S14 E12: The PDP Playbook Every DTC Brand Should Be Using

0:00Welcome back to Limited Supply, the podcast where we get deep into the tactical and strategic side of e-commerce, digital marketing, and building consumer brands. I'm your host, Nik Sharma. I've spent the last nine years building, scaling, and investing in brands. And through this show and my weekly newsletter at Nik.co slash email, I'm here to share everything I've learned. The wins, the losses, the experiments, the tactics, and the insights, all so you can unlock your next$100 ,000 in revenue. Today's episode is a good one, but before we dive in, let me tell you about our chosen sponsor for this week's episode.

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1:30Nik:Welcome back to another episode of Limited Supply. My name is Nick Sharma. I'm in a cozy comfort hoodie today because it's freezing in New York. We just got our first real day of snow a couple days ago. And while I wasn't here, I got back to New York last night and it's freezing. So I'm all cozied up. I hope you're cozied up wherever you are listening to this podcast and you're excited to get into today's episode. So for today's episode, I actually want to basically do a readback of the newsletter I sent this past weekend, which was all about product pages. And we spend a lot of time on this podcast talking through ads, talking through creative, talking through just general strategy.

2:13Nik:We do some website stuff, some landing pages. But the thing we haven't talked about too in-depth is the specific PDP where you're driving majority of your traffic. And the reason that I wanted to focus on PDPs is I'm currently in the process of probably building three to four different brand PDPs just in my own time. So I've been doing a lot of research on finding... When I say research, basically what I mean is I just go browse a bunch of stuff. I click a ton of ads and I just find things that I think get me convinced or hook me in. I'm a consumer that obviously has been in the direct consumer space for a while.

2:51Nik:So I know all the tricks and the hacks and the scammy-ish stuff, like those timers or those FOMO modules that pop up and say that somebody just bought the thing. I think those are all garbage. And so what I look for is if me, a consumer, were to buy something, what do I need to know or what do I want to see or what do I see that then catches my eyes and eventually convinces me to buy the product. So what I've been doing is, well, for the last few years, I've been building websites. Everybody's website from Parachute Home to David Protein to Iomate to you name it. We've done a bunch of websites at the Sharma Brands Agency, which is now under Lunar with the same design team.

3:37Nik:But then me personally, I also love to go because once we create something, then that becomes the new standard. If we find a new way to develop a homepage or a PDP or some new modules that we want to add, that becomes the new standard. But I always like to see how we can continue to push that standard because I do think that you can always make your conversion rate, your site experience, your consumer onboarding experience 1 % better. And so why not try to go out and figure out what other brands are doing that works really well. So while today, I'll focus a little bit on talking through some of the main things that I focus on so you can see more strategically.

4:16Nik:And if we have time, we'll get into some of those sections individually and talk through them. There's a bunch of site examples I can try to share. But I don't know if we'll get that far in because today is just a podcast. So what I'll do is I'll try to get as far as I can. And then maybe what we'll do is next week's episode, we can go very deep. I'll pull up websites in real time. And you can pull them up on your phone and your desktop in front of you. And we'll just talk through the modules and the elements that I really find interesting. So without further ado, I want to break down today's podcast into a few different pieces.

4:56Nik:So to start it off, I want to just talk general strategy of why the PDP is super important. After that, I want to go into the traffic source and talking about that. Then I want to talk about the above the fold piece of your PDP. I want to talk about the shop section or the shop module. Then I want to go into some of the other necessary modules you should have on your PDP. And then we'll finish with two bonus elements that you can throw onto your PDP or rather do with your PDP that will really increase conversion rate for those of you who are running paid traffic, which is probably most of you if you're listening to this.

5:35So let's start.

5:36Nik:So the PDP, first of all, is something that is generally an afterthought. Most people build their websites based on Shopify themes, which there's nothing wrong with using a pre-built Shopify theme to do that. The only downside is generally most people are not developers or they're not tech-adjacent enough to where they're comfortable to go in and add or resize or change or rearrange elements. And so what most people end up defaulting to is they choose a preset theme from Shopify. Maybe you go and buy a third-party Shopify theme as well, which again, not a bad idea, but there are risks associated with that.

6:18Nik:If things are updated or not updated, like if a website theme developer makes a theme, you use it, all of a sudden Shopify starts to update some of their things, but this theme developer is no longer making updates on their end, you've now got a tricky situation on your hands. My personal recommendation is to, well, the sites that I like to build are generally a lot more custom. But my approach is always the same, which is you build on Dawn, which is the standard, most up-to-date, developer-friendly Shopify theme on Shopify 2.0. and then you work with a designer or a developer, whether that's an agency like mine where we build really beautiful websites or if you find a contractor overseas because it's a little bit cheaper for you to get started.

7:03Nik:But in either case, whether you're doing it with me or you're doing it with somebody in Ukraine maybe or wherever, Brazil, you still want to follow that same approach because it gives you the best opportunity to have the best site. And it doesn't matter whether you develop your site here or overseas. As long as the site works and fulfills what it needs to do, the customer is going to be happy and you're going to get your sale. So back to this. So most websites are built off themes. And then if there's really any sort of customization, most people do that on the homepage of the brand. Why? Because that's sort of like your digital storefront, which is true.

7:42Nik:But the second most important piece behind that is the PDP. And most people don't touch that. A lot of people tend to have just the standard PDP image on a plain white background. It's not really optimized for space. And as a result, brands will see a 1 % to 2 % conversion rate and wonder why it's not higher. Now, the PDP, when it's done right, in my opinion, should be like a work of art. It should be like a song that somebody listens to or like a roller coaster, not a roller coaster, because that might be scary, but it should be a nice, beautiful, scenic drive somebody goes on. It should be something that people are excited to go into and consume and read from top to at least maybe half the page, understand what the product is, why it exists, how it works, how it compares to other options on the market, how much it costs, what's the cost per consumption.

8:32Nik:So maybe cost per day or cost per month, cost per week, cost per benefit. And it should give enough information for somebody to make a very informed decision of whether this product that they're looking at is right for them. That's how a good PDP works. It's not about tricking somebody into buying something. And so that's the way that I like to think. If your product is good, which if it's not good, you shouldn't be selling that shit at all. If your product is good, your PDP will do a good job pushing that. It's just up to you to understand how you're doing that from a messaging standpoint, from a positioning standpoint, from a graphics or a video or an animation or a photography standpoint.

9:11Nik:That part is on you. But the PDP real estate, as long as your product is good, should be able to do all that. So let's talk about the traffic source. So when you're building these PDPs, or if you're listening to this and your PDP is already live, and now you're going to take this episode's thoughts and go try to redo or redesign or re-approach your PDP, you have to really first think about the traffic. Now on a landing page, which is what we normally talk about, landing pages have usually a specified source of traffic. And for the majority of people listening to this, it's probably paid ads, right?

9:46Nik:The landing page is where you are driving traffic to, maybe from Facebook or Instagram ads. If you're getting a little crazy, maybe it's Google, maybe it's Reddit, maybe it's TikTok, maybe it's Snap. But the reason you want to have landing pages is because you have pages and modules and UX that is designed for the source of that traffic. So if somebody's coming from TikTok or Snap, app, they're coming from a really fast-paced mobile environment where everything is done with their thumb, right? The bottom right of the phone, you've got that corner radius that you're pulling out from. You need to make sure the UX for your page is perfect for that, right?

10:21Nik:If you're driving from Taboola and getting a lot of desktop traffic, you can build a different looking page. So it's really important to understand the traffic source. But I say that, all that to say, with PDPs, you need to make sure you're very universal. PDPs will get you traffic from your Facebook ads, whether they're direct-to-site ads or they're DPA ads. You'll get traffic from organic Instagram, organic social. You'll get traffic from influencers. Any sort of PR is generally linking directly to PDPs. And it really needs to be able to speak universally to all types of this traffic. People who come to your PDP, they may know everything about your product and they're ready to buy, right?

11:04Nik:They're just looking for a place to hit buy now and go and check out. Or they might have never heard of your product and they click some sort of a DPA ad they got, or they saw an influencer link to it on Instagram stories, or they were reading, you know, Refinery29 and Refinery mentioned your product and hyperlinked it. But you have to assume that whether somebody comes with a bunch of information or with no information, your PDP has to speak to them. And because of that, I like to make sure that this really is a very, very optimized, smooth, and fun experience for the consumer. It should be fun.

11:42Nik:And when I say fun, I don't mean that you need a bunch of crazy fun assets, but it should feel fun and easy to read. Meaning, you should have things like bullet points and iconography and animations and beautiful photography and videos that show the product in use, right? These are all things that make it fun. If you just have a very blocky, chunky text, black and white, no real design or style elements, you're going to lose out here. If you check out Taste Salud's website, it's probably a phenomenal example, even David Protein. Very fun websites to go through and consume. You feel like not only are you learning about these products, but you're also then educating yourself on how it's going to work for you, how these products compare to others.

12:26Nik:And again, it's all done in a really fun way. One of my favorite examples is that Taste Salud comparison chart that's on the homepage and on the PDPs as well. It's a fun comparison chart. You should go check it out and let me know what you think. Okay, so let's get into the above the fold. So the above the fold elements. Now, when I say elements, I'm talking about the design, the UI, the UX, the copywriting, the messaging. Copy and messaging are slightly different. messaging is more like, what's your angle or what's your goal here with the copy? And the copy is the actual words themselves. The photography, the animations, the iconography, the videos, the pop-up, all these elements are really the most important piece of your site.

13:07Nik:And it's where 100 % of your traffic is going to land and see. Why is that important, that 100 % number? Well, because if you use heatmap.com and try to understand your scroll depth of your users, you'll see that probably no more than 50 % will make it past the above the fold. In fact, if 50 % make it, that's pretty average. 25 % will maybe make it to your halfway point, maybe. It's usually lower. And then 10 % will make it to the end. If that, again, 10 % is a high number. That's assuming you've got a really nice website. So what does this mean? You have zero real estate to waste, and you have to be super efficient when it comes to spacing, messaging, driving home valuable information.

13:50Nik:That's why you'll notice I love website PDPs where the images, it's got information around it. It's got little product call outs. It's got a social proof badge. It's got a best sellers badge. These are all things that just make this real estate a lot more efficient. And when somebody sees it, it keeps adding more signals to their brain as to why this might be a good product for them to buy. Again, you never want to do this in a way that's going to trick them because that's scummy and that's what scummy marketers do. Scummy marketers like to trick people with timers or pressure them or tell them this deal's running out.

14:27Nik:But you want to just encourage them and educate them as to why. Now, all of your information that should be above the fold, well, I'll get into what few things should be above the fold. But you really need to use this above the fold to sell the why. For why somebody should buy the product. That way, if they leave, they still see it. There's a big chance that people might even leave your PDP and then go to Amazon to go buy it. But that above the fold connection, right? And I say connection because you really want to make that kind of like an emotional connection with the product and the benefit that somebody gets, whether it's confidence, happiness, excitement, being more comfortable in their own skin, whatever it is, right?

15:10Nik:Those are the things that you need to communicate. you want to communicate that you're going to get clearer skin in seven days, right? Not that it's just a brand new serum or a face product for men to use. So here are some of the must-haves you want to have above the fold. And again, it has to be done in a way with finesse, with effortlessness. And again, I keep going back to the word fun, but it has to be fun for somebody to consume. So at the top, you want some primary product visuals. Well, these are images or videos that show what the product is, how your life gets better, who it's for, maybe showing the product coming out of the box, what it looks like when it arrives, how long it takes to get set up, et cetera, et cetera.

15:50Nik:You want to have a one headline outcome at the top, not just the product. So again, going back to that example of clearer skin in seven days versus just talking about a face serum, you want to have benefit bullets. So what do I mean by this? Mind, body, green, creatine, PDP. Pull that up. Just Google that and pull it up. You'll see a great example of that. you'll see how they list out the benefits right underneath the product name and the price I believe and again these benefits are written back to what I was saying earlier being fun you want these benefits and really all your copy to be written in plain English fifth grade reading level no fluff and ideally quantified so you're showing numbers basically go back to BuzzFeed 101 numbers always work next one is a price and variant selector So what's the size, what's the flavor, what's the color?

16:40Nik:It's got to be dead simple. That should also include, are you buying a bottle? Are you buying packets? Are you buying a quarterly refill pack? But then also, is it one-time purchase? Is it subscription? Is it a quarterly subscription? Making sure that all of these different options of what somebody can buy are very clear. And ideally, you're doing this in a way where you're defaulting to the best option for that consumer. A lot of brands will actually just build out these bundles on the PDPs now, and that will be where it starts. And then it's up to them to change or alter the bundle or maybe cut some things out.

17:21Nik:But you want to make sure it's dead simple for somebody to look at and then decide exactly what they're going to get. The next one is star rating and review count. So very obvious at the top. easy way to put social proof and just kind of say how many reviews you've got. Seeing those reviews makes it easy for other new consumers to come and realize that they're not the first person to buy this. They're not maybe even the hundredth or thousandth person to buy this, but that this is a brand and a product that's been around for a minute and they can trust that when they put their credit card in, it's going to go through and the order is going to get shipped to them and that when the product arrives, it's going to be exactly what they promised.

17:58Nik:That's what just the star rating and the review count will do mentally. for somebody going to the page. When somebody clicks that, it should drop them down to wherever you've got reviews on the actual website. Your primary CTA of add to cart or add to bag or whatever it is should be there. And then if somebody scrolls, that should be sticky. Any sort of social proof badges, quotes, or forms of validation. So again, I talked about putting sort of a social proof badge on the image, like a bestseller or the Allure Best Beauty Award badge, whatever it is. You can have quotes in there. A lot of brands also will put these mini little UGC videos near that kind of shop module or that add to cart button that you can quickly go in and just see some video on the product that usually shows the unboxing, how it works, how it mixes in, how often you take it or use it or whatever it is.

18:51Nik:And then the last thing you want to have is some sort of a guarantee. So for me, I like to have something like ships within 24 hours, free returns, 90-day guarantee. Magic Spoon, they do a happiness guarantee, which then is defined as, I think, a 30-day return, no questions asked, something like that. But everything I just mentioned is what you want to have there above the fold. And honestly, you could probably add more to that depending on your specific brand. I was obviously thinking about one brand in my head as I was doing this, but whether you sell skincare, you sell furniture, you sell pet food, you sell water, you sell headphones, whatever you sell, there's different things that you know within your own world of what you're selling that should go there.

19:37Nik:Those are things that would otherwise stop somebody from making a purchase if they didn't know. Or just things that you know are common questions. Anytime you also know that there is a very frequently asked question, whether it's customer service, whether it's people DMing on Instagram, whether it's just as you're out and about talking about the brand and you hear these questions come back, make sure that you incorporate all of that into how you roll out your messaging, your copy, your imagery, your videos. If you get a big question, if a common question is, well, how big is the actual product, right?

20:11Nik:Then that should be very clearly shown. There should be some sort of a size comparison. If you run a supplement brand or a skincare brand, you know that one of your most asked questions is about ingredients and what are the ingredients and what's the dosage of those ingredients. So you might want to put a nutritional panel CTA right at the very top underneath your image, right? These are just basically thinking about how do you get ahead of what are the questions that are going to be asked so that you can reduce that last step for somebody to make a purchase and they'll go ahead and make that purchase.

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21:27Nik:Okay, I want to talk about the shop section now. This is probably the most critical part in terms of how things are laid out. So we talked a little bit about the pricing and the variant selection, but the shop module is really what needs to be super clean. So this part is where you go from a PDP being one SKU for one price into this guided buying decision. And a lot of brands have been doing this really well. Well, when I say brands, there's a set of brands that I personally am always checking on because I know that they're always doing the most to push and test and see how far you can really push the ball here in order to make a really good product or site experience.

22:15Nik:So I'll give you an example. Bundling. Instead of just offering one product on your PDP, make packs for one, three, and five. Or maybe it's one, two, and three. But you're able to create these bundles that are actually helpful to the consumer because they're going to get savings on those different bundles. They might get a free gift with purchase if they purchase the different bundles. It might be too that they're buying for them and their partner, so they need a couples pack. It might be that they're about to go on a trip and so they need more of a travel pack or a travel bundle. So you get travel size sticks of electrolytes versus a tub of electrolytes.

22:54Nik:This is called merchandising. And my favorite example of merchandising is if you've seen The Office and they do that garage sale. When Dwight is organizing his beats from the table, the front of the table to the back of the table, that's merchandising. So this is all basically the same thing. And what you're doing here is you're basically showing somebody how with them buying a bundle that's more convenient to them, you want to demonstrate that you have better pricing or it's a better deal or that they get free shipping with a certain bundle, they have a better cost per use or a cost per unit price, that lends itself nicely to into subscriptions.

23:33Nik:So if you're able to do this with the one time, you should definitely be able to do this with subscriptions because subscriptions are generally, call it 10 % to 20 % lower in cost. And you might be able to do something like offer free gifts when you have subscriptions because you're either going to lock somebody in for maybe a longer period if you're doing a 60 or 90 day subscription. Or it's like, hey, on your third subscription month, we also give you X. And you can give that sort of thing up front. But the trick is to sort of create these smarter options for people within the shop section, still include all of the necessary information, right?

24:10Nik:The happiness guarantee, the variant selection that's made easy, the showing, like actually demonstrating the amount of product they get also is very important. but you want to have basically two to three options for bundles and ideally an option for subscription. If you're a supplement brand or maybe a beverage brand, you might find that, hey, it's better for us to send a quarterly subscription. It's much cheaper to send one box with three times the product than it is to send three boxes with one product each. And so depending on that, you might decide for your own brand how many subscription options you have.

24:53Nik:But the key is, again, you have to make it dead simple. This whole section, especially the shop, above the fold for sure, but that's more consumption. The shop section is where it needs to be completely dead simple and easy to understand. Again, I've talked about these two tests in the past. One is the grandma test. So can a grandma, somebody who's much slower on a phone, probably not running the latest iPhone 17. Maybe they've got an iPhone 12. They've got slower internet because they have a cheaper cell phone plan because they don't use all the things that you might use. Can that device and that person and their mindset and with how slow they might be, can they go through and make this purchase easily?

25:37Nik:And if the answer is no, then it's too complex. And then the second one is the drunk person test. So you got a buddy, a couple drinks in, give them your phone, see if they can go through and make that purchase. Those are two tests that you should honestly always run across your website experience regardless. All right, now I want to talk about a couple of necessary modules that I like to have here and just go a little bit into them. So after you've got the above the fold in the shop section, the rest of these modules and the rest of the page should really feel like your red carpet. So it's not just extra info or reiterating what you've already listed on the top.