Once your customer is on a product detail page he made it half way. Now it is important that the customer can get an understanding and feeling for the product, try to make it tangible. 5 points which are important for product detail pages:

1. Good product visualisation is crucial. Show the products from different angles, the front and the back and allow the user to zoom in. Show different colour versions. Close ups are especially important where the texture or surface of the product is important such as clothing or jewellery – make the product as tangible as possible. Let the user “touch” it.
2. The presentation on all the product detail pages should follow the same pattern throughout the site so that the user can learn your site and get accustomed to it.
3. The most important product details need to be in the visible area without having the user to scroll down.
4. This is also a great time for cross-selling: Show the customer what other users bought and make pro-active recommendations. It is better to make recommendations on behalf of the behaviour of other users than by yourself. Say: Customers who bought A also bought B instead of We recommend B for people who are interested in A.
5. The user needs to be informed about the availability of the product. (in case this has not happened on the overview page yet).
6. If your delivery times are much faster than business standards or much longer mention it.

One really good example is again Esprit.

Sizes, colours, product illustration including zoom and front and back images, addtional product information, availabilit, cross-seeling all is in place

Check out the entire series:
Part 1) Navigation and homepage
Part 2) Product overview
Part 3) Product detail page

To come:
Part 4) Search
Part 5) Check out process
Part 6) The shopping basket

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 8th, 2008 at 12:23 pm and is filed under Usability. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.