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If you’re new to DTC, welcome! You’re in good company with fellow newcomers from Shopify, General Mills, ChipMonk, Alpha Foods, Blue Buffalo, and Facebook. 👋
In this newsletter, you’ll find: 👇
🔥 Making your product pages stand out.
📸 Authentic UGC reviews.
🍽 The New Non-Profit Growth Model: Wellfare CEO Cole Riley on Food Security and $12 Million Economic Impact.
Read till the end to access exclusive DTC swag. 😎
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The landscape… Find Waldo. :)
Okay, onto the good stuff…
Your customer has landed on your product description page (PDP) and it’s the moment of truth:
Will your customers buy, or will they click out and forget about your brand forever?
Whether or not a customer will follow through with the purchase largely depends on how awesome your PDPs are.
How to optimize your PDPs for higher conversions:
Preemptively answer your customers’ questions:
Customers reference PDPs for the answer to one question: Will this product fit in my life?
This means you need to include comprehensive information (and complementary images) to answer all of your customers’ questions.
Here’s a good example of a killer PDP from West Elm.
West Elm includes tons of details about:
Shopping online at West Elm almost mimics the experience of shopping in the store – and this is exactly what a PDP is supposed to accomplish.
If you sell clothing, you have an additional challenge that many other DTC brands don’t have. You have to make sure your customers can accurately determine their size.
The reason?
Getting size right will prevent losing revenue from customers returning ill-fitting items.
Here’s a cool example from a product at Universal Standard.
This brand leads the size-inclusive clothing industry and goes above and beyond to make it easy to pick out the right size.
Below is a sidebar that customers can reference to pick the right size.
This PDP enhancement helps customers get it right the first time.
Another great example comes from Mizzen + Main.
They include a 3D fit finder model on its PDPs to help men see how a shirt would look on someone with a similar build.
Another way to answer your customers' questions on your PDPs is to include user-generated content (UGC) in your PDPs.
UGC includes product reviews, how-tos from social media influencers, and pictures from consumers who have already purchased the product.
Glossier does this well.
It includes videos and pics from Glossier’s customers and a place for people to write detailed reviews. Customers can search the reviews to get answers to questions before they make a purchasing decision.
✨ Make your copy shine
We’ve all bought something at the dollar store or online and chuckled about the poor translations in the product descriptions.
But, when it comes to your eCommerce store, your PDPs aren't the page to skimp on the copy.
The PDP copy needs to be informative, crisp, grammatically correct, and have a bit of personality.
For example, check out the copy from Malicious Women Candle Co.
When you click on one of their PDPs, you don’t get a snooze-fest description. You get personality. You get a relatable look at life (AKA “Drinkin’ Around the Christmas tree”). You get sass.
The copy is funny, informative, and makes people want to buy.
Ways to make your copy stand out:
Once upon a time, discount sports apparel giant, Proozy, struggled with SMS marketing…
Their SMS tool was unable to segment subscribers, had no flow capability, and the only metric available was total revenue. 😟
This meant that all of Proozy’s subscribers received the exact same text messages and they were unable to see data like unsubscribes or click-through rates.
But then they made the switch to Klaviyo SMS.
With Klaviyo’s superior segmentation, flow functionality, and data insights, Proozy was able to:
A happily ever after, indeed! 🙌
👉 Read Proozy's fairytale SMS story here.
Many customers abandon their cart after realizing that the shipping is too slow or expensive.
According to Baymard, 49% of people abandon carts because of high shipping costs.
It’s especially important during the holidays to let customers know when their item will arrive. If you expect shipping delays because of disrupts in the supply chain – be transparent about it.
One great idea to calm consumers’ anxieties around shipping comes from Man Crates. Man Crates provides a simple solution – a shipping estimator.
Before deciding to purchase, customers can see when their Man Crate will arrive.
Another smart idea is to provide a shipping cost estimator, so customers know how much they will spend on shipping before they get to the checkout page.
👀 Consider the visual design of your PDPs
Visuals play a huge role in moving customers through the purchasing funnel.
Consider what you want your customers to see first and place those headers and images at the top of the page.
This usually includes the most important info – a picture of the product and the title of the product.
You’ll also want to carefully consider the design of your PDPs.
West Elm does an excellent job of including robust information but breaking up the content with smart design so it’s not overwhelming.
Instead of listing all of the information about the couch in a long list, West Elm breaks up the content into clickable and collapsable sections.
This makes it easy for customers to get the information they need, ignore the information they don’t, and not get lost in the process.
Lastly, your customers can’t buy if they can’t find the cart.
Buyers expect the “Add To Cart” function to be next to the product encased in a large, solid-colored, easy-to-see button.
While your products should be surprising and innovative, an unfamiliar format can unsettle and confuse future customers.
The Takeaway 👇
A great PDP makes the difference between an abandoned cart and a confirmed sale.
As you optimize your PDPs, keep your customers’ needs and concerns at the forefront of every design and copy decision you make.
The result will be a happy and informed customer and a boost in sales.
Why the Pilothouse team loves it:
Getting authentic UGC reviews is extremely hard. When creators feel pressured to post about a brand UGC can come off as scripted and awkward.
K18, a hair brand, had the perfect solution to this by taking the pressure off from creators.
They sent Love a package in the mail with hair care products they think would help her take care of her color-damaged hair – no posting required, just telling her to enjoy the products.
Love was so thrilled not only at the quality of the products but at the generosity of the brand – that she gave them a stellar review on her TikTok with over 100K followers.
This is not a sure-fire way to get quality UGC, but if you’re struggling to get your foot in the door and don’t have a big budget this is a great place to start.
Reach out to creators who have similar values and send them your product!
No pressure – just tell them to enjoy it. You might be surprised at the results you get.
🎧 Check out this week’s DTC podcast episode featuring Cole Riley of Wellfare, a non-profit on a mission to solve food insecurity and spread wellness for all.
🛍 Inside Facebook and Google’s big livestream shopping plans for 2022.
📈 Why returns are the new growth strategy.
🎬 YouTube adds new updates to the YouTube Studio app, making it more inline with the desktop version.
🎙 Spotify unveils sprawling podcast hub in downtown L.A.
👥 Instagram adds a new option to embed user profiles on third-party websites.
🍽 The New Non-Profit Growth Model: Wellfare CEO Cole Riley on Food Security and $12 Million Economic Impact.
🤰 Paul Singh from Bump Health on Becoming a Distribution Company and the Road to $200B.
🐶 Chippin Pet CEO Haley Russell on Crickets, Carp, and Global Warming.
🥜 Crunch Differentiation in CPG with Daily Crunch Snacks Founder Laurel Orley.
Don’t forget to rate the DTC Podcast on Apple (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
DTC Newsletter is written by Thomas Schreiber, Ashley Cummings, and Rebecca Knight.
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