Provide Descriptions and Pictures for Your Products

  realize that the new web designer is beset with contradictory advice about how best to design their site. One set of such conflicting advice is the requirement to be brief and to-the-point so that you can catch that Internet visitor who will only give your web page a few seconds glance before deciding whether to stay or go elsewhere. Contradicting that is the requirement that you describe your products in depth and place pictures of your product, or screenshots if yours is a software product.

The best way to resolve this, I think, is to take a leaf from Amazon.com's book. For every item they list on their search results for a query (they have too many products to have a straightforward "Products" page), they usually have a brief description, a thumbnail picture, the price and a link to buy the item. If this brief description interests you, you can click the link and get a longer description and more information about the product.

A product page for each product, with a long description and pictures of the product, is indispensable. This is particularly so if your product is expensive, or has plenty of competition. Your long description and pictures of what you're selling is what cinches the sale. Potential customers will use the information on that page to decide whether or not to buy the item. They look at the page and compare it with the what is said about your competitor's product. It is thus in your interest to mention all the salient points about your product or service on that page. Think of it as the web equivalent of a salesman promoting a product to a walk-in customer.

An informative and detailed product page is not all you need. You also need to place your "Buy" or "Order" buttons both at the top and the bottom of the product page. If your product page is especially long, spanning many screenfuls, you may also want to consider placing additional buttons somewhere in the middle of the page. Do not force your customers to scroll to the bottom of the page before they can buy the item. You may have suffered countless hours drafting the description of the page. Do not pass the suffering to your customers by requiring them to read it all before they can order your product. Some customers are easily convinced, or they come to your page having already decided to buy. Make it easy for them to get to where they want to go within your site.