Your Product's Image Carousel is the Most Important Asset on Your Store

Stop Trying to Look Cute and Start Converting More Customers

Hey I’m Shane, welcome to another issue of The CRO Weekly where each week I explore how to build a high converting Ecommerce store. If you’re not subscribed you can do so here:

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After watching thousands of session recordings one thing is very clear:

People consume your product images more than anything else on the PDP.

Yet there seems to be a web design trend developing where you show one, maybe two pictures of your product.

This looks great but you’re missing a huge opportunity to sell your product. The typical journey for a customer looks like this:

1. Lands on the PDP and sees the first image, the product title, and review count. Maybe a short bit of a product description

2. Swipes through 2-4 images to see if they’re interested

3. If they’re interested, they start to scroll and look for answers to their questions

4. If not, they bounce

Don’t believe me? Just download a tool like HotJar and look at the heatmaps for your PDP. You’ll see 50%+ of the clicks are on the product media carousel. Then, on the scroll maps you’ll see that 40% of people don’t make it past the first screen on your PDP.

What this tells me is that you have a few images and maybe a short product description to hook people.

Let’s Look at a comparison of two brands.

Hydrant is a wildly popular hydration mix with excellent branding. When you land on their PDP here is what you see:

This is definitely a pretty design. But when I swipe through the media gallery I only see one additional image and its of the back of the product:

I can’t even read the back of the package at this size. If I want to know the calorie breakdown (one of the first things I’d look for in a supplement) now I have to go looking for it.

Maybe if I’m super interested I’d scroll 3 sections down to read the ingredients and nutrition facts. But if I’m not highly motivated, you just made it more difficult for me to purchase, which makes me less likely to convert.

Remember this chart from a couple issues back:

The easier it is for someone to do something the less motivated they need to be to do it.

Anyway, let’s look at another brand.

Mister Jones is a supplement brand. Specifically formulated for women, it has both a day (for energy) and night (for sleep) component.

Let’s look at their PDP:

The only difference here really is that they stuck a review in at the top of the page. Aside from that its pretty standard. But when I swipe on the media carousel things start to get interesting:

That’s right, a breakdown of everything that the product does.

Imagine someone saw a UGC ad that said “Mister Jones’ Perfect Pair is soooo good. I take it every morning and night and it has me feeling like a whole new person.” Naturally they’re probably pretty curious about what the product actually does. So Mister Jones tells them in the second image.

Then you go to the third image and you get a breakdown of everything the nighttime supplement does for you. 

Remember to think like a customer. You landed and now you understand what the product is supposed to help with. Naturally, you’re probably wondering how you’re supposed to use the product. Is this a one day supply? Do I take it every day?

Here are the next three pictures in the carousel:

Okay great. This is a one month supply of both the morning and nighttime supplement. I’m supposed to take two tablets in the morning and two at night. That sounds easy enough.

The next question we can anticipate is… why Mister Jones? And of course in the last image in the carousel they have you covered:

Can you see how in their product carousel Mister Jones just walked you through an entire journey? They’re telling a story one image at a time. What the product does, how you’re supposed to use it, and why their product is worth the price tag is explained in 7 images.

Compare that to Hydrant’s media carousel and it’s easy to imagine how much Hydrant is leaving on the table.

Be like Mister Jones and use your media carousel for more than pretty pictures. Use it to tell a story.

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That’s all for today’s issue. I’d love to talk to you about it on Twitter:

Shane Rostad @shanerostad

After watching thousands of user recordings one thing is very clear– People consume your product images more than anything else on the PDP. Yet there's a trend developing where you show at most two pictures of your product. This trend sucks. Here's why–

bit.lyYour Product’s Image Carousel is the Most Important Asset on Your StoreStop Trying to Look Cute and Start Converting More Customers