of a great week, you are taking a well-deserved night off. You are sitting at a bar and strike up a conversation with the person next to you. You hit it off and the conversation turns to business, so you tell them what it is you do.
Turns out they’ve been looking for a product like yours. They have questions:
- When did you first see the need for your product?
- Why did it affect you? What personal frustration did it connect with?
- Were you surprised the product didn’t already exist?
- How did you go from having the idea to mustering the courage to start a company? Was that scary?
- Running a business is hard as hell. How did you overcome setbacks along the way? What gets you out of bed every day?
- What are your guiding principles?
- How do stay ahead of competitors with deeper pockets?
- Before you started what options were available to the shopper?
- What was the most complicated part of the development process? Were there parts that turned out to be way more complicated than you had originally anticipated?
- How important is it that this product exists? What would the world miss out on if it didn’t exist?
- How do you stay ahead of the competition?
- Your invention has been available for a number of years. What improvements have you made along the way? Please share some of those product improvement stories.
- When you talk to customers who have bought and used your product, what feature do they seem most surprised by?
- What’s one aspect of your product story that most buyers don’t know?
- Other sites can outspend you online. They will always show up #1 in a Google search. How do you plan to deal with that?
Every single answer you give them is a potential angle for your product story.
Each of these product story angles is a compelling element of your story. These product story angles help you answer your buyers questions. They want to know who you are, why they should care, and what you can do for them.
See our process for developing product stories.
How to shape your product story
You must shape your story in a way that is compelling. That is irresistible. Tell your story so that there is zero chance that your ideal buyers would ever stop reading.
Think about it.
We all know at least one person who can turn their weekend of folding laundry and bingeing Netflix into Shakespeare. We also know the other guy who could make us fall asleep while telling us how he single handedly rescued thirteen orphans from a burning building.
Be the Shakespearean laundry folders. Let the other guys play snoozy orphan rescuers.
There are millions of subconscious prompts that help shoppers navigate their choices. It’s a matter of finding the right prompts to turn your shoppers into buyers.
This is our list of the nine most important, often underused, conversion copywriting tactics that make the greatest difference in boosting your conversion rates. We call them:
The 9 fundamentals of product story shaping
- People are skeptical of “too good to be true”
- They find expertise sexy
- They root for people who beat the odds
- They are fascinated by surprising details
- They are visual animals
- They need motivation to break habits
- They love personalized experiences
- They like knowing they’ve stumbled onto something rare
- We must resolve their negative thoughts
When you use these elements to shape your product story, not only will you be telling the right story, you will be telling it in the right way.
And that is when you will start seeing a meaningful increase in your conversion rates.
Summing it up
Your goal, on your eCommerce site is to convert shoppers into buyers. The way you are going to do that is help them make that decision when they are ready. Shoppers reach the buy/no buy decision point on your product page. That means your product page is your greatest opportunity to convert shoppers into buyers.
The single, most effective way to turn shoppers into buyers is by telling them your product story.
Make sure you tell your “why we exist” and “why this product must exist” stories. When you do that, you build trust, establish connection, and form a bond. You answer the questions your shoppers have about you and your product. You move them along their customer journey, helping give the confidence they need to put down their hard earned money for your product.
When telling your product story, you must, must, must tell it in the right way. Use the 9 fundamentals of product story shaping to make your story so compelling that your shoppers will find it irresistible.
Do that, and you too may find yourself with a 20% boost to conversions on your best selling product.
About Rishi
Rishi specializes in radically improving product page conversion rates. He does this by supercharging your product story.
The most valuable thing he owns is a reprint of an 1897 Sears catalog.
Rishi’s company, Frictionless Commerce, uses buyer psychology copywriting to optimize conversion rates.
Rishi also has a weekly example-filled conversion secrets newsletter: https://www.frictionless-commerce.com/JOIN
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