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7 strategies to get your PDPs ready for the 2023 holiday season

If your home page is like the display windows on a department store when it comes to enticing shoppers to spend with you during the holidays, your product pages are the equivalent of that fitting room experience.

By the time a customer gets down to a product detail page (PDP), they're starting to consider making a purchase - including considering the value, reviewing product details, checking out reviews and UGC, and ultimately deciding whether or not to add a product to their cart. Getting your customer to add a product to their cart is one thing. Boosting that cart size to its max potential level and driving conversions is something else. The good news is LimeSpot can help with both of these things. Keep reading for 7 ideas on how to optimize your PDPs for the 2023 holiday shopping season.

Basic PDP customization strategies for the holidays

1. Cross-sell related items or bundle products

The easiest way to boost cart size? Promote products that go together, also known as cross-sells. There are a few different approaches to doing this.

First, you can use LimeSpot's 'Frequently Bought Together' boxes to automatically generate products that are often purchased at the same time. These boxes work great for stores that sell a base product with ancillary items or accessories - for example, cameras with lenses, tea cups with tea, or a gardening set with seeds.

Another option is to offer up one-click bundles of products that are specifically designed to be bought together. You can use any LimeSpot boxes to populate your bundles, or you can manually set what products appear. Customers have the ability to remove items from their bundle, as well as select details of their bundled items right from a single PDP. We especially love this option for sites selling complete sets, whether you're inviting clothing shoppers to 'complete the look' or curating a collection of matching bedsheets or cookware.

Finally, instead of focusing on boosting AOV, you could provide recommendations designed to keep customers on your site longer. Trending Items or You May Like are great choices to show hyper-relevant items based on what products a shopper has shown interest in.

2. Highlight key gifting policies

A customer finds an item they love on your site - great! But before they checkout, they'll probably want details on your shipping cutoff dates, return policy, and possibly even your gift wrapping services. Instead of having them click around your site, be sure to spotlight this information right on the page.

If you are using LimeSpot's Segmented Experiences module, you can also choose what information shows up for different customer groups. For example, you could create a customer segment for customers located closest to your main warehouse that has a longer shipping cutoff date than customers located elsewhere in the country (or globe).

3. Stack your recommendations

Not every recommendation box is going resonate with every customer. Don't be afraid to try multiple recommendation boxes on a single page, particularly if you have long, content-rich product pages that customers are going to want to spend some time with. We've got a best practices guide for box placement, but here are a few quick tips:

  • Place 'Recently Viewed' at the bottom of your PDPs to remind customers of what might be worth a second look
  • Use 'Related Items' or 'Frequently Bought Together' (or both!) below the product description to give customers somewhere else to click next
  • If you're offering bundle-style recommendations, place those as close as possible to the 'Add to Cart' button

Check out how LimeSpot client böhme is stacking their recommendations to minimize clicks and drive up sales in this brief video.

Advanced PDP customization strategies for the holidays

4. Provide recommendations on exit intent

If you've gotten someone to a PDP, you're doing something right. But maybe a shopper isn't finding quite the right item, or has limited time to browse. When they signal they're about to exit your site, use a pop-up provider of your choice to grab their attention.

Many brands choose to insert an offer in their exit intent pop-ups, but there are a couple of issues with this. First, it can create bad habits for shoppers that become deal hunters, basically forcing you to discount your products by default. Secondly, we've found that many customers aren't actually looking for a discount when they leave. They're likely leaving your site to look at other products, compare prices, or simply mull over the product.

Instead of throwing your prospective customer a discount, why not show them an exit pop with personalized recommendations based on the based on the product page they're on? Inviting customers to take a 'next click' can be way more effective at actually keeping a customer on your site as opposed to simply serving up an offer. Remember, you can always A/B test your pop-up experience through LimeSpot's Segmented Experiences if you want to determine which exit intent experience actually keeps customers on the site.

5. Promote free shipping recommendations in the cart

If growing cart size is a goal for your store this holiday season, there's no better strategy than promoting free shipping. If your store uses an Ajax cart (sometimes called a flyout, slideout, or popout cart), you can both highlight how far away a customer is from getting free shipping, and provide on the spot recommendations they can add to their cart without having to navigate anywhere else.

If you're going to employ this strategy, we strongly recommend focusing on products that are lower in cost. Think of your in-cart cross-sells as the equivalent of the gum and candy sold by the register in a grocery store; things you don't realize you want or need until they're right in front of you. Lower-ticket items are easier to rationalize, plus you can frame them as 'Stocking stuffer ideas' or 'Gift swap ideas' to inspire customers to tick off other items on their list beyond the bigger-ticket purchase they came to you for in the first place.

6. Cross-sell matching sets

If you look at our basic cross-sell recommendations, you'll see it's easy to set up your cross-sells based on items that go well together. But what if you have an entire collection of items that goes together? Examples might include:

  • Bedding
  • Home accessories
  • Towels
  • Tableware
  • Cookware
  • Clothing (same pattern)
  • Jewelry

If you have a large selection of items that belongs to a micro collection, you can actually adjust your recommendations parameters to prioritize items with a shared variant. For example, a customer looking at a Dutch oven in a bright teal color might only see other pots and pans offered by the brand in the same color. The more items you show that match, the more tempting it'll be for customers to 'complete the set' - and boost your AOV. Contact LimeSpot for support on executing on this strategy.

Check out our brief video above for a real-life demo of cross-selling matching sets to see how easy it is to drive up basket sizes.

7. A/B/n test your PDP personalization strategy

When it comes to the holidays, your tried and tested strategies might need a rethink. Remember, you've got customers flooding your site that often aren't familiar with your brand at all, particularly if they're shopping for a loved one.

A/B/n testing on your product description pages early and often is essential to ensure you've got the ideal messaging, recommendations strategy, and imagery served up to your customers when the apex of peak shopping season hits. We recommend kicking off your A/B/n testing at least three weeks before Black Friday.

These are some of the most common things you may want to test on your PDPs, using LimeSpot's 1:1 Personalized Recommendations or Segmented Experiences modules.

  • Featured image: Does one picture drive more conversions than others?
  • Key information: Think about your personas; what information do you need to have front and center to get them to convert? Holiday policies? Product features? Company practices?
  • Box placement: How high up on the page should you place your recommendations? How many types of recommendation boxes should you offer? What box types are driving the most revenue, and in what place?

You can test an unlimited number of scenarios through LimeSpot. Want to get started with A/B/n testing? Contact our support team or your LimeSpot Customer Success Manager.

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Are your PDPs ready for the 2023 holiday shopping season?

There you have it! Remember these golden rules for optimizing your PDPs for the holidays:

  • Test different experiences in advance of Black Friday to find the highest-converting options
  • Boost average order value and cart size by providing recommendations, bundles, and logical cross-sells
  • Reduce the likelihood of someone leaving your site by highlighting enticing 'next click' options

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