Product pages: what to get right first

Every audit we run turns up some version of this. If you only fix one thing about product pages this quarter, make it the first item below.

In e-commerce every friction point has a price attached, and the arithmetic is unusually easy to check. The teams that stay on top of it are the ones who put it on a calendar rather than a wish list.

Start here

Answer the questions that stop someone buying. The cost of getting this wrong is rarely visible on the day it happens. The practical test is whether someone new to the project could tell, in a minute, that it had been handled.

Then this

Multiple images from real angles reduce returns. In practice this is a scheduling problem more than a technical one. Check it against what you would want a competitor's site to get wrong.

Eventually

Stock, delivery, and returns belong above the fold. There is a version of this that is over-engineered, and it is worth avoiding. Most teams find the first pass takes an afternoon and the maintenance takes minutes a month.

How to tell if yours is fine

Small percentage changes matter here because they apply to every order, every month. Three things worth confirming about product pages before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Answer the questions that stop someone buying — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

Pick the one that would hurt most if it failed, and start there.