Optimizing Your Product Page On Shopify For More Sales | #206 Nkechi Esan

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Claus Lauter: Hello and welcome to another episode of the E-Commerce Coffee Break podcast. They want to talk about the most important page in your online store, the product detail page. Now obviously all the traffic that goes there should convert into a customer at the end of the day, and there's a lot of things that go into to make a successful product detail page, and that's what you want to talk about today.

So with me on the show, Nkechi Esan. She is a specialist when it comes to designing pages. She is a web designer and founder of Aha Studio and she is dedicated in helping e-commerce business owners boost their online sales through engaging web design, email marketing, and everything that comes with it. She has a ton of experience when it comes to product detail pages, and we wanna dive into this a little bit deeper now.

And Kechi, how are you today?

Nkechi Esan: I'm doing great. Excited to be here.

Claus Lauter: Let's dive right into it. Product detail page. That's a 700 pound gorilla in the e-commerce business. A lot of people struggle to make it really work and then they see low conversion rates. so let's start and give me a bit of a background.

Why is it so important to put a lot of effort into optimizing this specific page?

Nkechi Esan: Thank you, cla Well, I'm glad to be discussing about product detail pages. So there, as you said, there're a very key part of your Shopify store because as an e-commerce store owner, you've worked hard to bring traffic to your page, which can be daunting and expensive, and when you, your customer has proceeded to the product.

Detail page at that point, they're interested in a product, they wanna find out more about the product, and the key thing that the product detail page needs to do is to convince the customer to add to cart. and if the customer steps away at that point you're definitely Not as close to making a sale.

So the more customers click on the add to card button, the more closer you can get them towards making the final sale.

Claus Lauter: Now, Shopify is offering a lot of themes, a lot of three themes, and then as a beginner, as a start in the Shopify universe, you might think, well, there should be everything on this, a template on this theme that I need to get started.

But let's dive into what are the different elements that really make a good product detail page.

Nkechi Esan: Yeah, great question. So before even looking at those elements, it's important I think, to know the stats on a product detail page. So if you have a store knowing what how many customers are adding to cart, cuz then you have a goal in mind and you say, okay, the average rate is between three to five.

Percent, where do I stand? And then you have a goal for improving your product page over a certain amount of time. So I just wanted to discuss that before I go into the different things that you have that you can do to your product page to improve conversions. So the first one I would say is high quality product images and video.

Very key. And I can go into more detail why it's important, It's so important because when customers are shopping online, the trust is not as high as when a customer goes into a brick and mortar store. So they need to get a feel for the product, and you achieve that a lot with the high quality imagery and showcasing the product in different.

Way as being used by the customer. Lifestyle shots showcasing the product from different angles. I know I've gone to some online stores and I'm trying to get more of a sense of the product I feel for the product, but the images aren't enough. Like I just have one image or one image that's not very well lit.

So that to me, shows it's so important to have good product images and invest in that. And video is also a good way to show your product in use if it's addressed, how does it move and how does it hang on the customer. And that video can definitely show a lot more. So yeah, that's one way to improve conversions on your

Claus Lauter: store.

A hundred percent agree. Back in the past few years ago, we saw a lot of stores, drop shipping stores who just copy and paste images from Alibaba Ali Express Complete Nightmare. From time to time I see it still, but I a hundred percent agree with you. You need to have professional made very good product images.

And what I liked what you said is that also in the hands of the. Customer so that it gives you an idea on the sizing, on the person when it comes to fashion, how it looks on the person. Now let's move on to the next element, the buyer's box. So we start from the title and what elements do we look at?

Nkechi Esan: What elements? Well, there's the image I've talked about that then the product description is also a very key area, the product title, the copy and, information about the product. So it's very important to make sure that you include marketing copy and SEO copy. So marketing copy is, engaging information about the product and.

Perhaps where you can, how you can use the product, how it inspires the customer to buy the product that SEO copy is copy to make sure that the search engines understand what the product's about. Make it easier for your customer to find the product, doing a. Google search.

So those two things are important. And I also wanna add that I see great brands like, magic Spoon. I really love Magic Spoon Cereal and the way their website is built and the way that they provide product descriptions. So using inventive ways, using images of like food e-commerce stores could use images and, engaging ways to show the product description.

It doesn't have to be all text. That's what I'm trying to say. Yeah. So using innovative and inventive ways to describe your products can really make it more compelling for the customer and make them more willing to buy.

Claus Lauter: When it comes to buy from a website, and you mentioned that earlier in a store, you have a physical feeling of the product, but also for the business, for the brand itself.

Building trust is a very important topic there. Yes. What kind of elements do you use to build up trust?

Nkechi Esan: Great question there. Everything from the images to the product description video can build trust, but also some things that can really increase trust is trust badges from

trusted brands like judge me seeing that there's reviews as well. Product reviews from customers are a great way to build trust and make the customer more willing to make that purchase.

Claus Lauter: So user generated content is definitely something that's important there.

Nkechi Esan: Yes. User generated content.

Claus Lauter: What's your take on scarcity, urgency, fear of missing out? Are these elements that you would use on a product detail page? And if yes, in which

Nkechi Esan: way? Yeah, great question. Yeah, scarcity can be used well on a product description page, like knowing that there's only say two or three left of a part, particular product and showing the stock counters showing.

Something to show that it's almost running out. Or it's a limited edition, it's not gonna be available for some time. Those kind of things on a product page highlighted can increase conversion. I also loved some FOMO apps, like just showing that someone else has bought. Someone else in Florida just bought this.

As you're looking at the product page, seeing who's buying the product can be a great way to build trust and get the customer wanting to take part as well, not

Claus Lauter: miss out. Okay. Now your web designer, you obviously, you see a lot of stores, websites, designs that are probably not a hundred percent on top.

From your experience, what are the biggest mistakes when it comes to web design? By creating a theme for a product page or for a store overall. How do you solve them?

Nkechi Esan: Wow, great. That's a big one. Well, I think one mistake is strategy. One key mistake is strategy and designing without strategy in mind.

And just stepping back and understanding the customer, understanding what the goals are for the website. Cuz I think some times e-commerce store owners, they just wanna get online and make their sales. But how to make the sales and also knowing. Why am I putting this item there? What would a formal app be appropriate for my brand?

 It depends on what type of brand it is, what you're selling, and whether you are, say, in a luxury industry or it all depends. So I think the one key thing is having a strategy and knowing. Why you are making certain changes. That's one thing. Another mistake I would say is A clutter design.

I do see that sometimes a clutter design or a design that's not unified, like having your branding done before designing your website is a key thing that maybe e-commerce store owners that might be starting out may not. Have done, but bigger brands definitely do that, but, small to medium businesses not so much.

So that's another mistake that I see that I think is important to have a unified brand and consistent design across pages.

Claus Lauter: Okay. I love that you, the beginning you said first step before you even start is looking at the KPIs, at the conversion rates, click through rates and all of that. I think it's a very important thing to do.

When you work on a page, on a product detail page, how do you work from there with the data? So once you have a first data, how do you take it from there? What's your advice to the business owner on how to con continue collecting data?

Nkechi Esan: Well, how to start is using things like Google Analytics and checking your stop Shopify analytics page.

I dunno if I'm going too far behind for you. And then when you have the data looking at it from month to month, comparing periods is helpful. So seeing whether the figures are trending up or trending down, and then looking at your. Pairs in industry benchmarks to see how do you compare with the usual.

Cause you might want a 50% conversion rate on your product page, but if. The usual is 5%, then that might be a hard one to reach. So knowing the benchmarks across the industry is helpful. And if you are in the app industry, knowing what. The benchmarks are for your particular industry does for your niche, that is very helpful.

And then with that, you can have some goals and say, okay what do I want to achieve in the next period? And then have a strategy for reaching those goals. Another thing I wanna add is that when testing product page conversion and trying to optimize. One thing at a time is important cuz you want to be able to know whether the change you made was responsible for the increase in your conversion.

Because if you change five things at a time, it can be hard to know what worked. So it's really important to take the testing one step at a time so that also means that it could take some time depending on what it is you're trying to test.

Claus Lauter: It makes perfect sense. Now, how is your onboarding process?

So somebody comes with their store, with their theme to you and says, eh, it's not really converting. Please help me. How does that look

Nkechi Esan: like? Okay. My onboarding process, first of all I have a free discovery call with the client. I try to understand what they're trying to achieve. I check out their page, check out their social, and then .

I make a proposal to them based on what kind of services I think that they need and what's the customer approves the proposal and we are good to go. I then start with the strategy, so it's very important to me to. Work with customers on strategy and understand why they wanna get where they wanna get.

What are the key KPIs that we're going to focus on? And after the strategy, then we then only then do we go into the design content collection, and then we design the website or the portion of the website I'm working on. And after that analyze to see what, the customer behavior is like and what we've learned.

And take our learnings to the next step. It might be that some new, some more changes need to be made. I always say marketing is a lot, is an experiment. So you have your hypothesis, but only when you take it to market and get the customers using the page that you do learn a lot, you might learn something that.

You didn't expect. That's my process in a

Claus Lauter: nutshell. Okay. How long does this whole process usually work time-wise?

Nkechi Esan: Well, my Shopify intensive is it actually takes a week, but that week is the deal. So there is time needed beforehand to have the strategy meeting, collate the copy and information from the client and the content and all that.

So it depends on how fast I can get all that together. And so I would say it could take four to eight weeks depending on how long it takes. To get all that content. But the build time is about a

Claus Lauter: week. It's about a week. Okay. Now there's a lot of different verticals in industries and also obviously direct to customer.

B2b, who's your perfect customer?

Nkechi Esan: My perfect customer is a B2 C client who has an e-commerce store and needs to sell more on their store? Okay. Yeah.

Claus Lauter: Cool. Very good. Where do you think Shopify will move towards? You see a lot of artificial intelligence coming in. Things will be taken over from this technology. Do you think that Shopify merchants in the future will have more virtual assistance or more not virtual assistance, artificial intelligence, helping them in their business, or will it still be a manual business?

Nkechi Esan: Yeah, it's such an exciting time, isn't it? Like I use chat g p t myself, and it's so helpful to me, but it's exciting and it's scary at the same time. So that's a great question. It's hard to know because with new technology, it's hard to know. Just how far it can go. But from early indications, I see that Shopify is already adopting ai.

 With your product descriptions, you can write your product descriptions within Shopify using ai. I've tried just a note, I've tried it and I would recommend chat, g p t cuz the Shopify AI magic descriptions aren't as robust as chat g p t. But it's a good step I welcome anything that will help the customer to design faster to, get to market faster, even though I'm scared that it might make me redundant.

But I think that, It's a great tool. AI is a great tool to have. We'll probably be seeing some, I think that we could see some AI generated e-commerce stores in the future, but how useful and how well would they serve the client? That's how to know, because I've tried chat G P T and

it needs that human interaction to help it along. I think it's hard to substitute for human ingenuity the strategy and just this is something that a human being brings into the equation. But AI is very helpful for sure, and I see it being integrated into Shopify in the future.

Claus Lauter: Yeah, said I'm using chat, pt chat p as well, and I think you need to have the human touch at the end of the day.

 No one wants to be served by Robert, so I think this will not go away anytime soon. Gimme a bit of idea. Budgetwise. What's the pricing? What can I expect there?

Nkechi Esan: Well, my pricing starts.

My pricing is value-based pricing. So it depends on what the customer needs and what their particular situation is, but I would say my prices start from about $2,000. Yeah, I don't like to say that this is the pricing because it all, it also depends on the project and the needs of the client.

Claus Lauter: Okay, perfect. Keji, where can people find out more about

Nkechi Esan: you? Well, thanks for asking. My website is ahj studio a ia studio.com and my email address is NK ahj Studio and my Instagram is ahj Studio as well. So

Claus Lauter: good. I will put the links in the show notes as always.

Then you will be just one click away. Okay, thanks so much for your time today. I think a very good overview of what's needed for a good product detail page and I hope a lot of people will reach out to you. Have a good one.

Nkechi Esan: Thank you so much for having me.