Footwear is a multi-billion dollar industry. Nike Inc.’s market capitalization alone is $105.3 billion and growing.
[Image Source: nytimes.com]
To sell more shoes, footwear advertisers have invested heavily in display advertising. As a result, there’s a lot of data that we can look at. But for this post, we decided to focus on comparing the landing pages of some top footwear advertisers.
Meet the Candidates
For our analysis we looked in Adbeat and chose three high-spending footwear advertisers. We also limited our analysis to campaigns that lasted for no more than one quarter.
The advertisers and campaign details are as follows:
NewChic – $45,600 for a two-month campaign
Puma – $32,700 for a four-month campaign
Zulily – $97,800 for a three-month campaign
And here are the banners for each advertiser…
[Image Source: adbeat.com]
I should point out that none of these advertisers sell footwear exclusively; they also sell other items. The banners, however, are advertising specific footwear products and lead to specific product pages when we click on them.
Which brings me to my next point: The “landing pages” for each of these are really e-commerce product listing pages. So to evaluate these pages, we needed to use some very specific criteria.
The Criteria
To make a solid, unbiased assessment easier we decided to use a checklist created by WooCommerce. Billed as the Essential Product Page Checklist, the 26-item checklist offers a solid benchmark for making sure a product page has everything it needs to close the sale.
Let’s get started.
Analysis
Section 1: Product Photography
Mark Hayes, a Shopify contributor, says:
“When shopping online, customers aren’t able to touch whatever you’re selling. That’s exactly why product photography is so important in swaying a potential buyer’s purchase decision.”
There are four things WooCommerce recommends considering when it comes to product-page images.
More than one image provided
NewChic has 10 images of the sneakers on the product page. You can see five mini-pictures of the sneakers in the screenshot below and scroll to see the rest of them using navigation arrows.
[Image Source: newchic.com]
Puma has five photos of the training shoes, taken at different angles.
[Image Source: puma.com]
Zulily also has five images of the boots they’re selling. Unlike NewChic and Puma, you can see mini-versions of all the images without clicking on arrows.
[Image Source: zulily.com]
Photos are sharp, clear, and high resolution
All three pages get passing marks for having sharp, high-quality photos.
Zoom feature is enabled
While Puma and Zulily allow us to zoom in on the photos, NewChic doesn’t.
As you can see from the screenshot below, Puma allows such a deep zoom we can almost see into the soul of the shoe.
Puma — check!
Zulily — check!
NewChic — miss!
[Image Source: puma.com]
Photos show all aspects and views of the product (for example, included components, the unassembled version, etc.)
Potential customers are able to see the product from all angles on NewChic’s website.
While Puma and Zulily present fewer images on their websites, they still allow customers to see top, front and side views of the footwear.
Product Photography Scores
NewChic – 3 points
Puma – 4 points
Zulily – 4 points
Section 2: Copywriting
Strong copywriting is essential to optimizing your conversion rate.
According to RaptMedia studies, 63% of consumers said they’d think more positively of a brand if it gave them content that was more valuable, interesting or relevant. Here are the important points:
There are four things WooCommerce recommends considering when it comes to product-page copywriting.
At least three descriptive sentences are written about the product
NewChic lists product features, describes the shoe, toe and closure type, describes it as a male or female product, and suggests several occasions and seasons for which the shoe is appropriate.
These sentences aren’t overly descriptive, but at least there are several points listed.
[Image Source: newchic.com]
Puma lists five features of their product and has one descriptive sentence above this list.
Zulily uses the same model for product description and their product page.
Copywriting is, ideally, original to your store
We checked the text with the help of anti-plagiarism software called quetext.com. All three websites had 100% unique text on their websites.
Content makes use of keywords and/or phrases relevant to the product in question for the purpose of search engine optimization
All three advertisers made use of keywords and phrases that help with SEO.
Content has been spell-checked and reviewed for grammar
At first glance, we found no misspellings or grammar errors on any of these three product pages.
Just to make sure, we used the Grammarly app to check the pages at NewChic, Puma and Zulily.
0 critical mistakes total for Puma and Zulily’s descriptions.
NewChic, however, didn’t fare so well. Two errors showed up (see below).
[Image Source: grammarly.com]
Copywriting Scores
NewChic – 3 points
Puma – 4 points
Zulily – 4 points
Section 3: Product Features and Specifications
Features are listed in short sentences or bullet-point form
NewChic is the only online merchant here that lists product features in a numerical list vs. standard bullet points:
[Image Source: newchic.com]
The points are short, though. As for Puma and Zulily, they do list the features of their products in bullet point form:
[Image Source: puma.com]
[Image Source: zulily.com]
Product dimensions/size is listed, or a size chart is available
All three product pages list available sizes.
They also have a size reference section that includes a table showing how U.S. sizes correspond to other size systems.
Here is how it looks on NewChic’s product page:
[Image Source: newchic.com]
Puma also lists the available sizes and provides users with a size chart.
[Image Source: puma.com]
In addition to the selection of available sizes, Zulily informs users about which sizes are not in stock at the moment and invites users to ask for notification when the stock becomes available.
[Image Source: zulily.com]
Country of creation or origin is listed
Every product page failed this one.
There is no information about the manufacturing country on any of the pages.
Either they don’t find it necessary to display this information to potential customers, or they’re omitting it for a reason. Perhaps they’d rather not tell them where their products are made. Working conditions in manufacturing countries have sometimes been a point of tension between footwear makers and activists.
Any required legal information (logos, disclaimers, licensing, etc.) has been put in place
Standard copyright signs appear on NewChic and Zulily’s sites.
NewChic and Zulily have updated copyright signatures to 2018 at the bottom of their product pages.
Puma has plenty of information about the Puma brand at the bottom of the page.
[Image Source: puma.com]
Product Features and Specifications Scores
NewChic – 3 points
Puma – 3 points
Zulily – 3 points
Section 4: Related Products/Intelligent Product Suggestions
We probably don’t need to discuss the importance of upselling and cross-selling.
It seems obvious that connecting potential buyers to other products and/or showing a wide selection of goods might increase the overall number of items purchased.
Products in the same set, family, or by the same designer/artist are linked
NewChic has “recommended for you” and “you might also like” sections at various spots on their product page, so we can affirm that they’ve fulfilled this point.
[Image Source: newchic.com]
Puma has a “you may also like” section that connects to other items.
As you can see, the offered products that might be “liked” by users include similar shoes and accessories.
[Image Source: puma.com]
Zulily leaves links to the products “more from this event” and “you may also like.”
So, we can check off this point on the checklist for all three e-commerce shops.
[Image Source: zulily.com]
Additional relevant products are linked as needed
We checked whether all of the suggested products can be reached in one click.
They turned out to be clickable on all the observed pages.
On Zulily’s website, it’s also possible to add to your cart items from the same collection en masse—quite a clever move, as customers can plunk multiple items into the “buy” queue without leaving the single product page.
The items at “you may also like” from the screenshot above don’t have an “Add to Cart” option on Zulily’s page. Only those at “More from this event” allow us to “add to basket.”
[Image Source: zulily.com]
Related Products/Intelligent Product Suggestion Scores
Perhaps Puma and Zulily deserve an extra point here for upselling cheaper accessories and providing an “add to basket” option for other items at the checkout page.
However, in all cases, the guidelines of the checklist were met.
NewChic – 2 points
Puma – 2 points
Zulily – 2 points
Section 5: Other Items to Check
Add-to-cart button is functional and easy to find
The three product pages call “the cart” by different names, but the buttons all do the same job.
[Image Source: newchic.com]
[Image Source: puma.com]
[Image Source: zulily.com]
URL is clear (ex. /woo-t-shirt/ vs. /shirt-37837483-color-32/)
We’d say the shorter, the better. WooCommerce suggests omitting numbers where possible.
For small sites this seems reasonable. For larger e-commerce sites this seems nearly impossible. Just have a look at the current web addresses for our product pages.
https://www.newchic.com/sneakers-3622/p-1195605.html
http://us.puma.com/en_US/pd/fierce-strap-women%E2%80%99s-training-shoes/pna190274627956.html
https://www.zulily.com/p/truffle-ecru-namaste-ankle-boot-271325-52690973.html?pos=1&fromEvent=271325
The addresses are neither short nor attractive.
We’d say NewСhic wins in this category, but the URL still doesn’t look perfect.
Other Item Scores
NewChic – 1 points
Puma – 1 points
Zulily – 1 points
Breaking Down The Results
We can see that there’s no breakout winner among the participants.
Zulily and Puma have an equal score: 14 out of 16 possible points.
NewChic ended up with 12 points.
Things they’re doing right (you can follow their example):
- images of the items being sold are of high resolution and quality
- copywriting is strong for all three product pages
- features of the products are well listed in product descriptions
- CTA buttons are functional and clearly seen
Things they can improve:
- URLs can be improved
- copywriting is suboptimal on NewChic’s product page
Do you agree with our checklist assessment? Perhaps you discovered some “misses” on your own ecommerce store’s product pages. Tell us in the comments section.