Research shows that the average ecommerce conversion rate is only 2.58%, which means that less than 3 out of every 100 customers that land on your site will end up buying something.
There are plenty of great conversion rate optimization (CRO) guides out there that focus on how to get started with tracking your CRO, running tests, and optimizing your page layout and flow for conversions (Backlinko has a great one).
But when you're done with those... what's next?
This guide will take you through how you should craft your product content to build a strong foundation for your content bank, and how that can be re-used over and over through the customer journey.
What is product content?
Product content is everything on your site that helps your potential buyer understand the product they're viewing and contextualize how it would fit into their lives.
This can be broken down into visual content and textual content:
Why product content is relevant to your business?
Product content is crucial for your business as it plays a significant role in helping potential buyers understand the products they are viewing and how those products could fit into their lives. By providing relevant and engaging product content, you can create a strong foundation for your content bank and ensure that it can be reused effectively throughout the customer journey.
When creating product content, it is crucial to consider the various stages of the revenue funnel. Tailoring your content to address the specific needs and concerns of customers at each stage — from awareness to consideration and ultimately the decision-making stage — will guide them through the buying process and increase the likelihood of conversions.
Every customer's decision to purchase something usually goes along a conversion funnel:
Different businesses have different funnels in place, and at a high level, they involve:
- Discovery: What channels are your customers being acquired through? How do they come across and decide to land on your site in the first place?
- Interest and consideration: What's keeping the customer on your site? What are they looking at that is triggering a desire to keep looking?
- Decision: What's the tipping point when a customer is ready to buy?
- Retention: What keeps them coming back?
By maintaining a consistent tone and quality throughout your product content, you can effectively engage potential buyers at each stage of the revenue funnel.
How to create product content that converts?
Creating product content that converts requires careful consideration and strategic planning. Here are some tips to follow:
1. Build a buyer persona
A buyer persona is a hypothetical construct of your ideal customer. It's based on research as well as real data about your existing customers.
Building personas is a great way to understand how your typical customer can be influenced by product content
You can read more on persona building here.
As an example, if you operate a pet store, this is what one persona might look like:
2. Group recommended products
Curate groups of products that you think will fit the persona you have in mind. You don't have to create many new product shots or agonise over new descriptions.
This will help your customer identify quickly and click in more to find out.
One great example is Vinomofo's specific email to wine drinkers looking for both vetted, quality wines, who likely identify themselves as discerning and tasteful:
3. Leverage existing product shots into a slideshow
Video grabs attention FAST. Instead of painstakingly shooting video however, you can leverage your existing product shots into a slideshow to send a message across quickly.
Madewell does this especially well in their Facebook carousel ad here, emphasising their large range of swimsuits for someone who might spend a lot of time browsing before making a selection.
4. Use stock photos or videos combined with typography
If you're trying to convey a message that doesn't quite come across visually (eg. a USP or product feature), you don't necessarily need to make your visuals show that.
With a simple text overlay on Canva, you can use stock photos or videos combined with large, eye-catching typography.
Noom does this well in this Facebook ad that immediately calls the attention of someone who's been trying all sorts of diets without success, and is results oriented:
5. Use existing reviews on social media platforms and ads
Who best to attract more customers than your current customers singing praises about your current products?
You can use a user-generated content platform like Stamped.io to create content off your existing reviews for use on social media platforms and ads:
After you've gotten potential customers onto your site or landing page, you'll want to feed them with the right content to get them to stay on.
6. All relevant buying information should be above the fold
'Above the fold' means the upper half of a web page that is visible without scrolling down the page.
When you have all the information your customer would want the minute they land on a page, they are subconsciously reassured you're a trustworthy business.
This doesn't mean stuffing the top fold with information. Again, identify what your target persona would want to see.
To ensure that your product descriptions include all the necessary information, consider using a product description template to formulate your descriptions. Not only will this help your buyers to understand the product better, it will also help to improve your conversion rates.
Tentree is a good example of this. Aside from your usual free shipping policy, model information and sizing, they target consumers concerned with social responsibility and state the production facts of product prominently, even above the product description:
7. Automatically generate product descriptions based on customer personas
While specifications in descriptions are important, painting a picture of how this product fits into their lifestyle is key to getting your customer to add that product to the cart.
Hypotenuse AI is a product description generator that takes your product images, any keywords you might want to include to optimise for SEO, and generates a fluent, human-readable description automatically.
8. Showcase the power of user-generated content for social proof
Detailed, filterable reviews
Make use of the reviews you've received to give your customers a personalized experience and prevent frustration. By allowing for filters on reviews, your customer can help themselves negate their own doubts around the product they're looking at.
Everlane does a great job of this on their site, by allowing for filters on size, height and weight:
Shop through Instagram generated content
Frankies Bikinis has a specific landing page for customers inspired by what other customers have posted, where you can click to shop:
9. Experiment with pricing packs to upsell more
By highlighting pricing information around a product your customer already has interest in, you can increase your revenue by creating buying norms around larger quantities.
In the case below, Native first tries to get me to Subscribe and Save 17%—a clever move to use percentages (17%) instead of amounts ($2).
When I persist with a One-time Purchase, Native ends up offering me the same price for just 3 sticks instead of locking in to a subscription. Very smart.
10. Use Cart stuffers as further buying incentives
61% of shoppers leave their cart when they see that a shipping charge has been added to their purchase.
Using your cart upsell section is a good way to tip the scales and increase basket size for customers to fulfil free shipping requirements. Some customers might want to just buy enough to hit free shipping, but don't know what else they can add to do so.
Notice that Bicyclesonline shows fairly low-value items in their 'Customers Also Bought' section. These can serve as 'cart stuffers' to hit your store's free shipping minimum:
Utilize AI-powered tools like Hypotenuse AI
It is evident that product content plays a vital role in the success of any business. By implementing effective strategies and tactics, businesses can engage their target audience and drive them toward making a purchase.
Hypotenuse AI enables businesses to stay ahead of the competition by providing them with an edge in the digital marketplace. With the ever-increasing demand for engaging and persuasive product content, businesses that utilize AI-powered tools like Hypotenuse AI gain a competitive advantage by delivering compelling descriptions that captivate their target audience. This advantage translates into increased conversions, higher customer satisfaction, and ultimately, improved business performance.
So there you have it. A comprehensive list of strategies you can focus on producing effective content.
Which one will you start with?
