Does your ecommerce business have a strategy for reducing shopping cart abandonment? Great; now take the next step and reduce product page abandonment.

Product page abandonmentmeans that a visitor has gone to at least one product page on your website, but then leaves the site without putting a product in their shopping cart. As ecommerce marketing automation gets more sophisticated, companies are starting to pay more attention to product page abandonment. Here are five tactics you can use to reduce product page abandonment:

  1. Provide enough product information. Have you ever left a product page because you couldn't get enough information? I sure have. Maybe you want to know the fabric content or care instructions for a piece of clothing, or the size of a sofa so you know whether it will fit in your living room. Maybe you want to see reviews from other buyers. In addition to a product overview, which helps create an emotional feeling about the product, you should also think through all the information that a shopper might want.

The problem is that some shoppers want tons of detail, while others don't care and feel overwhelmed if they see a lot of type on a page. One way to keep both types happy is to use tabs to display product information. This way, those who want to can click through to the "Specifications" or "Reviews" tab, while those who don't need that much data can just read the product overview. (Home Depot does a good job of this.)

  1. Don't forget about visuals. Photos and videos are just important as words in providing product information. Recently, I was shopping for curtains online. Many sites were frustrating because they didn't provide the ability to zoom in on the curtain fabric to see weave or patterns-a key differentiator in selection. Include photos of products from all relevant angles, against a white background as well as in use, and give viewers the ability to enlarge or zoom. For instance, if you sell apparel online, showing it both laid flat and on a model, as well as front and back, gives viewers a clearer idea of fit and appearance. Products such as apparel or shoes can benefit from videos that give a sense of how the fabric hangs or how flexible the shoe is. Zappos does a great job of providing tons of visual information.
  1. Include calls to action on each product page. For best results, calls to action such as "Add to Cart" should be prominently displayed near the product price. The desired action should get customers one step closer to checking out.
  1. Be consistent. If at all possible, provide consistent levels of product information on all product pages. Some manufacturers don't provide as much detail as others. You will probably find that those products don't sell as well. Tracking this kind of information and sharing it with the wholesaler or manufacturer might inspire them to provide more information. If necessary, you may want to measure the item yourself or take other steps to get the information you need.
  1. Reach out. Just as ecommerce companies send out reminder emails to reduce shopping cart abandonment (a tactic that's been very successful for most), now some companies are using email to try to reduce product page abandonment. A report by Bronto Software, "Revenue Recovery ", studied how the over 100 U.S. retailers deal with product page abandonment and shopping cart abandonment. Only 15 percent of companies send one product page abandonment email, and only 5 percent send two emails. However, Bronto says that the use of shopping cart abandonment reminder emails started out just as low, and since those emails have worked so well, it only makes sense to start sending emails after product page abandonment as well.

Whether you can do this depends on the abilities of your shopping cart and ecommerce software-as well as how well your customers deal with the "Big Brother factor" of getting emails about products they've only looked at. Still, this is a trend worth keeping an eye on.

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