Design tips to boost sales

We’ve reviewed the questions we receive during our Design tips to increase your store’s sales webinar and boiled them down into 5 frequently asked questions. 

We then asked our merchandising expert and fellow Squarespace site owner to share some of their expertise, and here’s what they had to say:  

1. How can I showcase a new collection of products? 

There are many ways to merchandise a new collection of products, depending on the look and feel you want to go for. Here are a few different options: 

Use a products section

Products sections were designed to display your products in eye-catching layouts. In addition to merchandising products on your store page, you can use a products section to merchandise your products on other pages of your site, like your homepage. As you drop new products, you can update the images in the product section to highlight them.

Link a store category in your main navigation 

When you add categories to your products, your store page will be organized by those categories for an easier shopping experience. You can also link the specific product category in your site’s main navigation so more visitors will see it. Here’s one idea: you can create a  “New” category for recently added products and then link that category in your main navigation so your newer products will get more views. 

Use Unfold to create templates for social media 

With Unfold, you can create beautiful templates for your social media feed and story posts. You can use these templates to advertise your new product releases on your social media platforms. 

Use the announcement bar 

An eye-catching call to action you may want to try is the announcement bar. The announcement bar appears at the top of your website, and you can use it to link to a new product drop in your store. 

 

2. What is a best practice for product descriptions? 

Of course, product descriptions should accurately describe the product in an enticing way, but let’s dig a bit deeper and talk about some other things to keep in mind when listing your products. 

Add high quality product photos 

A picture’s worth a thousand words, and your product photos are no exception to that. It’s best to have multiple photos that show off different angles of your products so that customers are more inclined to purchase. 

Choose your first and second product photos carefully. Your first photo will be the featured image on your store page, and the second photo will be the one that can display on hover. That said, it’s a good idea to use photos that are a bit different. For example, if you sell clothes, the first image could be the item itself, and the second image could be the item on a model. 

You can also enable image zoom on your photos. This is a particularly good idea if your products have any fine or ornate details that you want to show off. 

Of course, you should always make sure that you’re uploading photos that are the right dimensions and aspect ratios to ensure they look their best. We recommend an image width between 1500 and 2500px and a size of 500 KB so that they load quickly. Learn more about formatting your images for display on the web. 

In addition to looking great on your site, high quality product photos can also catch the eyes of customers shopping on Google, Instagram, and Facebook. With Squarespace, you can display your products in Google Shopping and sync them to Facebook and Instagram.

Here’s a final tip: you can bulk upload photos from your phone using the Squarespace app. This is a great way to streamline the uploading process if you have your products on your phone. 

Enable reviews 

Do you look at customer reviews before you make a purchase? According to a study  by trustmary.com, 93% of consumers read reviews before making a purchase. Enabling reviews is an excellent way to give your customers a voice and to inspire trust of your brand and products.

Focus on benefits and use SEO keywords 

Your written descriptions are very important, not only because they can help a customer determine whether or not they want to purchase your product, but because they can help get your products to appear in search engine results. When writing your descriptions, it’s a good idea to focus on the benefits customers will derive from using a product. In other words, think of how the product could personally benefit someone who uses it and frame your descriptions around that. When you start to draft your descriptions, think about which SEO keywords you want to incorporate. 

SEO keywords are the words you use in your site content to help your site rank in search engines and help people find you. While not related to the overall design of your site, SEO keywords can help your products get noticed on search engines. When you’ve decided on the terms you want to prioritize, you can incorporate them into your product descriptions to help them surface on search engines. 

We recommend that your descriptions are at least three sentences. To get a first draft, you can use Squarespace AI to generate a description of your product. We recommend that you always review and edit AI output to ensure that it’s accurate, appropriate for your site, and incorporates your unique voice. 

Use limited availability labels 

Limited availability labels display product availability and flag items that are low in stock. They display on store pages and product details pages, and they can help drive buyer urgency. They’re an especially great merchandising option if you sell bespoke or limited edition items as you can communicate the scarcity elegantly. 

 

3. How can I merchandise my online courses? 

Course pages display a collection of online courses in an easy to navigate way. When a customer completes your course, they’ll see a visual indicator of their progress, motivating them to finish. Let’s talk about some ways you can further design your courses to encourage customers to purchase them. 

Use a digital products section 

Digital products sections are similar to products sections, however, they can be used to merchandise your digital products (like courses, member sites, and videos) on high traffic pages. If you’re a digital product seller, a great place to add one of these sections is to your homepage so visitors are aware of your offerings. There are plenty of layouts to choose from, and you can make your own edits to them to incorporate your own personal touch.

Offer a freebie 

Everyone loves a freebie. Creating a free introductory level course can give potential customers a taste of what they can get out of your course, which may encourage them to make a purchase. You can then list that freebie in your digital products section or use a digital product block to advertise it on another page of your site. 

Within a course’s lesson page, you can link a downloadable handout with a detailed course overview or additional information to further encourage customers to enroll.

 

4. How can I increase my average order value (AOV)? 

A tried and true strategy of increasing AOV is to offer a discount or free shipping when customers spend a certain amount. That said, you have many design options you can try to get customers to add more items to their carts. Let’s go over some popular ones. 

Use add-on products

If you’re looking to increase the amount customers spend on an order, try add-on products. With add-on products, you can display other related or complementary items on a product page. For example, if you sell jewelry, you can upsell a jewelry cleaner add-on with any other product. This can encourage your customers to purchase multiple items from you and even increase their awareness of your other products.

Display related products

Similarly, you can display up to five related products on a product details page to help deepen customers’ engagement with your store. After you add categories and tags to your products, you can choose the ones you want to display. You can have random products within the category or tag, the newest products, or products with the highest stock quantity display. 

Use product variants to sell sets 

When adding a product to your store, you can set up variants for options like size and color. You could also use them to boost your sales by bundling sets of items. For example, if you sell tea cups, you can add a variant for a pair of cups or even a full tea set. Those variants display on the tea cup’s details page where the customer can add them directly to their carts. 

 

5. How can I make my site mobile friendly? 

While all Squarespace sites are designed to look great on mobile devices, sometimes additions like large media files or content-heavy pages can cause some issues to arise. Let’s share some tips on how to keep your Squarespace site mobile friendly:

Keep your pages under 5 MB 

Pages with more than 5 MB of content may load slowly on mobile devices, impacting a visitor’s experience on your site. To ensure your site is designed with mobile in mind, check the size of your pages and make adjustments to the content as necessary. If your page has images on it, be sure to keep them below 500 KB to ensure they load as quickly as possible. You can use any third-party image editing software, like JPEGmini, to resize the image. 

(Fluid Engine) Edit your mobile layout 

With Fluid Engine, mobile layouts display the same content, but you can arrange the mobile layout and resize its blocks independently of the computer layout. In other words, if the alignment of a block looks great on a computer but not on a mobile device, you can reposition the block on the mobile layout without affecting the computer layout. 

(Classic Editor) Know how blocks stack on mobile

With the Classic Editor, the mobile layout cannot be changed independently of the computer layout; Squarespace’s responsive design automatically stacks blocks vertically on mobile devices. If you have three image blocks in a horizontal row, they’ll stack on top of each other from left to right on mobile. Keep this in mind when editing your site, and be sure to take advantage of device view to get a preview of how edits you’re making will look on computer and mobile layouts.