Increase your Returns with Informative Product Pages

Visitors to your website need sufficient information about a product before purchasing it. Product pages can provide that information using a combination of text and images. Effective product pages show

availability
product options
total cost

Good images also matter.

The product pages on most e-commerce and SME websites suffer from information deficit. It's rare to see product descriptions that tell visitors and prospects all they need to know to make a purchasing decision.

Research data from Prioritising Usability* shows poor product information accounted for 10% of the user failures (that is, cases where visitors gave up shopping, as opposed to just being delayed or annoyed).

Designing product pages according to shopper needs is a highly targeted way to encourage sales at a point where shoppers have already indicated interest by of visiting the product page.

You need detailed product information and it must be written in a way that makes sense to people who are not experts in your field. For example Epson describe the Photo 1410 as "The high quality, high performance A3+ printer for the digital photography enthusiast" (sounds like me!), the product page then has plenty of information if I want all the specs compared with the HP website where I have to search through all the details (great that they are listed) to ascertain the suitability of a printer for my needs and it's all very technical.

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* Jakob Nielsen, Published 2006