Listing your product is one of the most important components of your E Commerce startup, if not the topmost. Listing your product in an optimized, well-organized fashion makes your customer move from a person looking for information to becoming a buyer quickly.
The primary objective is to help customers know about product features, which are listed in your e commerce shop and then give them compelling reason to take that credit card out and make the purchase. That is what we are aiming for, aren’t we? For all the brouhaha about E Commerce setup and market, your visitors would not be inclined to make a purchase if they cannot figure out what your product is all about.
Here are a few steps listed, that you can perform to make your product listing more meaningful.
Keyword Research
You would like customers to come and purchase from your E-Commerce Market Place or your E-Commerce Website, isn’t it? Sure, you would be happy to share links in social media posts but that you would also need customers to keep coming back when you are not actively promoting the website.
Keywords identification starts with determining what your customers will see when they enter that specific web page which contains your product information.
Keywords included in the product listing at title/description/images also help search engines to determine if they need to give any space on their result page when the user enters a query with an intent either to buy or look up information.
A full discussion on Keyword research is out of scope for this article. However, let me outline a few of the important points and tools that you can utilize for doing it, to get the maximum possible mileage.
Understand intent (info/purchase)
The search engines have changed over time. Now they look for search intents. On a broad level there are four search intents namely informational, navigational, commercial, and transactional.
It is important to ask these questions before you decide to write about your product.
- Has user come to your site intending to know about it more or purchase it outright?
- If they wish to know more about your offering/products, you should be able to guide them to the relevant sections that lists your product details.
- You would see traffic from keywords like “reviews”, “how to-s”, “comparisons” if the intent is to gather more information.
- You would see traffic from keywords like “Price”, “Discount”, “Cheap” in case the customer has intention to buy.
The purpose of a good product listing is to give customer the information they came in looking for. Here is a great guide to understand intent of customer search
Competition research
E commerce scenario is competitive and you need to do competition analysis to make sure that your product listing remains searchable and purpose worthy. You need to understand how a competition is placing their product in terms of heading, description, pricing in order to develop a strategy that will help you outsell their product. The friction is that even your competitor may be ranking on the exact or close keywords as your product.
One of the ways to perform competitor research is not directly using the product name but with related words like compared to, reviews, vs. etc….
There are so many tools you can utilize on the internet to understand where your competition stands. Here are some top ones.
Craft Compelling Product Titles
Once you have the list of keywords that your competition is using you can create content strategies around them. You can drill down into keywords. It is much harder to rank for popular keywords unless you are a large authority website. But you can still target areas which are related and unexplored. You may also check the volume of the keyword and if it gets the right amount of traffic.
For example, a how guide to reach potential customers in your location will be easier to target than for example Customers in New York.
Use the keywords in your product titles.
- Use simple titles that gives users what they want.
- Analyse competition for what they are using as titles
- Optimize your titles
Write Detailed and Persuasive Descriptions
Incomplete product descriptions make customers drop off quickly. It is a deciding factor between purchase and letting it go
82% of shoppers feel product descriptions are extremely or very influential to their purchasing decision.
(Source: Field Agent Digital Shopper Report – IMRG)
Here are some important points to consider.
What’s in for me
When your customers are perusing your product, they need to become aware of your offering. If you are giving a discount, it can be listed on somewhere it can be seen easily. If you are offering free shipping, you need put it at the most visible location.
Telling a story
We all need that person who inspires us (real is better, imaginary ok) . But the person or let us call them as a hero, need to have achieved something significant. Then there is a story which takes a reader from position A which our hero was in peril to position B, which was to their advantage and for which they used tactics/work/products to reach.
A story can be told by a mascot or real person.
USP – your way into their hearts
USP or unique selling proposition is the reason your product will stand out among the competition.
It is impossible for a customer to find out which product is better among thousands of products they see on a shelf or an ecommerce store. They all look the same and have the same feature, so what uniquely sets your product apart.
These features may not be easily copied by your competitors. For example, a USP could be about a feature that is provided by only you and none of the competitors. Or that your brand evokes a sense of commitment. You can use colours and design to specify the uniqueness
Social Proof – We all like to buy what our friends have, don’t we?
It is a psychological trait that when you see your friends buy something, you are tempted to at least look at what they are buying. Often you would rely on someone trusted to help you buy a service or product.
In E-Commerce scenario, social proof helps a customer decide if to purchase or walk away from a buying decision.
Discussion of complete psychological aspect is beyond the scope of this article. However, you may consider asking customers for reviews and photographs if any of how they used your product.
Do not be scared by negative reviews as they also showcase that you are willing to listen and make changes in your process or product to make things better for your customers
List of features and Specifications
Listing features of a product help finalize a customer to make decision either to buy the product based on its suitability or reject it for further research (we want the former for sure)
A good product listing would contain in addition to the contents mentioned in above points, a table enlisting specification for example wattage, voltage and current requirements for an electrical requirement.
For an air conditioner, the product may list the energy consumption, the star ratings.
The specification and features may contain why it is beneficial for the user to use the product.
The features may include any advance features that separate your product from other run of the mill products
You may add why your product is high quality product. For example, you may include benchmark scores and any test results that indicate its performance.
You may also add any variants that come up in specifications such as colour, dimensions, wattage etc. It would be better to use a separate sub section to explain the differences.
Use High-Quality Images
Why do need to do this?
The image often act as differentiating factor between your product and competitor. A bad image screams unprofessional or sloppy work. In clothing and fashion products without image would not be even considered worth a second look.
In case of reselling, a reseller may want to use your product image in a dimension that is suitable either for printing or on a website. You as a manufacturer may need to supply high quality image.
Again, the complete treatment of a how to take a great product image is out of syllabus for this article but I have added a few of the tips.
- Get a specialist if you can afford. Nothing better than the person who knows what they are doing.
In case you find it too costly to hire a photographer, here are a few pointers.
- You need to have basic photo editing knowledge to post process your images. You can utilize multiple tools or even AI based tools to enhance your images.
- A good environment is useful for taking a great photograph. For example, using a white background for electronics or using a chair and a table setting for a food product. Using pink colour for displaying feminine products is a good eye catcher.
- Learn Camera settings: Anyone can use automatic settings but often it may not produce the desired results. Read about aperture, iso, white balance, raw photography etc.
- Practice: Practice your craft under different conditions
- Ask the manufacturer: Asking the original manufacturer or educating them about a good photograph is a great way to achieve scale and save costs. Ask your manufacturer to export files in multiple formats for different usages such as printing, small size image, and large size images.
- Post Processing: Sometimes adding touches post processing help in enhancing the visual appeal to the image. You may learn photoshop techniques or even use AI to enhance that. You may use free tools as well (list)
Price Competitively – No one wants to pay more than what they think is reasonable!
We would like to have a product that we desire, that is of the best quality and that is available at the lowest price. It is wishful thinking, you must be saying,
But having an optimal price strategy can make customers feel like they are getting a winning deal.
Pricing is such a complicated topic that again in this largish article trying to cover everything, covering every pricing strategy would make it laborious to read.
The purpose of great pricing is to
- Reduce costs.
- Increase conversion.
- Increase customer engagement.
- Provide insight into the mind of customers.
- Improving the value that a customer perceives
How would someone who has small to no idea of how to price a product need to go about it.
- Market research
- Ask your friends and family.
- Goto a local shop and checkout prices
- Location
- Product average sales (an overenthusiastic salesman might tell you)
- Use this guide
- Customer Profiling
- What price are customers willing to pay.
- Value based pricing
- Tiers of pricing for different customers
- Understanding pricing psychology
- Understanding pricing models
Optimize for Search Algorithms
If you have reached this stage, it means that you have a fair idea as to what will persuade the customer to make that purchase once they land on your product page.
Land if they do. You may do paid advertising, but nothing beats an all the year-round traffic and that customers see “your” products before competitors, when they search for them.
First step in this is to use keywords that come naturally to your products and product lines. Your need to categorize your product into neat categories for easier browsing.
If a customer wishes to browse your product list by tags rather than categories, you need to make it easier for them to use the tags.
The content needs to also appear fast. When user reaches your product page and it loads slowly, they might bounce and search another website. That is a lost opportunity.
Your content needs to:
– Use relevant keywords naturally.
– Fill out all fields like category, tags, and attributes.
– updated and accurate.
Gather and Showcase Reviews
Encouraging satisfied customers to leave reviews is a terrific way to create social proof and to show your new customers, why they can trust you. You may utilize:
- Surveys
- Polls
- Timing and Ease of review
Respond professionally to reviews to build trust.
Provide Accurate Shipping and Return Policies
– Clearly state shipping costs and delivery times.
– Outline easy return and refund processes.
Monitor and Adjust Listings Regularly
– Track performance metrics.
– Test different titles, images, and descriptions.
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