Admit it. If you’re a shop owner, you’ve thought this at one point or another. On our side of the fence, we hear it a lot.
My Products Aren’t Selling!
The reason products that don’t sell isn’t because the products aren’t any good.
In this blog post, we’ll take a look at one of the biggest eCommerce struggles that online shops have – products that don’t perform. We’ll look at why they don’t perform and what you can do right now to help them convert more site visitors into paying customers.
Product Images
One of the biggest fails are the product pictures.
Your customers don’t have the ability to inspect the product in the same way they would at a brick and mortar shop, so having product images that show every detail they want to see is imperative.
One of the best examples is a shop that sells backpacks.
The shop owner was bummed because the backpacks weren’t selling despite all the SEO and marketing efforts he put in. He also wrote beautiful product descriptions, but where he fell flat was in the product images.
He had enough images of the backpacks.
That wasn’t the problem. He had manufacturer supplied shots of the front, back and both sides of each backpack… BUT…
There were no interior shots!
People want to know how much the backpack will hold.
They want to know what kinds of storage space, pockets and dividers it has to get a feeling whether the pack will work for their needs and wants.
By not including any images of the interior space, the potential customers had no idea what was on the inside, and if it would carry what they needed.
Using manufacturer supplied product photography makes your site blend in with all the others that use the same images, but moreover, there is nothing unique that screams “BUY ME!” to your site visitors.
Either take your own product photos or hire a professional photographer that can do it at your location.
Take the time and do the research to understand what your customers want to see.
Like the example above, a shop that sells laptops wouldn’t sell many if they didn’t include images of the keyboard layout, the laptop open for a full view or even pictures of all the ports and card slots available (many people won’t buy a laptop online if there aren’t pictures of the ports).
Having the right images will sell a product better than any written description under certain circumstances. Make sure you know what your customers want to see, and get those pictures!
Using paGO Commerce, all you need to do is drag and drop your product images right into the editor. You don’t have to go hunting, and paGO does everything for you in displaying the product images correctly, which includes a larger image when clicked.
Product Descriptions
Most serious eCommerce shops, such as paGO Commerce use two descriptions.
- Short Description, positioned next to product photo by default
- Long Description to give your customers the full details
The first mistake that many shop owners make is using the same description, either in part or whole, for both descriptions. Customers don’t like this, and it looks like a rush job on the shop owner’s part.
Additionally, using the same description creates an on page duplicate content issue, which is bad for your search engine optimization.
The short description should do 3 main things:
- Give the customer enough information to get a basic idea of the features/benefits
- Entice the customer to read the longer description for more information
- Supplement or highlight what the customer is seeing in the product images
Many shop owners put product specifications in the short description.
This is pretty darn lazy, and people don’t buy from spec sheets. The short description should be exactly what it is:
A short description that describes the product just enough to catch the customer’s interest enough so they either place the item in their shopping cart or move on to the long description to make a buying decision.
The long description should do 3 things as well:
- Give the customers a lavish illustration of the products benefits and features
- Spark the customers to imagine ownership of the product
- Show the customers the value of the product if they do indeed purchase it
Many companies also put in selling points on why the customer should order from them as well. Both the long description as well as the short one should be as personalized to your eCommerce shop as best as possible.
Video Tours
A video of the product in a tour format where the customer is walked through a feature/benefit presentation (also known as an unboxing video) can sell a product even better than any of the above.
People identify with people, and a customer that can watch a product video where a real person handles the product does many things:
- Gives the customer a reference point for size of product
- Allows the customer to see all angles of the product while the demonstrator shows it off
- Introduces hearing as one of the involved senses that factors into the purchase decision
- Gives the customer information that ordinarily couldn’t be written (ex: sound of the product)
On that last point, we’ll go off on a small tangent.
The sound products make is vitally important to a buying decision. For example, the sound of a YK brand fully metal zipper versus a cheap plastic zipper. In the video, the YK will sound VERY solid, like a zipper that is built to last, even after hundreds of thousands of pulls whereas the plastic one sounds cheap.
On a laptop, people don’t actively listen for it, but the sound of a loud fan can kill the deal, so in this case, it’s the lack of noise that adds to the buying decision.
In essence, videos are vitally important to selling a product. Just look on YouTube.
There are millions of unboxing and demo videos, a lot of which are done by third parties or consumers that have purchased the products themselves.
Look for more informational blogs coming soon that will help your store grow. We are here to help not only provide a quality platform paGO Commerce but from helping you succeed in your business. Your success is our success and we take pride in our customers.
