What should be on a product page?

Why does a product page only get two jobs?

Most product pages I review are trying to do everything at once. They explain the science, tell the founder story, run a loyalty programme and show off every review the brand has ever had, all on the one page.

My view is that the PDP should just be talking to the emotion and countering objections. Anything else is kind of irrelevant, and it belongs on landing pages and ads.

Emotion is about where your customer’s head is at when they land. Objections are the reasons they might not buy today. If a block on the page isn’t doing one of those two jobs, it’s competing with the add-to-cart button, and it should go.

What doesn’t belong on a product page?

More than most founders expect. A founder I was working with recently had a genuinely good technical angle about one of their ingredients, one that nobody in their category was using yet. It’s a strong ad hook. It just doesn’t belong on the product page.

Run that kind of angle as an ad that sends people to the product page, or build a landing page around it. The shopper who loves the science gets it in the ad, then lands on a page built to close the sale.

Then there’s the clutter that builds up on most Shopify product pages over time. Loyalty points widgets, pop-up teasers, mystery discounts, a second reviews carousel, chat bubbles and vague shipping notes. Every one of them is something to click that isn’t add to cart. You want them hidden on the product page, because there they’re a distraction.

When should you use a landing page instead?

Any time you want to change the message for a campaign. Your product page should be the stable, evergreen version that every customer sees. When you want to test a bundle, push a new angle or run a big campaign, build a separate landing page with the same order components (variants, price, add to cart) and change all the content around them for that one campaign.

The product page stays clean, and the campaign content can change as often as you like. You never have to rewrite the page that converts your everyday traffic just because marketing has a new idea.

What order should everything go in?

Design for the most distracted shopper you can picture. Someone who’s busy, their kids are fighting in the background, and half their attention is somewhere else. If they can’t tell where to click, they leave.

This is the order I work to, top to bottom:

The gallery, with the product title and your reviews sitting close to it.
A one-line descriptor that says what the product is and who it’s for.
The price, big and easy to read.
Three USPs, between the price and the variants.
The options and the add-to-cart button. Make the button contrast with everything else on the page. With add to cart, contrast is the whole game.
Your most important collapsible, usually benefits, expanded by default directly under the button.
The rest of the collapsibles, closed and grouped together below it.

Within a single screen you want the gallery and, as close as you can get, the options and add to cart. Set the descriptor and the USPs up as Shopify metafields, so every product carries its own without anyone hand-building the page.

Why do the collapsibles need to stay together?

Because shoppers learn how your page works as they scroll. You want to give people a predictable rhythm as they move down the page. When the collapsible sections sit in one group, the shopper knows that’s where the detail lives and opens what they need.

Breaking a section out of that group is one of the major no-nos. I reviewed a page recently where the benefits section had been moved above the add-to-cart button and the other sections left below it. I can see the logic, because benefits matter most. But it pushes the button further down the page and breaks the pattern. Keep benefits inside the group, open by default, straight under the button. It still gets the attention, and the rhythm stays intact.

Should you rebuild the page in one go?

Get to a strong baseline first. Strip the page back to the simple version and get it working properly, then add the extras back in one at a time, if you still want them.

You don’t have to delete anything to do this. Hiding the widgets on the product page is enough, and you can bring any of them back later.

Nathan Frater

Managing director of Backbone, an e-commerce marketing agency in Auckland. Most weeks I'm on calls with Shopify brands working out what to fix next, and I write up the patterns here.