Product details that should be provided

Your product pages are one of the most important pages in your Shopify store.

That means it's important to get your product data right and to not miss anything. Customers depend on that data to purchase and missing critical pieces will cause visitors to bounce and abandon carts.

Not all data is created equal though. Some data (e.g. SKU) is more important to you than customers.

Let's ignore the structured data for just one moment and instead focus on the content of your page. What your customers actually read, not the data search engines are looking for. 

These are the things you absolutely have to get right for your Products in Shopify.

Name

It sounds oblivious to most people that the product name is important, but oftentimes I see bad names in Shopify stores.

Imagine having five black shirts that are just called "Black tee", "T-Shirt, black", "Fitted Shirt", etc. Or worse, all with the same name.

You might be able to tell the difference using the image or SKU but it makes it hard on customers to tell the products apart. Especially if they don't know your product lines. A confused customer is either going to leave or require a large investment of time from customer service to find what they are looking for.

Avoid this by naming all of your products uniquely and try to follow standard patterns. e.g. "Black T-shirt with graphic design", "T-shirt with crew collar", "T-shirt, fitted" works much better.

Standard naming is even more important if you're a reseller. Use your supplier's product name in the description for searchability and change the title to make it fit in with the rest of your catalog.

Price

The product's price is one piece of important information every customer will want to know. It's required in Shopify but some stores hide it or make it difficult to find. That causes no end of trouble for the store.

If you are legally required to hide it, fine, but it'll make getting new customers extremely hard outside of B2B.

Just having the price isn't enough though. You need the complete price. That includes any additional fees, taxes, and shipping costs. If your shipping cost varies, have a clear breakdown or link to your shipping page.

Every single customer hates getting into checkout only to see higher prices or hidden fees.

Make your price highly visible and clear.

Images

When it comes to product images you want a few things:

• an image of the product alone, e.g. in a light box
• an image of the product being used, in context
• multiple angles showing important sections

Don't just use one image or think a video will substitute for all of the images. Shopify allows you to use as many images as needed, so use them.

Also avoid the badly photoshopped stock image. You've seen these before on Amazon, especially on low-end products as a way to fake how the product looks in context. Customers notice those from a mile away and will make them question if the product is actually real or just a fake.

Real images of actual products, even if slightly flawed, are vital. Especially with the amount of AI-fakes these days.

Reviews from customers

Including reviews of the specific product from customers is, although not required, still very important to help prospective customers.

Reviews act as a social proof and can give visitors an idea about the good and bad parts of the product. Even a couple or handful of reviews can help. Having zero reviews is fine, especially on newly released products.

Don't delete negative reviews either. As long as they are honest about the product and not being offensive or attacking someone, they can help sell a product. There's been numerous products that I've bought because a negative review mentioned an attribute that the reviewer hated but I was actually looking for.

Size

For many products, the size can be the next deal-breaker.

With clothing, size is required. Clothing that doesn't fit a customer is a waste of everyone's time and is going to be returned.

With other products, size will determine if a product can be used at all. A 12-inch poster of David Bowie could be used by anyone (though it might be a bit small). A 12-foot poster of David Bowie is more for the super-fans. Getting those mixed up will make no one happy.

Finally there are some products where size is more a placeholder for quantity. 5 pounds of dog food is different than 50 pounds, but don't fundamentally change the buyer's opinion.

Usually you'll use product options to list the product's size, though if you don't have any size variants you can just include it in the product title or description. Just make sure it's somewhere easy to find.

Also, don't invent your own sizing standards. Use your industry standards as much as possible and then include actual physical measurements if you can. Ladies in the US, we can attest to the size variation from one store to another and it's beyond frustrating.

Material or composition

What your product is made from can matter a lot to customers.

Some materials might be more durable, or easier to clean, or there could even be an allergy issue.

Whatever the product is made out of should be listed somewhere in the product. How prominently will depend on how important the material is. If there's an allergy-risk like with nickel in jewelry then it should be very clearly listed: in the product options or even title.

For products where the material isn't a main concern, listing it in the description is usually fine. Knowing that a coffee cup is made of stainless steel is useful to some people while others care more about its size and if it is dishwasher-safe.

Other Specifications

Based on the product type, any other relevant specifications should be listed.

Electronics should list energy usages and battery info. Food should list ingredients and nutrition information. Clothing should include fit details and washing requirements.

For specifications I've found a simple table or list of them at the bottom of the product description can work well. That way they are on the page but not taking up valuable space.

Ask yourself what you'd want to know

While the above covered most common required product information customers will want to know, there's always more that matter for your specific product.

The best thing to do is to ask yourself, "If I was buying this product, what else would I want to know?"

Secondly, you can also involve your customer service and see what questions they get most commonly. These don't need to be as formal as frequently asked questions but can give you ideas about what information is missing.

Missing product information means missing orders

While it may seem like a lot, much of this product data is just part of doing business. It's only needed one time per product so it's best to handle it all upfront when you create the product.