Reduce friction on your product pages by giving users what they actually need

A few things almost always show up when we're testing PDPs with users: shoppers land on the page and get met with a wall of internal jargon, hidden specs, and premature upsell pitches.

How much this matters naturally depends on the complexity of the product, but the facts should always be easy to find. Otherwise, frustrated users skip "Add to Cart" and head to Google or ChatGPT to translate what your product actually does.

If this sounds familiar, it might be worth taking a closer look at your PDP. Is it designed around what your users actually need to know, or does it lean more toward what your company wants to sell?

Here are four tips on how to make your product pages more user-friendly.

1. Structure pages by customer priorities, not internal departments

Many e-commerce sites suffer from "inside-out" layout design, pushing shipping options, warranty upsells, or promotional banners to the very top of the page.

However, user data reveals a clear psychological hierarchy: if a customer doesn't yet know if the product itself is right, they are completely unready to process delivery methods, insurance, or cross-sell offers.

Let the product play the leading role on its own page

Core product information is the primary driver for any purchase decision. Users must be confident that the product fits their exact needs before anything else craves their attention, like logistics, financing, or bundles. On many product pages out there, crucial product specifications sit so far down that most users never see them.

Essential delivery details should of course be present, but they must never crowd out the main product's features or dimensions. Validate the match first, then introduce shipping rates, warranties, or upsell bundles.

2. Stop forcing customers to use AI as a "technical translator"

Are your product descriptions written for regular consumers, or for the technical teams who built the product? When a page relies heavily on raw metrics, internal brand lingo, or vague feature names, it actively alienates buyers.

Reduce cognitive friction

If users can't instantly interpret a number, icon, or label, they get frustrated. Instead of moving forward with the purchase, they leave your site to find the answer on Google or ChatGPT. And once they're gone, there's a good chance they buy from whoever explained it better.

So don't make people do that work. Translate specs into plain, real-world terms:

Put numbers in context

• Instead of "Capacity: 8 kg" (washing machine), write "8 kg – fits standard families of 3-4 people".
• Instead of "65L" (backpack), write "65L, enough for a week-long backpacking trip".

Give bare scores a scale

• Instead of "Dust pickup: 98" (vacuum cleaner), write "98% dust pickup efficiency".
• Instead of "Firmness: 7" (mattress), write "7/10 – medium-firm, ideal for back sleepers".

By clarifying the technical specs and putting numbers in context, your page starts answering the question people actually came with: will this work for me?

3. Use images as a "Virtual Manual"

In a physical store, a customer can open a lid, check the size and feel the material with their own hands. Online, your image gallery has to do all of that. People aren't just looking for nice studio shots, they're checking scale, fit, and compatibility. They want to see the product in a realistic context, what's inside, and how it connects to things they already own.

Tell AND show

For high-consideration items, showing dimensions visually works well. A measurement drawn onto a product photo is far easier to grasp than the same number written out as text.

Place the products in the real world

Beyond measurements, showing the product in real-world context helps buyers understand things numbers alone can't — clothes on a model, a TV mounted in a living room, lipstick on a pair of lips, or how a color actually looks in natural light or against skin tone.

4. Rethink the upsell strategy (chill a bit!)

Cross-selling and bundling are fantastic for increasing Average Order Value (AOV), but timing is everything. Pushing unrelated recommendations or secondary product bundles directly on the PDP can easily trigger a defensive shopping mode.

If a user is hyper-focused on analyzing a pair of running shoes, aggressively pushing a yoga mat or a gym bag underneath the main image is perceived as pure digital clutter. Customers aren't anti-upsell, but they are highly sensitive to irrelevance.

The rule of thumb

Keep the PDP clean and fully focused on the product in question.

Ask yourself:

• Is this something the user genuinely needs? Like a lightbulb for a bedside lamp? Then make it clear and easy to add.

• Does it naturally complement the product? Like suggesting a matching soundbar for a TV or ski pants for a ski jacket? Help the user to "shop the look" without pushing too hard.

• Does the price relationship even make sense? If someone's buying an expensive TV, are they really going to add a fridge and double the amount spent? Think of it like the checkout counter in physical stores: cheap, useful add-ons are placed right where people are already buying. The same logic works online.

Save the additional product recommendations and cross-selling bundles for the right moment. When you do consider pushing one earlier, weigh the trade-off: how much it disrupts the experience versus how much extra sales it's likely to bring in.

But not every upsell has to feel like an upsell. Sometimes the best way to help someone spend more is to help them decide, not to sell them something extra.

Let shoppers compare without leaving the page

Comparison is one of the biggest reasons people leave a PDP — is this washing machine actually better than the one in the next tab? A comparison table on your own site can answer that before they start looking elsewhere.

It works two ways. For the shopper, seeing "8 kg – fits 3-4 people" next to "11 kg – fits 5-6 people" lets them place themselves in the decision instead of converting specs in their head. For you, it's upselling without the pushy bundle — if the bigger model clearly handles more for a modest price jump, people upgrade on their own.

The Bottom Line

At the core, these four tips all come down to the same thing: build your PDP around how people actually think, not how your company is organized internally. Show what matters first, explain it in plain language, let images carry the weight numbers can't, and save the extras for when they're actually relevant.

But these aren't hard rules: what works depends on your product, audience, and site. Test these principles on your own PDPs, run usability tests to see how users actually think, and back it up with quantitative data.

Need a hand optimizing or analyzing your product pages? Reach out to us, we'd love to help!