A bow tie for the outfit at the party or a new drill are to be purchased. The way to the product often leads via an online store. Electrical goods and clothing are the top-selling product groups in e-commerce. [1] In the online store, we click through categories, use search functions or reach the article page by entering a search engine. These article pages are also abbreviated as PDP. PDP stands for Product Detail Page. On a product detail page, all relevant information provided by the respective company about the product appears. Which information is visible to customers or must be visible through relevant regulations (see article on material details) depends heavily on the respective product groups and user needs.
What is a PDP?
PDP is the abbreviation for Product Detail Page. A product detail page is a web page that provides information about a product in a web store. Customers learn interesting facts about an article here. This page is an important basis for a purchase decision.
In addition to core information such as name, price, color or model options, product descriptions, images or videos of the product, product detail pages also contain operating instructions, size tables or the option to compare directly with other products. PDPs should ultimately turn visitors into customers and positively influence the conversion rate (ratio of visitors to website/number of completions). Product Detail Pages are the shop window to the product and an important touchpoint on the customer journey.
What is a Customer Journey?
A customer journey describes the journey of potential customers from the first contact with a product to the desired target action. It takes into account all touchpoints with the brand, product, or service. Depending on the requirement, this can be a purchase, registration, or login, for example. A customer journey model is divided into five phases based on the classic AIDA model.
- Potential customers become aware (Attention)
- Interest in product is aroused (Interest & Desire)
- Product is chewed (Action)
- Customers become regular customers (Retention)
- And recommend products to others (Advocacy)
Product Detail Pages turn out to be an interface between many work areas and requirements. Design, usability, marketing and sales, frontend and backend development, to name just a few. How a PDP is fed with relevant information will be examined in the following.
In the following, we will present a model PDP of a clothing company and show which of the information can actually come from a Product Information Management System (PIM).
Left side
Badge
A badge is a symbol that prominently labels the article, usually on the cover. This can be labels such as Exclusive, Plus Size, Sustainable,... . In the PIM, such a label can be attached to a group of articles, which then appears on the PDP.
Assets
In the context of a PDP, assets are images or videos of the products. The PIM manages these. The preparations for the right quality (cropping, watermarking, ...) can be taken over by a DAM (see article), which in turn is connected to the PIM via an interface.
Cover image
Product photographs and product illustrations are central to a PDP. The item's cover image appears directly when the page is opened and can be set in the PIM.
Care instructions
Care instructions are required in the garment merchandise category. This information is also created and maintained in a PIM.
Long description
Longer product descriptions provide more detail about items and, depending on the quality, can provide deeper insights into the overall structure surrounding the item. This can be body text or even a bullet point list.
Right side
Item name
For products these lines are the place for their name and the most prominent place. This is crucial for finding the product via search engines, and is therefore also mandatory with regard to SEO handling. In the PIM, this information is maintained via the attribute type Text.
Short description
This subline can reflect the brand, product category or even an initial descriptive note about the product. This information is also maintained in the PIM via the Text attribute type.
Prize
The placement of the price as further important information about the article is usually found directly under the headline and signature. Price management does not happen in the PIM, values can only be mapped here.
Size
Other relevant information are sizes. Available sizes of an item are maintained in the PIM and passed on to the PDP.
Color
Possible variants of an item, such as colors in this example, are differentiations of a product. This information can be easily adapted for groups in the PIM via inheritance mechanisms.
Material descriptions
The specification of the material proportions of an article is obligatory by the EU. This information can also be clearly designed and managed with corresponding attributes.
Outfit
The display of further stimulating purchase options becomes possible via relationships between different items. A PIM can solve this requirement via the Product Relationships and Bundles feature.
Conclusion
It turns out, much of the information seen on a PDP can come from a PIM. The Product Information Management system provides valuable and essential data when it comes to populating a product item page. A PDP represents one output medium among many possible ones, which benefits from the consistent data quality that a PIM grants through its inherent features.
[1]: https://de.statista.com/themen/247/e-commerce/#dossierKeyfigures
What follows...
In the second part, we will take a closer look at a model product page from the technology product group.