Shopify Product Page: 8 Tips on how to Customize and Optimize in 2023 (Plus Examples)

8 minutes

Need tips and Inspiration? We’ve got both. Find out how to optimize your Shopify product page to get huge conversions in 2023.

Product pages are pretty high maintenance. They require the perfect balance of elements and ideas to be effective in their main aim – converting your visitors into customers. Because of this, they take on great importance on our stores; so how do we optimize our Shopify product pages to fulfill their roles and to fulfill our e-commerce dreams?

Well, we’ve been asking ourselves that for years.

Join us on our pursuit of the perfect product page as we take a look at where to start, how to make one and see a few inspiring examples from companies that have nailed their own.

Where do I Start?

If there’s one absolutely vital thing you need to nail before you start optimizing your Shopify product page, it’s your audience.

Your audience is going to shape everything on your product page. After all, you ideally want to create a shopping experience that flows for the people you’re selling to; one that appeals aesthetically to them but that also promotes all the things they value.

The right way to start this is by building a buyer persona.

Take the time to create a comprehensive profile of your average customer. How old are they? Where are they from? What types of media do they consume? What problems do they have that your product can solve?

Gather as much information as you can about the people who might want your product; it will inform pretty much every decision you make when optimizing the product pages on your Shopify store.

How? Hubspot has some amazing tools to help you figure out and build your buyer persona.

8 Tips to Optimize your Shopify Product Page for Huge Conversions

Have you found yourself looking at an empty product page, wondering which element to begin with? You’re far from alone. Let’s take a look at how to build and optimize your Shopify product page for your audience and begin reaping the benefits of a well-constructed, conversion generating machine.

Check out our 8 detailed and actionable tips on how to optimize for conversions on your Shopify product page:

1. Focus on design

We’ve put design first for a reason: having the right product page design that fits your audience’s values is absolutely paramount.

Have a think about the following principles of web design – does each one chime with the aesthetic and experience you’re trying to create for your store visitors? With your visitors making their judgement on your page within a 20th of a second, it’s crucial you get this part right.

Whitespace: No one likes real-life clutter, so it’s natural that digital clutter is treated with the same disdain. Whitespace refers to the instances of blankness that lie in between elements, ones that give the reader a break from the noise and highlight the elements that need highlighting.

It’s an incredibly powerful tool when you’re looking to optimize a Shopify product page, as it can increase visitor comprehension of your product by 20%.

Font: Something that really connects with a customer is font. It helps to convey the aesthetic and maybe even the lifestyle of your product, which can be surprisingly effective at driving conversions.

There’s an unbelievable amount of choice in the world of fonts. Shopify is fairly limited in its offerings, but you can easily find one that fits your store via DaFont or 1001 Free Fonts.

Color: The colors you choose for your page are probably more influential on your customers than you think. We’re hardwired as humans to associate colors in different ways: red for urgency, blue for calm, pink for femininity, purple for elegance, etc.

Finding a color that bridges the gap between your audience’s needs and your product’s offerings can work subconscious wonders on your visitors and end up increasing your conversion rate.

If the first step seems a little overwhelming for you, don’t worry; you’re not alone. PageFly is Shopify’s number one page builder app, with over 3,000 reviews and a 4.9-star rating on the Shopify App store. You can design your store via a huge library of templates and create it through a simple drag and drop system, making optimizing your Shopify product page and beyond not only incredibly effective, but incredibly fun.

Try PageFly out for free.

2. Provide a Clear Call-to-Action

Having a great design attracts your visitors and gets them to stay, but how can you get them to convert to a sale? Your call-to-action (CTA) is the button or link that you ultimately want your visitors to click – usually the ‘buy now’ or ‘add to cart’ button.

Making this CTA as clear and distinct as possible is probably one of the best things you can do for Shopify product page optimization. You’ll want to make sure your CTA button is surrounded by whitespace, placed adjacent to the price (and the compare at price if it is being displayed), set in contrasting color to other elements and is an eye-catching size and shape.

Even just changing the wording of your CTA can affect its efficiency, as it did for BettingExpert.com by 33%.

3. Make it Visual with Images

Big, beautiful images – that’s what we want when we’re looking to buy something online. Never underestimate the power of product pictures, they’re incredibly effective at helping customers envision the kind of lifestyle that your product can provide. Great product photography can be the difference between a good conversion rate and a great one.

Not only that, but original product images also…

Make your product 40% more shareable on social media.
Increase memory retention of your product by up to 55% compared to words alone.
Help to establish originality if you’re dropshipping.
Improve your product page’s SEO score and prominence on Google.

There are some simple ways that you can optimize a Shopify product page through images.

Make sure that you include multiple images consisting of a variety of angles.
Make sure that all of those images portray all the various product options and variants you offer.
Make sure you include image zoom to allow customers to see the finer details of your product.
Make sure your images have a reasonable file size so that your page doesn’t load slowly.

4. Get Creative with Video

Much like images, product videos really help customers get a true sense of your product and its uses. They’re becoming much more favourable nowadays, especially with millennial buyers, so we recommend having one per page if possible.

There are different types of product video that suit the different budgets of store owners. They don’t have to be super glossy, sleekly edited promotional ads; you can easily make a converting video with nothing but your phone and your product:

Traditional ad (high budget) - An ad that uses a script, paid actors and a storyline.
Entertainment ad (medium budget) - An ad that shows the use of a product in a unique and entertaining way (think Will it Blend? or Dumb Ways to Die)
Review (low to medium budget) - A review of your product by a paid influencer.
How-it-works ad (low budget) - A video that simply explains how the product is used.
Showcase ad (no budget) - A very simple but effective ad that showcases a product in its basic environment.

Even a showcase ad, which can be completely free to make providing you have access to a smartphone and basic video editing software, can be very influential and an effective feature of an optimized Shopify product page.

Don’t believe us? Check out Oberlo’s guide and their example of a great showcase ad below:

5. Don’t Forsake the Product Description

There’s no denying the powers of visual content, but it doesn’t mean that you can neglect your written text. You may assume that no one has time for lengthy product descriptions in this day and age, but actually, 95% of people still make buying decisions because of them.

It’s all about trust. Buying things online takes a lot of trust on the part of the buyer, and your product description is an opportunity to create some for them on a human level. It can be the difference between another abandoned cart vs a customer feeling comfortable enough to make a purchase.

Use it to appeal to their problem and mention how your product can solve it. Be as descriptive as possible to minimise the chance that they’ll return your product due to unclear or missing information.

Doing all of this has a secondary benefit – to improve your page’s SEO score. Google will be able to rank your page more effectively if your description contains the keywords that your customers are searching for.

The art of the written word is not dead. Far from it; it’s one of the best ways to optimize a Shopify product page in 2023. And, while you’re in your Shopify admin writing killer product descriptions, don’t forget to add relevant tags to your products to aid in discoverability and make it easier to add products to collections down the line.

6. Back your Product with Social Proof

As socially connected humans, it’s in our nature to listen to others. It’s the reason why reviews are generally seen as trustworthy and as influential in a buying decision as advice from our own family and friends.

Having a wall of reviews to backup your product and your service is incredibly valuable, and just one of the components of social proof – the very real psychology of doing things because others rate it highly. Whether you’re selling physical or digital products, reviews are critical for driving sales.

Aside from reviews, here are a few other ways to optimize your Shopify product page through social proof.

Star Ratings - Stars out of 5 are an immediate and very visual way for customers to measure the authenticity of a product. Any score above 4 will do you wonders.
Sale Pop-ups - Those little pop-ups on a product page that tell you when someone else has bought that product can be a helpful nudge towards a sale. Be careful though, because too many can get very irritating and seem disingenuous.
User Generated Content (UGC) - UGC is like a more detailed review. It’s an upload of a customer using your product in their own lives, most likely on visual social media like Instagram, TikTok or Pinterest. Broadcasting these user-made uploads in the form of an image gallery on your product page is fantastic for conversions.
Trust Badges - You’ve seen these before - those small, digital stamps that officially declare a product as 100% made from recycled materials, that there’s a money back guarantee, or that your payment method is secured. Again, these are small, visual boosts to a customer’s trust in your store and your product.

7. Upsell and Cross-sell

At some point in your life, you will have been converted via upselling and cross-selling. It sounds kind of invasive if you’re not sure what it is, but it’s a totally innocent practice and a mainstay of all the most optimized product pages on Shopify.

Leveraging both of these tactics is an unmissable strategy in 2023. Here’s a few examples of what you can offer to increase the average order value of visitors to your store.

Upgrade offer: ‘Upgrade from this 50L bag to this 60L bag for just $20 more!’
Related products: ‘You might also like…’
Trending products: ‘Check out what other customers love right now...’
Product bundles: ‘X% off your order when you buy this with these other items...’

Offers like these are not only great for making more money per customer, they also help to build trust and foster return visits. In fact, customers who are converted via cross-selling are almost 2x more likely to return to your store.

The PickyStory app automatically assembles the recommended products of your store and adds them to your product pages, taking the forms of bundle recommendations, shoppable galleries and ‘buy the look’ buttons.

You can even check out the in-built analytics to see what’s working and what needs tweaking to reliably optimize your Shopify product page. And, inventory is updated automatically for all products at SKU level – easy!

Try PickyStory for free.

8. Navigate off your Product Page

The kind of seamless shopping experience that upselling and cross-selling provides is just one example of great page navigation. If you’re looking to optimize a product page for conversions, you’ll want to make sure that it navigates well towards other pages, including your checkout page.

There are 4 directions in which a product page should always easily navigate:

Backwards to a category page or homepage, wherever the customer has clicked from.
Sideways to another product page, one that’s related to the product they’re looking at.
Forward to a checkout page, which is ultimately where you want to drive them.
Outbound to somewhere off the site, most likely to one of your thriving social channels

We’ve discussed in the previous point how upselling and cross-selling encourages sideways navigation, but what about the others?

Well, to navigate backwards, it’s always a good idea to have a breadcrumb menu. This is a tab at the top of the page that illustrates to customers the page trail that has led them to the product page: something like Homepage —-> Sale —-> Home and Garden —-> Smart Plant Pot

To get customers moving forward, you want to remove as much friction as possible. Get rid of all the unnecessary steps that they have to take between your product page and your checkout page. Preferably, you’ll have a clear CTA button on your product page that leads straight to where they can put in their delivery details.

Last but certainly not least, all well-optimized product pages on Shopify will have outbound links to an equally optimized social media page. Having a Instagram gallery of user-generated content or buttons that encourage sharing your product on social media is a great way to go about this.

Remember, it’s not about pushing customers towards a sale, it’s about giving them the means to find their own way around.

3 Quick Examples of how to Optimize your Shopify Product Page

Looking for inspiration to get started? The product pages below are all expertly crafted and great at driving the conversions that they aim for.

Beaufort and Blake

What they do well:

Great navigation in the breadcrumb menu on top and social share buttons.
A visual ‘related product’ section great for cross-selling.
Social proof in the star-rating and review counter.
Clearly laid out product options in colour and size.
Large product image and gallery below.
Unmissable call-to-action button.
Excellent use of whitespace.

Lush

What they do well:

Beautiful autoplay video showing how the product works.
Fantastic, unique font.
Social proof in the star-rating and review counter.
Trust badge to indicate products are vegan-friendly.
Social sharing buttons.
Further down the page there are larger sections for reviews, links to related blog posts, more great videos, more trust badges and an attractive ‘related products’ section.

Zappos

What they do well:

Breadcrumb menu for ease of navigation.
Social proof in the star-rating and review counter.
Super large image directly in the center.
Image library showing all angles and also a simple product video.
Social sharing buttons.
‘Recommended for you’ cross-selling section.
Further down the page there is a full review section, more upselling and cross-selling sections and a gallery of user-generated content.

Check out over 30 more examples of great product page optimization on Shopify.

So, What's Next?

There’s a lot to consider in Shopify product page optimization, but don’t let it overwhelm you. Take things step-by-step, see what works and tweak things accordingly.

One of the best places to begin is with a tried-and-tested template. As Shopify’s best-rated page builder, PageFly has a diverse library of 60+ templates from which you can start constructing your product page and beyond.

Once you’re up and running, don’t miss out on the chance to scale your conversions with PickyStory. We’ve helped some of Shopify’s fastest growing brands optimize product pages and increase their average order value through AI-driven cross-selling, and we offer 24/7 personalised support to help you do the same.

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Shopify Product Page: 8 Tips on how to Customize and Optimize in 2023 (Plus Examples)

Table of Contents

Where do I Start?

8 Tips to Optimize your Shopify Product Page for Huge Conversions

1. Focus on design

2. Provide a Clear Call-to-Action

3. Make it Visual with Images

4. Get Creative with Video

5. Don’t Forsake the Product Description

6. Back your Product with Social Proof

7. Upsell and Cross-sell

8. Navigate off your Product Page

3 Quick Examples of how to Optimize your Shopify Product Page

So, What's Next?

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Frequently Bought Together

Present bundles of products that are frequently purchased together, simplifying the decision-making process for your customers

What is Frequently Bought Together?

It is a recommendation scenario that suggests additional products to the shopper, which are often purchased by other customers in conjunction with the item they are currently viewing or considering purchasing.

Why are brands using it?

How Zenbivy uses Frequently Bought Together

www.zenbivy.com

Create Frequently Bought Together

Build Your Own Bundle

Offer shoppers the ability to create their own bundle of products by selecting from a range of available options

What is Build Your Own Bundle?

Build Your Own Bundle scenario provides shoppers with the flexibility to select specific items or features that best meet their individual needs and preferences. The selection is based on a pre-curated set of products by the merchant.

Why are brands using it?

How Prodigy uses Build Your Own Bundle

Prodigy enables its shoppers to build their own bundle of golf discs, fully personalizing the shopping experience. Shoppers get an easy way to select their favorite discs while Prodigy consistently increases its AOV.

www.prodigystore.eu

Create Build Your Own Bundle

Bundle as Product

Combine multiple individual products into a bundle and sell them as a single unit

What is Bundle as Product?

Bundle as Product scenario involves bundling multiple individual products together and selling them as a single unit. This strategy offers shoppers a curated selection of items that work together or complement each other.

Why are brands using it?

How Gravity Fitness uses Bundle as Product

Gravity Fitness knows that it's not an easy task for shoppers to collect all the required pieces for a complete home gym. That's why they have created pre-made home gym bundles for an easy shopping experience. Now they have fewer SKU issues, a higher AOV, and happier customers.

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