Online shopping is all the rage today! Who wants to go out and fight the crowds and traffic when you can buy your favorite products right from the comfort of your own home? If you’ve opened your own eCommerce business, you should know how important product listing pages are to your online success. If not, you’d better read on!
What Is a Product Listing Page?
Your product listing pages are the main interface between what you are selling and the people looking to buy it. That’s why they play such a significant role in the buyer’s journey. While there is a lot of buzz about the importance of optimizing product pages, little is actually said about product listing pages (which are different). It’s a shame that more information isn’t offered on product listing pages because they truly do affect your conversion rates. So, what are they?
Product listing pages, also called PLPs, are the results of category pages or internal search results. They serve as a catalog that displays all the products inside a category. They can also display all products after a filter has been applied.
When product listing pages are created effectively, they can greatly impact the user experience. But, whether or not they are successful depends on several things. These include:
- Your value proposition
- The products’ attributes
- The overall quality of the information you provide
- Let’s take a closer look at the best practices for PLPs and how you can create powerful product listing pages that convert viewers to paying customers.
Best Practices to Create the Perfect Product Listing Pages
Follow these 10 steps to create product listing pages that bring your business better results.
1. Take Advantage of Your Headers
Headers play a huge role in your online success. When it comes to your product listing pages, they should display the title role of each category. They basically indicate what type of content viewers can expect to find on each page. Get creative by using fun visuals in your headers to keep away from all text options that could seem boring.
You should also make sure you include your keywords in your h1 tags to help with your SEO efforts. Headers should be informative and helpful to your customers, but it doesn’t hurt to have them boost you higher in the search engine results. They can also be used to show off featured products, special offers, and discounts.
2. Choose Your View Based on Your Industry and Products
When it comes to choosing between grid view and list view, there is no easy answer. The decision is dependent on the type of products you sell and the type of customer experience you want to provide. When it comes to choosing between the two, you can use these tips to help:
List View:
- Better suited for products that require extensive information and specifications. The list view can help customers compare specs and products before they make a decision.
- Great option for technical products like TVs, computers, hardware, and electronics.
- Better for products that require customers to take their time before choosing. You can utilize the additional space to display ratings and give customers the most information before they make a purchase.
Grid View:
- Grid view is most popularly used for products that need to show a lot of pictures. This allows viewers to quickly compare without paying much attention. It’s more of a visual experience.
- Grid view can be used to display the most popular products in each category. You can rank best sellers, and even lure visitors to clicking on your most popular products.
3. Choose the right amount of products per page or row.
For businesses who choose to opt for the grid view, you’ll eventually need to decide how many products will be listed per page or row. Just like choosing between list or grid view, there’s no right answer to this question. The right amount depends on three factors:
- The size of your images. For large, high-resolution images, you’ll have a hard time squeezing in more than 4 or 5 products in each row.
- The number of products listed per row depends on the number of products you have in each category. Since you want to make each page look full, try to arrange your rows effectively.
- The volume of information that comes with your products will play a role. The more space you need to display your products; the fewer products you will display.
4. Don’t forget the importance of product thumbnails.
Product thumbnails are extremely important. In visually-driven industries like retail or travel, they hold even more weight. Your product thumbnails should be easy to see, use attractive images, and create a sense of harmony with your products. While the size of thumbnails depends on your brand image and the industry you work within, they should always use photos that are easy to see and on a background that increases contrast and highlights your products.
5. Pay attention to your navigation.
When it comes to user experience, navigation plays a huge role in your overall success. Your product listing page is no different. Since some products require extensive sorting to handle their more complicated specifications, you need to pay close attention to how your website performs when navigating your customers to what they need.
Your goal is to guide your customer through the shopping experience. You should help them find their perfect product and navigation plays a huge role in doing so. Customers should be able to sort and rank products based on a variety of different search criteria. Some options for criteria include:
- Price
- Size
- Category
- Color
- Shape
- Product type
- Gender
6. Display helpful information that encourages your customers to make a purchase.
There is a lot of information you can display on your product listing and category pages. But, what you choose to put there is up to you. Make sure that whatever information you display will effectively assist your customers in making a purchase. Your goal should be to convince consumers to buy!
Include information like color options, stock availability, star ratings, and short descriptions that can help customers learn more about your products. Besides great pictures and your pricing, this additional information can be a great help to your customers.
7. Sort products effectively.
The main purpose of sorting should be to help customers to narrow down the number of products displayed. When you effectively sort products, you will increase conversions. Your sorting options should be based on your audience’s needs and expectations.
What would your typical customer be looking for? What does the average customer of your business need? The more you tailor your sorting options to your customers’ expectations, the better the experience you deliver to your clients.
8. Use Quick View where applicable.
Quick View is an eCommerce function that can be a major asset to your business. It allows viewers to see a miniature version of the desired product page without having to fully navigate through. Quick View should only be used on websites where a customer won’t confuse it with a full product page. When customers confuse the two, it can negatively impact your conversion rates.
9. Make sure you implement SEO best practices.
Effective SEO drives more traffic to your page. In the world of eCommerce, SEO is crucial to your business’ success. When it comes to product listing pages, 50% of all eCommerce traffic land on these pages. Product listing pages are extremely beneficial for your SEO because they are the most heavily linked to pages of your website and they are already keyword rich. Therefore, you should make sure you take extra care when it comes to SEO best practices.
10. Improve conversion rates by split testing your product listing pages tips.
Last, but certainly not least, you should make sure you test your product listing pages for effectiveness. Since many of the above-mentioned tips suggested that there is no right answer for how to do things, you need to make sure the option you choose works for your industry and your business.
A/B test your product listing pages to be sure you are using the right methods. This will identify which areas work and which don’t. Over time you can gradually increase your conversion rates and improve the overall user experience for your customers.
When you implement these best practices for creating perfect product listing pages, you will see your conversions and your customer satisfaction rise!
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