How To Use Story To Brand Your Ecommerce Website

Most companies that sell products instead of services have multiple products.

If you have multiple products on the same page (like supplements or skincare products) suddenly, using a story-driven framework gets confusing. So what do you do?

First, separate your pages into types.

You need a homepage, category pages, and product pages. Each type of page requires a different approach.

Product Pages

For product pages, you can basically just apply your favorite marketing framework up top. It will help you clearly define and capture the message your audience needs to see to connect with whatever you sell.

If you follow any story-based framework, your product page needs a hero section, the title of your product, and a short description.

Product pages focus primarily on what you sell and how it makes your customer’s life better.

Category Pages

On your category pages, you’ve got options.

One is to simply list the products you offer that fall under that category.

The second option is to build a category page. It should be a lot like your product page if you follow a marketing framework. It will have a hero section that highlights your customer’s story, and the rest of the page will focus on how products within the category improve their lives.

Then, there are two places where you have the option of putting your products.

You can put your products right on the category page and features specific products if you don’t have too many.

But if there are a lot, you’ll want to reduce the options to avoid overwhelming your customer.

People don’t make decisions when they have a lot of options. Go check out Apple’s website for an example. Their homepage typically only has three to five products.

They offer more than that, but they’re featuring the ones that they want you to look at right now by reducing the options seen on the page. By doing this, they’re actually increasing conversions.

And you can do the same thing on your category page.

After you have your products there, add the common problems that make your customers seek these products below. Then go through the rest of your story-driven marketing framework to finish the page.

If you’d like, you could also put the products down at the bottom where the call to action would normally be. That’s generally the bottom section on the site. You can have more products, different products, or you can have your featured products section again.

Here’s an example.

This is an immune complex from a company called Bulletproof. These folks have incredible marketing. Looking at the page, we have the title first. Then we have a description of how it makes your life better. Then they have this description that tells you exactly what it is and what it does, price, and a clear call to action. If we scroll down, we find a few benefits.

This is what I call the results bar.

This section specifically talks about what the product does for you. We see things like “science-backed,” “immune support,” and “1000 milligrams of vitamin C.”

Then we get into a breakdown of the benefits that provide more value and information. They use language like “Your all in one immunity powerhouse” and “targeted defense when you need it” to appeal to the customer and create a connection.

This is an incredible example of a product page that works.

Now here’s an example of a great category page. This is The Honest Company. They make excellent products, and we’re going to look at the bath and body page.

First, they tell you the page that you’re on. Then we can see that they’ve added benefits all over the place.

Next we have clickable images with options and a video that walks through some of what the products do.

Notice that these folks don’t have a problem section, which is okay. Especially in e-commerce. It’s perfectly fine to talk about how your products help customers succeed instead of focusing on why they aren’t.

Homepage

You can use your homepage as a jumping-off point to get visitors into a category or product page.

Apple does a fantastic example of this. They only have featured products on their homepage. If they have an event, they will feature that here. But this is an example of a homepage purposefully designed to get you off the homepage. That is the only purpose here.

Again, reducing options is always a great way to go if you want to steer visitors toward specific products instead of others. It’s like the homepage acts as a buyer’s guide.

Show Customers How You Change Lives

People want to see how their lives are going to be different. With The Honest Company, you saw that they use their images and text to show and reinforce this.

With Apple, you’ve seen a homepage designed to get people to go to a product or category page.

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