– Differentiation is important in ecommerce, but it is not always possible from a raw product perspective in a commoditized world.
– The focus should be on presenting enough information for customers to make a buying decision and being top of mind for them to choose your brand.
– Many product pages lack the necessary information and structure to guide customers through their buying journey, and there is a need to change the approach and create better experiences.Revamp product pages to provide comprehensive information and guide customers through their buying decision process, focusing on addressing their questions and needs.In e-commerce, there are a lot of people who hype on differentiation. I’m one of them who pretty much requires it, but… In a commoditized world, this isn’t always possible from a raw product perspective. But we forget we’re not in the business of selling a product. We’re in the business of presenting enough information for someone to make a buying decision and being top of mind for someone to go with us. There’s a big difference. If you sell the same or a similar product as another company, that’s fine, you just have to have a better product page. This isn’t even an oversimplification. The problem is that most brands play the company journey version versus the customer journey version. You know how you can tell? If a brand really cared about ranking, they would structure their product pages in more of a Q&A format with the top most likely questions people would have when searching for products like theirs. The fact is that most product pages don’t do this. Most customer journeys go from ad to product page, ad to landing page with an offer, ad to collection page, ad to please dear god buy my product. I’m not sure how we decided that this was the way to sell products or to advertise products. I’ve never found myself saying, “Oh god, this product page is full of too much information, I’m just so overwhelmed with getting all my questions answered. Oh, and all the images and the detail, it’s just too much, I can’t possibly make a decision being completely well-informed and having seen all the elements of the product up close.” Let’s face it, neither have you. Yet when it comes to product descriptions for a lot of brands that haven’t broken through, they take the approach of less is more. They hide and collapse descriptions, you have to click tabs to look for the important bits, etc. The descriptions are about the product, not the people that use them. This is true for all companies. If I had one thing to focus on in a complicated market, it would be blowing up the current way that product pages look and building real experiences. Because remember… A product page should tell a story, they exist for first-time customers. In fact, your website exists only for first-time customers, repeat customers know what they like and trust your brand for the most part. Go look at your own product pages, try not to cringe when you figure out that they look like a catalogue listing rather than something that guides people through the inevitable questions they might have. Hell a lot of clothing brands don’t even list care instructions on the product descriptions. The bar is low. Change the approach. Change the game. #marketing #ecommerce #strategyhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jivanco