Creating Effective Product Listings

Too many people selling online these days think that creating good product listing pages is a nuisance – in fact, it’s a golden opportunity to deliver a tailored, highly effective sales message to potential buyers!

So don’t simply copy manufacturer product descriptions onto your pages or upload product images that look like they were taken with your cell phone camera.  Instead, invest time in learning to create the effective product listing pages that will get more of your items sold!

Element #1 – Your Image

Our eyes are naturally drawn to images, which makes your product picture one of the first things visitors notice upon arriving on your product listing pages.  Your images represent valuable real estate on your product listing pages, so don’t waste this opportunity to showcase your products in the best light.

If you’re selling products that you’ve created, it’s up to you to take your own pictures.  While we’ve covered the best way to take product photos here before, keep in mind that you don’t need an expensive camera or a photography degree to take effective product images.  Instead, you can create your own professional-quality product listing photos with a homemade white background and lighting setup.

On the other hand, if you’re reselling products produced by someone else, you’ll likely have access to a variety of stock images of the product.  These images can provide a good starting point, but if every other site reselling the same products online uses the same pictures, there’s nothing that will make your site stand out from your competitors if you use them as well.

Instead of copying and pasting a single manufacturer’s image to your own product listing page, consider the following techniques to make your site unique:

• Post multiple manufacturer photos.  If you have access to a variety of images from your product’s manufacturer, upload as many of them as possible to your site.  Some ecommerce retailers rush through the creation of their product listing pages and only upload the first picture they see.  By comparison, offering multiple views of a product makes your site more valuable.
• Customize manufacturer photos. Instead of uploading manufacturer images “as is”, customize the images by cropping them, adding a watermark or adding some type of border image that makes the pictures uniquely yours.  Even though the subject matter of the photos is still the same, your site will appear different than competitors who are using the images “straight.”
• Take your own photos.  Just because you’re reselling a manufacturer’s product doesn’t mean you have to use the images they provide.  If you have access to product inventory, take a variety of new pictures in your homemade photography studio, paying special attention to capture interesting shots that the manufacturer doesn’t provide.  Doing so will help your site to provide more value overall compared to your competitors.

Element #2 – Your Product Description

Once you’ve got your product images squared away, the next element of your product listing pages that you’ll want to focus on is the product description.

Again, this isn’t a place to copy manufacturer descriptions word-for-word (if you have access to this content).  Not only does this provide limited value for the people who visit your site, it also opens your site up to potential filtering by the search engines’ duplicate content detection systems.

Now, contrary to popular belief, there’s no “duplicate content penalty”, wherein your site faces negative consequences for publishing the same content as other pages.  Instead, when the search engine spiders detect duplicate content, they may limit the number of instances of this repetitive text that they’re willing to display in the results pages.

If your product descriptions match other sites that have already been indexed (because you pulled your content directly from the manufacturer’s site), you risk not having your site appear in the SERPs – which could be potentially devastating for your business if your traffic generation strategy revolves around natural search traffic.

So not only is it important to write your own product descriptions in order to make your listing pages as informative as possible for your users, it’s worthwhile to do some from an SEO standpoint as well.

Here’s what a good product description looks like:

• Good product descriptions are very detailed.  Today’s consumers have access to a wider variety of product purchasing options than ever before, and due to the bad economy, they’re more selective than ever about the products they buy and where they get them from.  One way to overcome the natural resistance that these conditions create is to offer as much detail about your products as possible.  When your visitors have more information, they’ll feel more confident about buying from you.
• Good product descriptions share benefits in addition to features.  A feature is something your product offers, but it’s the benefits of these features that demonstrate why your readers need your product.  For example, if you’re selling a laptop carrying case, a feature might be the extra layer of padding included, but the benefit is that your readers’ laptops will be less likely to be damaged in transit.  Good product descriptions share both of these characteristics to appeal to different types of buyers.
• Good product descriptions answer common questions. Don’t wait for your website readers to use your “Contact Me” form to ask questions about your products – chances are not all buyers will be willing to take this extra step.  Instead, brainstorm the questions you expect readers to have about each of your products and then preemptively answer these questions within your product descriptions.

Element #3 – Additional Features

If all you do is improve the images and descriptions you use in your product listing pages, you’ll be ahead of 99% of ecommerce merchants out there, who treat these content elements as a nuisance that must be done as quickly as possible.  However, if you really want to take your product listing pages to the next level, consider integrating additional “viral style” features into your content in order to increase conversions and generate even more traffic to your site.

What kinds of features?  Consider integrating any of the following elements into your product listing pages to make them as appealing as possible:

• Video clips showing your product being used. For a really great, viral style example of video usage in product listing pages, take a look at the listing for the World’s Largest Gummy Bear created by Vat19.
• User reviews and testimonials. In addition to providing valuable information for people who are thinking about buying your products, integrating user reviews into your product listing pages offers you additional opportunities to have relevant keywords indexed in the search engines.
• Interactive tools. The longer you can keep visitors on your product listing pages, the more likely they’ll be to buy.  For this reason, interactive tools like sizing charts, comparison features or other script-based activities can play a powerful role in making your listing pages more effective.

So stop undervaluing your product listing pages!  These valuable pieces of web real estate can play a major role in improving your conversion rates and improving your business’s bottom line, but only if you’re willing to invest the necessary time in making them as engaging as possible.

Image: The Consumerist