**by Gab Goldenberg**
Can an ecommerce stores product detail pages bog a visitor down in
too much detail?
Can you provide the wrong information and leave people with
unanswered questions?
My friend and occasional client Michael runs Greek For Me
<http://www.greekforme.com>
, an apparel store for Greek fraternities and sororities. He recently
asked me for usability consulting to help him increase his conversion
rate. I thought Id share this mini-usability review to help Mike and
other store owners who may be struggling with these issues.
Lets check out Greek For Mes Alpha Xi Delta Hoody
<http://www.greekforme.com/axd-hoody-01.html>
detail page.
<http://seoroi.com/pics/greek-sweater.png>
(Click to enlarge)
The page gets the general info down fine. It obviously matches the
keywords likely to deliver visitors, and like the rest of the site,
theres shopping cart info in the top right and breadcrumb navigation
to orient visitors.
Where this product detail page drops the ball is with the drop-down
menus used to select size and colors. These overwhelm visitors and
make them anxious.
Suppose youre curious to see the sweatshirt in other colors than
gray. If you pick any color, the product picture doesnt update to
reflect your choice. And you cant click some secondary pictures of
the item for different views, because theres only the one picture.
The same problem repeats with the dropdown boxes for the foreground
color and border color. You cant tell what they will look like on the
sweatshirt, much less what they will look like in combination with
each other.
And this is compounded by using jargon color names, like vegas gold,
old gold and light gold. What if I just want gold? Besides, who goes
shopping, thinking I want a sweatshirt with vegas gold lettering!
Similarly, if you pick a size, you might have a general idea what
that entails, but its by no means certain. For example, SEOmoz gave
me a tshirt last year that was a size medium. I thought it would fit
as Im about a medium build, but it turned out that I needed a large,
so I reluctantly gave the shirt to the girl I was dating at the time.
Which might explain why we broke up and I still dont have a
girlfriend. But I digress&
To reiterate, product detail page dropdown menus make visitors
anxious. They create a fear of getting the wrong size product with the
wrong colors. We as humans fear loss more than we seek gains. So these
fears of wasting money on the wrong product reduce purchase momentum
(kudos to the Bryan Eisenberg for the momentum metaphor
<http://www.clickz.com/3378361>
.)
Possible solutions to test:
By far the easiest solution is to offer no alternative colors. By
making the color question a simple yes-or-no decision, momentum is a
lot easier to maintain.
A better solution is to offer a very limited range of popular colors.
You could probably copy The Gap and go with blue, pink, gray, red and
black. This avoids leaving money on the table in the case of people
thinking, No, I dont like the default color.
Use only one foreground-border pairing for each background color. If
you get the blue background sweatshirt, your lettering is
white-and-gray, period.
Add pictures of the product in the alternative available colors.
Have some sorority girls model the product, and explain what size
theyre wearing. Tests typically show that actual-use pictures convert
better.
Create a customization tool that dynamically alters the product image
as people select different options. This is probably the most
expensive solution, and would likely need to have its own section on
the site.
In fairness to Mike, I should point out that he has a clickable link
to see the colors involved, but these just show a chart with various
swatches of color. And while that might be enough for some people, I
only barely noticed it after already writing most of this article.
So its skimpy information, presented in a muted part of the page.
Shipping questions for detail pages
Two common questions visitors have are:
When will the product arrive? (Sometimes phrased as, When will it
ship )
What will the price of shipping be.
The product arrival date info is automatically estimated, which is a
great piece of functionality. Unfortunately, this too is hidden in the
discreet Additional Information box below the product image.
As to the price of shipping, this is nowhere to be found on this
detail page or any others.
The site tries to solve the problem with a shipping price calculator
that appears on the next page, below the cart information, when you
click add to cart.
<http://seoroi.com/pics/greek-cart.png>
(Click to enlarge.)
The catch is that the visual design of the page emphasizes the
checkout buttons. They strongly contrast with the rest of the page by
their shape and color (see more on buttons and layout in my friend
Sandra Niehaus great article on button balance
<http://www.wilsonweb.com/design/niehaus-button-balance.htm>
and contrast).
Normally this emphasis on the checkout is good, but in this case it
will create a lot of scenarios like this:
Add to cart
Check cart info
Continue to checkout
Then when people move on to the billing page, the Standard and
Rush shipping options dont provide any more info on price.
So what?
So the net effect of this lack of information on shipping times and
rates creates anxiety. Again, this slows momentum towards conversion.
Possible solutions
Embed a simpler calculator in a reasonably prominent part of the
product detail page. For example, some of the whitespace on the right
hand side could be used without affecting how clean the page looks. Of
course, thats just a hunch youd have to test that to know for
sure.
Since most products have a standard weight and size, Mike could use
USPS If it fits, it ships product and just automatically list
shipping rates on his product detail page according to product type.
The fundamental role of a product detail page is to decrease anxiety
by spelling out clearly what the product offer is. It should offer
enough information to answer visitors questions, without overwhelming
them and making them bounce.
Opinions expressed in the article are those of the author, and not
necessarily Search Engine Land.
Gab Goldenberg
<http://searchengineland.com/author/gab-goldenberg/>
also writes his own SEO blog <http://seoroi.com/blog/>
where he discusses advanced SEO tactics and ideas. He loves offering
SEO consulting <http://seoroi.com/seo-consultations>
to entrepreneurs.
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