Ecommerce User Experience Vol. 03: Product Pages

5th Edition

Part of Series: Ecommerce User Experience

Customers need adequate information about a product before they will buy it online. Effective product pages use a combination of text and other media to communicate product details, availability, price, and provide a clear way to purchase the item. This report also includes guidelines for designing product customization options and presenting user reviews.

This 428-page report contains 108 design recommendations based on our user research. Discussions and 433 screenshot illustrations supplement the findings.

Topics

• Navigating among products
  • Finding products
  • Suggesting related products
  • Communicating structure
• Product descriptions
  • Best practices in writing and presenting product description
  • Layering product details
  • Layout considerations
  • Helping people make comparisons
  • Describing details and characteristics
  • Specification tables
  • Dealing with bundles or sets
  • Using media to supplement text
  • Size charts and measurements
• User reviews and ratings
  • Visual elements for fast comprehension
  • Criteria to ask for in reviews
  • Types of reviewers
  • Customer-submitted photos and videos
  • Question and answer sections
• Product images
  • Linking to and from images
  • Size, alternate views, context, detail, and composition
  • Zoom tools
  • Model measurements and diversity
• Price, costs and availability
  • How and where to show price
  • Relevant information related to cost
  • Delivery and store availability information
• Specifying product options, like color and size
  • Indicating selected options
  • Color swatches
  • Multilevel lists and menus
• Augmented reality features
  • Discoverability of AR tools
  • Best practices for implementation
• Price, other costs, and availability
  • How and where to show price
  • Communicating unusual costs and fees
  • Delivery and store availability information
• Adding items to the cart
  • Effective design, labels and placement of add to cart buttons
  • How to provide adequate feedback after adding to the cart
  • Additional purchase options
  • Subscription or recurring purchases
• Special considerations
  • Seating charts
  • Product customization

Research Method

The information in this report is based on five separate rounds of ecommerce studies for this and the previous four editions of this report. These studies included a mix of the following methodologies.

• One-on-one usability testing
• Diary-based longitudinal study
• Eyetracking
• Expert review

Representative users tested 350+ ecommerce websites. The studies took place in the United States, the United Kingdom, Denmark, India, and China