How To Create Stunning E-commerce Sales Pages

What is an e-commerce sales page?

As a concept, an e-commerce sales page is largely straightforward. It is a section of your website that is expertly designed as a way to drive sales and encourage customers to purchase from your company.

Usually, they are used by companies that are trying to sell a specific product, but can also be used to encourage sales for events and experiences. When used effectively, they can help support the growth of your company and bring in impressive amounts of money. 

However, a poorly designed sales page will have the opposite effect, as it can present your company as untrustworthy or unprofessional. If you cannot make your product sound appealing, why would a potential customer purchase a product from you?

Sales pages vs. landing pages

A landing page is usually the first section of your website a customer will ‘land’ on when they follow a link or search for your company via their chosen search engine. This is the first thing they will see if they follow a specific advertisement to your website.

It doesn’t need to be used to sell a product, but should at least introduce your brand and products to the audience. You should treat it as an opportunity to get them interested in what you do or sell.  

It may also give them the option to sign up for a mailing list or a way for them to be given company updates. By encouraging them to sign up, you’re earning their loyalty since it’s highly likely they'll make a purchase in the future - especially if they receive exclusive deals or discounts when signing up.

A landing page should also include a link to your sales page, where you can provide more information about a product to your audience.

As mentioned previously, a Sales Page is the section of your website you’ll use to garner sales. This is the entire focus of the page, and the content included will reflect this intention. 

Why a Great E-commerce Page is Important

To put it simply, if your online shop isn’t reaching its sales goals, it may be due to an underperforming sales page. A poorly designed page or a page without sufficient information simply will not convince a potential customer to make a purchase.

Impressions are key, so even if you approach conversion rate optimization over a long period of time, a potential customer who has already been let down by your website may not return. 

10 Ways to Create a Stunning E-commerce Sales Page

1. Nail down your pricing 

How you price your products is important. You need to ensure you’re not under or overcharging your customers, as both can limit your ability to earn money. To accurately price your products, consider all aspects such as cost of production, facilities, staff wages and shipping and packaging.

Then, you need to ensure the price is attractive to your customers. Ask the following questions:

• Can they find a better deal elsewhere?

• How much do competitors sell the same products for?

• Can I offer any unique deals?

• How can I convince customers to pay more money for my services? What makes them stand out?

2. Make sure you know your audience 

You likely already have a strong idea of the kind of people you’re targeting your products towards.

However, you must narrow this focus as much as possible, to ensure the content you provide appeals to them directly. Gain an understanding of their likes and dislikes, and think about the kind of messaging and content you need to provide to encourage a purchase.

Consider hosting a focus group, running a site survey or even installing live chat to deepen the connection with your customers.

3. Work hard to build trust

Trust is an essential factor when making a sale.

Your customer needs to know they’ll receive a quality product or excellent service for them to confidently make a purchase. Thankfully, you can use your website to develop a bond of trust between yourself and a potential customer.

It could be as simple as adding trust badges. Here are a few ways to build trust: 

• Tell the truth. Be honest about your product and what it can do. If you believe in your product, there’s no need for overselling it, as it will only lead to disappointment and complaints.

• Include reviews from previous customers, so they can see what people who aren’t attached to the company think of your product. You may also want to ask customers to share images of the product on social media that you can feature on your website.

• Be transparent and honest. If you make a mistake, or something goes wrong (i.e a product is damaged in transit, or a customer receives the wrong order) - hold your hands up and apologize. This shows you care about customers more than sales and will encourage people to purchase from you in the future.

• You can also share links to any news articles or blogs about your product, as this demonstrates professionalism and can help foster trust.

4. Add videos and images

Customers need to know exactly what to expect when they’re buying a product.

Often a description alone isn’t enough to make a sale, no matter how detailed it may be. They need to see what it looks like before they make an order. This is particularly important if you’re selling products such as clothing, or household items.

After all, have you ever made a purchase yourself without first seeing the item?

Although you don’t need to hire a professional photographer to take pictures of your product, you need to ensure they're high quality. Your customer needs to see clear, unedited photographs of your product that allow them to make a well-informed decision before purchasing. 

Ideally, you should take photographs of your products against a plain background, so they’re the focal point of the image and there are no distractions. Alternatively, you can use a background remover such as the one from Quicktools by Picsart and creat a transparent background in just a few clicks.

You should include at least 3-4 images of your product on your sales page, which gives the viewer the option to zoom in for a closer look. Show the product on its own, in its postal box and a few lifestyle shots.

This way, the customer knows exactly what they’re buying and how it will look upon arrival.  And if you’re feeling adventurous, you can use illustration software to create truly unique-looking images for your sales page.

You can also create videos to show what the product looks like in action. Audiences are sometimes wary of e-commerce websites that only include pictures, which can be heavily doctored.

5. Use several CTAs

Every sales page needs an effective ‘Call To Action’ (CTA). This is a brief, snappy message that encourages a customer to make a purchase. They use decisive language to help drive sales. Depending on your product, you may want to include more than one CTA or even use filters or other interactive elements to encourage the desired action.

That being said, don’t overwhelm your customer by including too many CTAs, as this can quickly become frustrating. You need to find ways to subtly convince them, without it appearing desperate, obnoxious or forceful, which is often the case when you include too many CTAs in a small space.

6. Don’t forget about the value proposition 

Your value proposition is the section of text that provides reasoning why a customer should make a purchase - i.e. the ‘value’ you’re providing to the customer.

You should use this section of your sales page to highlight your product’s best qualities, including details of what makes it stand out from the crowd.

For example: 

• Why should they purchase this product from you as opposed to one of their competitors? 

• What makes your product so great? 

• Why is your product unique? 

• What is included in the price of your product?

• What ingredients/materials are used in your product?

• Is your product environmentally friendly?

• Does your product have multiple uses?

• What should they expect when they make a purchase?

7. Perfect the headline and subheadings

Customers don’t want to deal with paragraph after paragraph of text to understand what you’re offering, especially if they have a limited amount of time.

Keep your content succinct and persuasive. One way to do this is by breaking information down into separate sections, using headings and subheadings or bullet points that provide useful information and draw the viewer in.

Headlines and subheadings are also a great way to incorporate SEO into your webpage. For example, if you sell moisturizer, using key phrases related to skincare may help customers find you easier. 

8. Responsive design is your friend

Responsive design means your website is user-friendly and adapts to whatever device a potential customer may be using.

For example, without adaptive design, your web page may load strangely on a mobile phone - making it hard to read, hard to navigate and ultimately, hard to convert sales.

Thankfully, there are several tools you can use to make a responsive design (and creating a high-quality sales page) easy.

1. OptinMonster - helps you design a website that looks perfect whether the website traffic comes from a phone, PC, tablet or laptop. 

2. InstaPage - This app works to ensure that your pages are responsive, whilst also providing you with useful content curation tools.

3. UserTesting - allows you to split test new website content or pages with experienced reviewers who provide you with feedback on what works and what doesn’t work.

9. No distractions

Your website is likely packed full of all kinds of information, from stories about your brand development to images of customers using your product.

In fact, the more information you include, the stronger your brand becomes as it makes you appear more professional and accomplished. It also gives you plenty of opportunities to connect with your customers on a personal level. 

However, this type of information should be kept to a minimum on your sales pages - especially excess information that has nothing to do with the product you're trying to sell. For example, you don’t want to include a link to your latest blog post on your sales page, despite the fact that it may allow your blog to reach a wider audience.

You want the customer’s entire focus to remain on the product and the sales button, as this will make a sale more likely. 

10. Use approachable language

When you’re trying to make a sale, you’re trying to connect with a customer. Encourage them to make a purchase, by using careful, persuasive language without sounding too demanding. To do this, you should aim to be succinct but friendly, as this allows you to appear more trustworthy. 

A common mistake people often make when designing their sales page is being too formal - using complicated language that isn’t accessible to their customers.

While it’s important you convey your knowledge and expertise around the product/topic, you need to do it in a way that doesn’t alienate your customers. If they're confused or frustrated they’re less likely to make a purchase. Remember, you want to draw them in, not chase them away. 

If this sounds like a lot of work, you’re not alone - it’s an art form that can take a lifetime to perfect.

And ff you don’t have “a way with words” then consider outsourcing to a content writing service (or hiring a freelance copywriter) to help you. Small changes in the copy of your sales page can have a huge impact on increasing conversions.

Conclusion

An e-commerce sales page can make or break your sales goals. There are lots of ways to make sure your sales page is a good one, but it takes a bit of trial and error to figure it all out.

From getting to know your audience to perfecting visuals and CTAs, there are lots of little, yet highly important details.

We hope the tactics laid out here help you develop an optimization strategy for sales pages and beyond.