How to Educate Shoppers on Your Ecommerce Product Pages

When an online visitor hits your product page, it’s like they’ve walked into your store, picked up an item, and are holding it in their hand. Any experienced retail pro will tell you – now is the moment. This is your time to shine, to win their business by drawing attention to key features and helping your shopper visualize the benefits of owning and using your product.

In other words, it’s time for a little bit of strategic buyer education.

Nelson Mandela once said: “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” It is also the key to turning your online store’s product pages into a revenue-generating machine.

If you can make the consumer feel knowledgeable about your product, then they will feel more confident in their decision-making abilities. The more confident they feel, the more likely they are to buy.

That’s a win-win well worth aiming for.

1. Educated shoppers are confident buyers. Help your customers feel secure in their decisions and your sales numbers will soar.
2. Education helps buyers understand the value they are receiving in exchange for their money, raising satisfaction levels and minimizing returns.
3. Education is a full-circle process. Through the act of teaching, you’ll learn more about your customers and your products, thereby bolstering your own level of expertise.

1. Educated shoppers are confident buyers. Help your customers feel secure in their decisions and your sales numbers will soar.
2. Education helps buyers understand the value they are receiving in exchange for their money, raising satisfaction levels and minimizing returns.
3. Education is a full-circle process. Through the act of teaching, you’ll learn more about your customers and your products, thereby bolstering your own level of expertise.

One of the first lessons they teach in sales and marketing school isn’t about writing, design, or data. It’s about about drills and holes. Here’s the gist: nobody really buys a drill for the drill, they’re buying the holes it creates. It’s not what your product IS that matters, it’s what it DOES. So, when you’re selling (or in this case, writing your product description), don’t just sell the drill. Sell the hole. This means doing more than rattling off a list of features in your product description. Use this content opportunity to show your customers you understand their needs and tell them why those features matter.

One of the easiest “tricks” for writing compelling product descriptions is to make the customer the focus of the description, not the product.

Stories are great for grabbing interest, but sometimes you just need the straight facts. When users visit a product page, they expect product information. So, give it to them! In either a subsection of your product description or a separate place on the page, bullet-list your product’s features and specifications.

Stick to the facts here – this is not the place for flowery descriptions and storytelling. Avoid paragraphs – big walls of text rarely get read or retained. Save it for the product description, or better yet, your resources.

If you’ve gotten the buyer into your store, holding the product in their hand, the last thing you want to do is send them off to another location to learn about the product. That same is true online. Give your web shoppers the resources they need right then and there on your product page, so they don’t have a reason to leave and get distracted – or worse, swept away by a competitor.

By “resources”, we mean all types of media and content you can use to inform the buyer about your products. Photos, drawings, diagrams, animations, videos, FAQs, whitepapers, brochures, how-to’s, user guides, slide shows, case studies, research reports, articles, and much more.

Learn more about how to use video in ecommerce marketing.

Buying a product online can be a little bit stressful, especially when it’s your first time shopping on a new site. We’ve all been burned by bad experiences and sketchy sellers, so we’re on high alert for red flags.

One way to increase confidence and ease your customers’ fears is to set clear expectations from the very beginning. Include links to all your policies and terms and summarize them in plain language. If you have a multi-step checkout process, outline the steps upfront so people know what to expect and can have necessary information ready.

And finally, inform customers if and how they will be supported after the sale. Does the product have a warranty? Can replacement parts be purchased? Is there an 800 number to call with questions? 24/7 web chat support? Extended documentation or resources? These are all important things to know before making a purchase, and they will help your customers feel confident not only in the product they are purchasing, but the company they are choosing to buy from.

As the old Latin proverb goes, docendo discimus – the best way to learn is to teach. When you embrace education in your ecommerce process, you will experience this in two ways.

First, through the process of deciding what you want to teach and preparing your educational content, you will get to know your customers, products, and processes on a much deeper and more thorough level.

Secondly, you can use sales data and web analytics to learn which educational content works best for you. Do customers who watch a how-to video end up leaving more/better reviews? Then how-to videos should always be part of your product pages. Does downloading a PDF brochure lengthen time-to-purchase without improving the conversion rate? You can probably leave that out and capture the sale faster.

Product pages are just one of many opportunities to make customer education an important feature of your ecommerce experience. For the greatest success, prioritize education throughout all steps of your customer journey. Provide educational content and promotional efforts not just about your products and processes, but about the problems your products solve, how they solve them, and most importantly, the people they help.