10 High-Impact CRO Tasks to Improve Your Ecommerce Product Page Conversion Rate

You probably have many ideas to improve it. But, how do you know which will have a greater chance of increasing sales and reducing bounce rate?

Over the last 15 years, I’ve done conversion rate optimization (CRO) for hundreds of ecommerce websites. Here’s a recent product page teardown I did on sports drink brand, LMNT:

While doing these teardowns and CRO projects for countless brands over the years, I’ve discovered what tends to have the most significant impact on ecommerce product page conversions.

So in this post, I’ll share my top 10 product page CRO tasks you can implement right now. And don’t worry, we’ll go much deeper than surface-level advice like A/B testing your CTA buttons—there are even more important things to do first!

Let’s get started 👇

💡 Note: Rich offers free CRO teardowns, like the LMNT one above. Click here to get one done for your store's product or landing page.

1. Set up a short visitor survey to gain feedback on your product page

This is one of the best CRO tasks for any ecommerce website, as it helps you understand your user's issues, doubts, hesitations, and needs. Once you gain these insights, it helps you create very-high impact website improvements, as you will better understand what needs improving. In particular, you should ask questions like these:

• Do you have any doubts or hesitations about this product?
• Is anything missing or stopping you from purchasing?

You should use a tool like Hotjar to create this visitor survey after users have been on your product page for at least two minutes. Don’t show it any sooner, as users won’t have had enough time on your website to be able to answer the survey very well.

You should also incentivize this visitor survey to encourage more responses, like offering a chance to win a gift card. 

2. Improve your product imagery 

I’m not just talking about ensuring you have several images for each product. You need to go much further with your images to showcase your product better and increase your conversion rates:

• Add multiple images from different angles
• Use lifestyle imagery to show the product in use (being worn, enjoyed, etc.) 
• Use word overlays on your images to explain critical benefits
• Offer a good level of zoom to see your products in detail
• Consider offering 360-degree imagery if you have the budget

Take a look at the imagery Unbound Merino uses and how enticing it makes the product:

3. Improve your shipping offers and promote them better

According to research, shipping costs significantly influence increased checkout abandonment. 

But, it's not good enough to just have free shipping. You must promote it close to your add-to-cart button so visitors can’t miss it.

See how Everlane promotes free shipping and easy returns right under the product imagery as a user scrolls down:

And remember that often Amazon will be one of your competitors, and they offer free next day delivery!

4. Add unique value proposition elements above the page fold 

You should presume your visitors haven’t seen your products before, so focus on ensuring they understand why to choose you instead of your competitors—they may even have their websites open in different tabs!

This should be clearly shown and explained above the page fold, so visitors can immediately see it without needing to scroll. 

Many brands sacrifice valuable above-the-fold real estate in an over-eager attempt to upsell other items. See how this brand shows a “Complete the Look” section too prominently instead of giving reasons to buy the initial item:

Using icons to show benefits and reasons to use your website helps make these more noticeable, like whether you have a satisfaction guarantee or offer unique features. An ideal place for these is right by the add-to-cart button. UnboundMerino.com is also a great example of this:

PRO TIP:

Save your upselling and cross-selling tactics until someone has at least added the original item to cart.

Shopify store users can then use ConvertFlow to try an upsell popup on the cart page itself. Or even an overlay that recommends similar items as soon as something is added to cart:

Learn more about ConvertFlow's Shopify integration

5. Watch session recordings of users on your product page

Website analysis can help you understand common issues and bugs. So watching recordings of users interacting with your product pages is crucial. Watch out for these in particular:

• Rage clicks. This is where a user repeatedly clicks on something. This usually indicates confusion or frustration that something isn’t working as they expect it to.‍
• U-turns. These happen when someone repeatedly goes back to the page they were previously on, often indicating that they can’t find what they are looking for.

To make finding product pages where users experience these issues easier, you can use the filters in Hotjar. 

6. Add user-generated content

It’s not enough to just add product images to the gallery. You also need to show images and video content from your users, which helps showcase your products better and build social proof.

In fact, recent research covered in Ariyh indicated that simply showing a hand touching your product left visitors 16.3% more likely to buy and willing to pay 14% more for it. Imagine how much more impactful this could be if it were real customers actually using and enjoying your products.

How do you capitalize on this? Make sure to collect strong image and video reviews from your customers—and even incentivize these reviews by offering gift cards and discount codes.

Here’s a great example of JohnLewis.com nailing it with UGC content directly from Instagram:

You can also embed video reviews in your image gallery and lower down the page. Tools like Billo are great for getting this UGC video content. 

7. Go further than ratings and reviews for increasing social proof

Product ratings and reviews are essential. But, you also need to include “as featured in” sections to:

• Show reputable and well-known media outlets you’ve been mentioned in
• Add testimonials from independent experts

Here you can see UnboundMerino.com doing this very well just under the page fold:

If you don’t have at least 10 product ratings and reviews yet for your popular products, show them for the business as a whole. This will be a much higher and more influential number to display. 

8. Use proactive live chat widgets to engage potential buyers

Offering live chat is essential on your product pages for quickly answering visitor questions. You need to take that a step further by proactively asking a question to see if they need help or have any questions.

These convert much better than hoping they start a live chat or contact you to ask their question. 

I suggest showing a proactive chat after they have been on your product page for two minutes. This length of time indicates the person is interested, yet may be unsure about something and need help.

Don’t make it appear any sooner, or you will risk annoying your visitors. 

9. Optimize your mobile product page

Most ecommerce stores have a significant amount of mobile traffic these days—meaning many of your users will be viewing your website on a mobile device.

So, you need to ensure your mobile website experience is excellent.

Here are some things to do:

• Check your images aren’t too large and that your font sizes aren’t too large or too small
• Ensure your page doesn’t break or get squashed on smaller mobile dimensions like 360 width
• Check your sticky buttons or navigation bar aren’t too big, as they can take up too much space
• Add a search icon in your navigation (unless you have very few products)

Here is an excellent example of the page fold on the mobile version of ManlyBands.com:

Note how the images are still very prominent, the text is legible, and the site is generally easy to navigate and not over-crowded. It’s a great mobile experience that lends itself to high conversion rates.

10. Do user testing to gain in-depth feedback from your target audience

Doing user testing on your target audience is another high-impact part of conversion research, as this is essential for understanding their issues, doubts, hesitations, and needs. You create a list of tasks and questions, and you get to see them using your website answering them.

Here are the two questions that I’ve found to bring the most insightful answers :

1. What are your biggest doubts or hesitations about this website?
2. Would you have purchased from this website? If not, why not?

I highly recommend a tool called Userfeel.com to do this user testing, as they offer user tests from just $30—and you don’t need an expensive subscription, like with other tools such as Usertesting.com.

Get a free CRO teardown of your product page

You should now be in a good place to improve conversion rates on your store’s product pages.

Start with the tasks and advice contained in this article. Just remember to always be testing and tracking results to see what works (and what doesn’t) for your audience.

Want me to take a look at your product page for you?

Click here to grab a free CRO teardown of your own and get actionable conversion steps tailored to your specific needs.