Combine SEO and UX for More Profitable E-Commerce Product Pages

Below are the key takeaways from a recent webinar “Profitable Product Pages: Using SEO and UX to Increase E-Commerce Sales” Heidi Trost, Voice+Code Director of User Experience, co-hosted with Pam Aungst of Pam Ann Marketing.

By combining best practices for SEO and UX, you can ensure customers:

1.  Find your product, both externally via search and within the site itself.
2.  Are convinced that the product is right for them.
3.  And are then able to complete their purchase seamlessly--happier than when they started.

 

The best e-commerce experiences are human experiences

Using the L.I.V.E. Digital Method framework, we think about digital experiences as living things, analogous to real life experiences. Purchasing a product online is no different. The best e-commerce experiences are human experiences:

• they are helpful.
• they educate.
• they anticipate and overcome objections.
• they help the user solve a problem.

You can combine user experience research, insights from analytics, keyword research, and SEO best practices to create more profitable product pages. This combination is successful because we can:

• figure out what is helpful to our customers.
• understand what our customers know and don’t know.
• uncover what objections customers have.
• discover what problems or challenges our customers face that we can help them solve.

For example, keyword research can show you how people go about searching for items they need. Perhaps your product is a solution the user isn’t even aware of yet. Combining this information with information gleaned from user research, you can create custom product descriptions that not only makes the product easier to find, but is tailored to your users’ wants and needs—increasing the likelihood of a sale.

Or, maybe your website analytics show where users are dropping off or abandoning their cart. This is incredibly useful information to give you clues as to where problems are occurring. However, you need user research (usability testing, in particular) to identify why people are dropping off. Perhaps the user was unable to determine if the product has a feature that is critical to them.

 

SEO best practices are UX best practices and vice versa

Investing in SEO and in user experience research will only serve to benefit the other. This means that the investment positively impacts not only your product pages but your entire website.

For example:

• Focusing on usability, instead of the latest design trends, will improve conversions and make search engines happy.
• Mobile-optimized sites ensure your users can make a purchase on any device and ensures you website isn’t penalized by search engines.
• Social proof (for example, reviews) help to educate and overcome user objections, gives you free insight into how users feel and talk about your products, and helps with search engine visibility.
•  A clear structure and hierarchy (including a proper URL structure, breadcrumbs, H tags, alt tags) help users understand where they are within the site and where they could go. It also makes it easier for search engines to index the website properly and will enhance SEO.

The bottom line: your user experience research and SEO teams should be working collaboratively to ensure your product pages are more profitable.

Want to combine SEO and UX for more profitable product pages? Send us a note.