Product Pages That Actually Sell

The Baymard Institute maintains a running meta analysis of cart abandonment research, collecting every credible study rather than running one and publishing a single figure. As of their September 2025 update, the average across 50 documented studies sits at 70.22 percent.

The number worth paying attention to is not really the average. It is the spread. The individual studies range from roughly 55 percent to 84 percent, and that range is the honest part, because it tells you abandonment varies enormously with what is sold, to whom, and how.

So roughly seven in ten people who add something to a cart do not buy it, and that has stayed broadly stable for years despite everything the industry has thrown at it. Some of that is unavoidable. People browse, compare, save things for later. But a meaningful share is caused by things on the page, and those are fixable.

Here is what a product page has to do.

1. Photographs that answer questions

Product photography is not decoration on an e-commerce page. It is the entire substitute for handling the object, and it is doing the job that a shop assistant and a shelf do in person.

Multiple angles, including the unflattering ones. People want to see the back, the underside, the seams. Hiding them creates suspicion, not mystery.

Scale. The single most common photography failure. A person cannot tell how big something is from an isolated shot on white. Show it in a hand, next to a familiar object, or being used. Returns caused by size surprises are expensive and almost entirely preventable here.

Detail shots. Texture, finish, the quality of construction. This is where you demonstrate that it is worth the price.

In context. The item in use, in a real setting. Isolated product shots on white are necessary and insufficient.

Consistent treatment. The same lighting and background across your catalogue. A store where every product was shot differently looks improvised.

2. A description that answers the actual question

Most product descriptions are written as marketing copy. They should be written as answers.

What is it made of. What size, precisely, in numbers. How does it behave over time. What is included. What is not included. How do I look after it.

Read your customer service messages and note what people ask before buying. Every one of those questions belongs on the page. If somebody had to ask, the page failed, and for every person who asked there were several who left instead.

Specificity outperforms enthusiasm consistently. “Eleven inches across, holds about a litre” does more than “generously sized.”

3. Price clarity, including the total

Baymard’s own checkout research points repeatedly to unexpected costs as a leading cause of abandonment, and it is worth taking seriously because it is one of the few causes entirely within your control.

The failure pattern is familiar: a customer builds a mental total through the process, then shipping and fees appear at the final step and the number jumps. That feels like a bait and switch even when nothing dishonest happened, and people leave over the feeling rather than the amount.

Show shipping cost, or the threshold for free shipping, on the product page. Show taxes if they apply. Show delivery timeframe. Every figure the customer will eventually see should be visible before they commit attention to checking out.

4. Stock and delivery, stated plainly

In stock or not. How long until it ships. How long until it arrives. Where you ship to.

Vagueness here is expensive because it is one of the last uncertainties before purchase. “Ships in 2 to 3 business days” is a small sentence that resolves a real hesitation.

5. Returns, said clearly and early

A clear returns policy is a conversion tool, not a legal footnote. It removes the main risk of buying something unseen.

Say it plainly and near the buy button. “30 day returns, we pay postage” does more work than any amount of persuasive copy, because it transfers risk away from the customer at the exact moment they are weighing it.

Burying it in a footer link works against you, because the anxiety is present whether or not the answer is easy to find.

6. Reviews on the product itself

Site wide testimonials do very little on a product page. Reviews of this specific item do a great deal.

If you sell clothing or anything with fit, reviews that mention sizing are worth more than everything else on the page combined. Prompt for that specifically when you ask.

A handful of genuine reviews including a lukewarm one is more persuasive than a wall of perfect scores, which reads as curated because it usually is.

7. A checkout that does not fight the customer

Baymard’s usability research consistently identifies forced account creation as a major abandonment cause. Somebody who is ready to give you money should not be required to invent a password first.

Offer guest checkout. Keep the form short and ask only for what you need to fulfil the order. Show progress if it runs to multiple steps. Do not clear the form when validation fails, which is a small failure that produces disproportionate rage.

8. It has to load

Everything above is irrelevant if the page does not appear. Product pages are especially vulnerable because they are image heavy, and image heavy pages are where oversized files do the most damage.

Google’s threshold is 2.5 seconds for main content, measured at the 75th percentile. Run your best selling product page through PageSpeed Insights on mobile and see where you stand. If images are named as the cause, they can almost always be a fraction of their size with no visible difference.

The diagnostic

Take your best selling product page and go through this list, marking each item present or absent.

Then buy something from your own store on a phone, all the way through to payment, as if you were a stranger. Notice every point where you hesitate or have to hunt for something. Those are the same points where customers leave, and you will find two or three you did not know about.

Then do the same on a competitor’s site and note what they answer that you do not.

Most stores are missing three or four items from this list. None of them require a rebuild, and the ones about clarity, shipping costs and returns are usually just writing.

The mobile version is the real version

Most of the traffic is on phones and most product pages are designed on a desktop, which produces predictable failures.

The buy button is below the fold and stays there. On a long product page, somebody scrolling through images and description reaches a point of decision and then has to hunt for the button. A sticky add to cart bar that stays visible while scrolling solves this and is standard on well built stores.

The images cannot be examined. On a phone, tapping an image should open it large and allow zooming. If it does not, you have removed the one thing that substitutes for handling the product.

The variant selectors are fiddly. Small dropdowns for size and colour, close together, are hard to use with a thumb. Larger tappable options are better and reduce mis-selection, which reduces returns.

The description is a wall. On a narrow screen, four paragraphs of unbroken text will not be read. Break it into short sections with headings so somebody can find the fact they want.

Buy something from your own store on a phone, all the way to payment. You will find at least two of these.

What to fix first

If you are going through this list with limited time, the order that produces the most improvement per hour:

Add shipping cost and delivery timing to the product page. Unexpected costs at checkout are a leading documented cause of abandonment and this is entirely within your control.

Enable guest checkout if you do not already. Forced account creation is one of the most consistently identified abandonment causes in Baymard’s usability research.

Add a scale reference to your main product photos. One image showing the item in a hand or beside something familiar. This reduces both hesitation and returns.

State the returns policy near the buy button. One sentence.

Check the page speed on mobile. Product pages are image heavy and this is where oversized files do the most damage.

Those five are mostly writing and settings rather than development. None of them require a redesign, and together they address the causes that research consistently identifies rather than the ones that feel most pressing.

What abandonment is not telling you

A closing caution about the 70 percent figure, because it gets used badly.

A high abandonment rate is not automatically a problem to be solved. Carts get used as wishlists. People compare across three stores with items sitting in each. Somebody adds something to check the shipping cost with no intention of buying today.

None of that is a broken checkout. It is normal browsing behaviour, and no amount of optimisation will convert most of it.

What you are actually looking for is the portion of abandonment caused by something on your page: a surprise cost, a forced account, a missing answer, a page that would not load. Those are recoverable and they are the ones worth chasing.

The way to find them is not the abandonment percentage. It is going through your own checkout on a phone and noticing where you hesitate, and reading the questions customers ask you before they buy. Both of those point at specific fixable things. The headline number points at nothing in particular, which is why it is quoted so often and acted on so rarely.

Cart abandonment figures from the Baymard Institute’s meta analysis of 50 documented studies, updated September 2025: average 70.22 percent, individual studies ranging from roughly 55 to 84 percent. Core Web Vitals thresholds published by Google at web.dev. This article does not estimate what abandonment costs any specific store.