Balance attention without distraction

I've been shopping on my phone the last few days. Just browsing stores I wouldn't normally go to as part of some research I'm doing.

Unfortunately, I had my ad blocker off which meant a lot of the product pages were more... bouncy???

At times, I wondered if there was an Oscar given to websites with the most animations going at once. 2026's Most Animated Store or the like...

Swaying Add to Cart buttons, countdown timers, inventory slide ups, stock tick downs, animated fire for "hot" deals, shaking text, and more. All on the same page and all above the fold.

It was so intense I could feel my phone heating up just loading the page. I couldn't tell if it was the battery or just my browser blushing from all the attention...

With a product page, you want to grab attention. Direct it to the product, the details, and eventually the add to cart button.

You don't want to distract from that.

Half a dozen things going off at once becomes a distraction. You're dividing the customers attention too much and they end up not doing anything.

How to do this right is like using salt.

When you season a dish, you want some salt or the flavor is flat and bland. If you go and dump on too much though, it'll ruin the dish. So you start by adding a little salt, taste, add more if needed, and taste again. Eventually you'll get to where it tastes great and you stop.

(Note: garlic works differently, more garlic is always the correct answer)

Oftentimes many things that boost conversions work fine alone but start failing when combined with others. This is why.

In an ideal world, you'd A/B/C/D test each conversion boosting idea on your product pages and drop the worst. That way you'd hone in on just how much you can add to your product pages without over-salting everything.

Since you probably don't have the traffic for that, try one new conversion component at a time. Start with 2-3 things that have worked for you in the past (or for others in the industry) and try out one new thing for a couple of months. If it works, replace one of your original components and make sure your metrics don't drop. Then try another new thing and keep testing.

This way you'll keep things fresh without making everything too distracting.

Worst case, you can throw them all away and stick with just a prominent add to cart button. People understand how to buy products online these days and don't need a ton of hints.

Especially hints that are constantly bouncing.