An online shop that sells: what should we change first on the product page?

At a car parts shop, we looked at the session recordings and saw the same gesture dozens of times: people scrolling down the product page, then scrolling back up, then leaving. They were looking for compatibility with their car. The information existed — in the third tab, under the description.

We moved it up, next to the price, as plain text. Orders increased. Exactly how much isn't worth writing here, because it was just one shop, one period, and we didn't run a clean test.

The order in which we place information

First screen, no scrolling: photo, name, price with VAT explicitly mentioned, stock, delivery time, button. If one of these elements is missing, people scroll to find it, and every scroll is a chance for them to leave.

Below the button, we put the things that cut hesitation: shipping cost (or the threshold for free shipping), how long delivery takes, how to return items. Not in the footer. Not on a separate "useful information" page.

The description comes after. And it's written for someone comparing two products, not for search engines — specifications in a table, not in a paragraph.

What we test, when we have traffic

For shops with decent volume, we test in this order: button text, delivery information position, presence of reviews next to the price, number of steps to complete an order.

For shops with low volume, we don't test statistically, because it's not possible. We make the change, look at orders for a few weeks and at recordings, and accept that we have an informed opinion, not proof. I prefer to be clear about this difference: with low volume, it's not worth pretending statistical rigour.

The Photo

Our own photo beats the manufacturer's photo, in almost all cases where we could compare. Especially for products where the real size is difficult to estimate — then we put the product next to a known object.

Here we made mistakes with conviction a few times: we created galleries with beautiful transitions that loaded the page a few seconds slower on the phone. They looked good in presentations and cost orders. Now the gallery is simple, images load one by one, and the first one is optimised separately.

How we gather initial reviews

We don't invent reviews and we don't recommend anyone to do so. If you don't have any yet, we use what you have: number of orders delivered, customer photos received via WhatsApp (with permission), mentions from social networks.

The simplest mechanism that worked for us: an automatic email one week after delivery, with a direct link to the review form, without an account or password. The fewer steps you have, the more you get.

What we don't touch at first

We don't start with a complete shop redesign as the first step. We've done it, and it's a good way to change 30 things at once and not know what helped. We start with the product page and the checkout, because that's where the most visible money is lost. It's not worth changing everything at once.

Send us the link to a product from your shop. We'll look at it on the phone and tell you what we'd move first.

Where we first look in a shop

Order matters, because many "conversion" interventions that you see recommended have no effect if the basic steps are broken.

Internal search is something almost no one takes care of. For a shop with many products, people who search buy more often — it's worth seeing what they type and what they can't find.

What we read from real behaviour

We look at session recordings and where people get lost, not at opinions. When the client says "no one can find category X", we first check if it's true. A couple of times it wasn't, and the real problem was the delivery cost being displayed too late.

The cheapest optimisation we ever did was to move the delivery cost one step higher. It took an hour.

What we don't recommend

False offer timers, pop-up windows appearing after three seconds, invented messages like "only two left". They work for a short time and erode trust, and for shops selling products repeatedly, it backfires. If a client insists, we tell them our opinion and the reason, then they decide.

What depends on volume

For shops with low traffic, we cannot test variants. We make changes based on what we see blocking people and accept that we don't have statistical proof. For shops with high traffic, we test and wait.

If you have a shop with visits and few orders, we'll look at it and send you a list in the order we'd work.