If you have ever been involved in an e-commerce application development, if not worked personally, then you would have surely heard about Magento. What makes it the most preferred choice for an online store is its flexibility and scalability. Due to this very reason, demand for Magento web development companies has experienced a sharp hike.
Even after being built on open-source technologies, there’s a free edition for Magento website development for online merchants offering tons of templates, themes, plug-ins, and powerful marketing tools among others. This robustness of Magento has led to the birth and growth of more and more Magento development.
Now, product pages form the center stage of any online store as that’s what the customer is for on the website. The main idea behind a product page is to introduce the customer to the product within a few seconds to drive their purchasing decision.
This article is a detailed view of the best practices one should follow for an ideal Magento 2 product page design and will thus act as a Magento 2 development guide for many developers.
But before starting with the real deal, let’s talk a bit about the default product page by Magento. The default or perhaps the most fundamental page of a product by Magento has the most clearer and best usability practices in mind. It has:
- A simple and clean layout
- A huge image visibility section for the product’s gallery and distinctive CTA elements
- A well-structured and prominently placed information of a product
So let’s get to the best practices to follow when building a product page using Magento 2:
1. Reduce page load time
It is the most fundamental aspect of any website development paradigm. Any delay of more than 2 seconds disrupts user experience and also harms the website’s SEO. Implement caching to save page data. So the next time when the user requests for the same page, it gets loaded faster. Though Magento offers this feature in the paid enterprise version, you can implement it in the free community version as well.
2. Incorporate breadcrumbs
You might be someone who doesn’t find breadcrumbs visually appealing if they break into multiple lines or feel like they block the view of the page unnecessarily. But what seems like a struggle is a great way to enhance the visibility of the product page. It reduces the number of actions to be taken by the visitor and thus reduces the bounce rate.
They become all the more crucial when a user lands on the product page from SERP. By default, a breadcrumb of the form “Home/$(product-page)” is being generated by Magento, although you can customize it to display a full category hierarchy so that if the user wishes to navigate to find similar products, the task becomes easier on their part.
For example: Home & Kitchen>Plastic>First Smart Plastic Rectangle Pot (Brown, Pack of 3)(35 x 18 x 14 cm)
3. High-quality product images
There’s no point in putting up low-quality product images on your online store. So your ideal Magento 2 product page design should have high-quality pictures of the product at different angles (for a 360 degrees panoramic view) and at least one photo in its natural surroundings. It gives the customers a real idea as to how it would look in their surroundings.
4. Facility of close-up, zoom, and video
When a product has some texture or specific details, the buyer often inclines towards getting a zoomed view. Ensure that there are no limited zoom or low-quality zoomed-in pictures.
Incorporate close-up views of products as well for the buyer to investigate them better. It gives them a clearer idea of the product in its totality. Including a video about how to use or something related to the product develops a more in-action view of the specific product.
5. Don’t forget product variations and “recently viewed products”
Showing different variations to the current product is something that should be on your radar to have a disposal of options at the user’s end to choose. Either create configurable products or add custom options to simple products. An advanced way is incorporating a product configurator.
Also, there’re chances that the user might want to check out a product again that they saw a few minutes back. Give them the flexibility to do so by showing a section of “recently viewed products” on either your Magento 2 product page design or home page design.
6. Include product reviews and ratings
There’re high chances that the customer would check for reviews and ratings by other buyers. Don’t step back from showing a mix of reviews as this will help them get a real picture of the product. Also, as reviews are unique in content, they act for a good SEO ranking. Don’t skip negative reviews during moderation, lest you’ll incur a loss of 30% viewership at that very instant.
Tip: Install a product reviewer extension for users to review the products that their purchase.
7. Include payment and returns information prominently beside the main purchase area
The main purchase area is that part on the product page design that lets the visitors know the important product-related information like its description, price, discounts and offers, shipping information, unique value/sale propositions, and much more. So fill that section with all due information as it drives the user’s purchasing decision by a good factor.
But amidst all this, don’t shy away from putting up payment-related info like price in the accurate currency and return information besides payment vendors prominently on the page. Be clear on the return policy.
8. Feature related products (up-sells) and cross-sells
A product might not be available at the time of purchase, so show other variations of the same product for the user to choose. Try to depict related products like a phone cover with a smartphone or fake/real plants with a flower pot. It helps in increasing sales.
And here we have come to an end!
Above are some of the best Magento website development practices followed by some of the top Magento web development companies. If you want to know more then, we shall come up with a part 2 for the same and help you be a top Magento 2 web developer!