Customers who shop in person can experience products through all their senses. They might pick up a merino wool sweater from an inviting display, feel its weight and texture and see its color in flattering lighting, while breathing in the store’s signature scent. This multisensory experience helps them envision how the sweater fits into their life, nudging them toward a purchase.
While the sweater is the same online or in-store, the customer’s product experience differs dramatically. Without the ability to touch and interact with products directly, ecommerce customers need new ways to connect with your brand.
Here’s how a well-designed product experience anticipates and meets customer needs to help them fall in love with your ecommerce offerings.
What is product experience?
Product experience (PX) is how customers feel, understand, and interact with a product throughout the entire user journey—from first sight to unboxing and beyond. A better product experience improves how customers discover, unpack, use, maintain, and even replace your product.
In the software industry, PX refers to user onboarding, navigation, and engagement with digital interfaces, but the concept also applies to physical products. A holistic approach to product experience helps you design better products and shopping experiences by focusing on how well a product meets customer needs and expectations, and how intuitive and enjoyable it is to use.
Product experience vs. user experience
Product experience encompasses how customers interact with your products, from browsing your ecommerce website to unboxing a package at home. Product experience design takes a comprehensive approach, addressing every step of the customer journey. This might include high-resolution product photography and 360-degree views, engaging product descriptions, memorable unboxing moments, and responsive customer success teams with 24/7 support.
While product experience covers an item’s entire lifecycle, user experience (UX) design is more specifically concerned with digital touchpoints. It focuses on customers’ digital interactions, like intuitive web navigation, smooth checkout flows, and accessibility. UX designers work with software developers to translate customer needs into functional solutions that work smoothly across devices.
How to improve the ecommerce product experience
- Optimize your site for natural shopping behavior
- Replicate in-store handling
- Create virtual try-on experiences
- Add video demos
- Create intentional and informative packaging
Product presentation and experience are crucial for ecommerce business success. Since online customers can neither pick up nor try on items, they depend on you to clearly convey what they’re buying and how to use it. Here’s how to improve your product experience:
1. Optimize your site for natural shopping behavior
Your online user experience shapes product adoption—how customers find, evaluate, and use your products. A thoughtful website structure ensures each customer interaction, on any device, feels smooth and intuitive. Here are some strategies:
- Deploy heat map tools, like Hotjar, to track user behavior patterns and understand how existing customers interact with your pages.
- Design product grids to match natural eye movement patterns. For instance, since many desktop users scan in an F-pattern, place key information in the upper left corner of the page.
- Create clear visual hierarchies using consistent sizing, spacing, and typography to direct shoppers to high-priority products.
- Build mobile-first navigation paths to accommodate thumb-friendly zones.
- Collect user feedback and use it to conduct experiments and A/B testing.
2. Replicate in-store handling
High-definition product photography is now a standard in ecommerce. Elevate the experience with 360-degree product viewers to replicate the in-store sensation of picking up and examining a product. A 360-degree visualization tool, like Shopify’s 3D scanner tool, can help customers shop with more confidence and fewer returns.
Handbag company Rebecca Minkoff, for example, uses Shopify AR tools to give ecommerce shoppers an interactive experience. Its 3D media allows customers to see products from every angle and even view them in augmented reality (AR). Since activating these new features, customers are 27% more likely to place an order after viewing the product in 3D and 65% more likely to place an order after interacting with a product in AR.
3. Create virtual try-on experiences
AR virtual try-on tools let customers explore a product’s style, fit, and aesthetic compatibility with new features like object and hand tracking. They provide a detailed preview of items in their real-world context.
Reactive Reality offers PICTOFiT, a virtual try-on app for fashion and apparel stores. The tool enables virtual dressing rooms and uses AI to dress customer avatars in outfits from your store.
4. Add video demos
Video demos transform online shopping from a guessing game to an informed decision. They let customers explore nuanced details like texture, scale, and color variations, and demonstrate instances that static images can’t capture—like how fabric drapes, makeup blends, or a musical instrument sounds.
Selena Gomez’s makeup brand, Rare Beauty, uses video to demonstrate blush against different skin tones, lipstick colors on diverse faces, and makeup techniques. Each clip tells a story about how the makeup moves and sits on the skin, and what it truly looks and feels like.
alt="Screenshot from Rare Beauty’s website shows Selena Gomez testing blush.">
5. Create intentional and informative packaging
Intentional product packaging turns a mundane delivery into a delightful experience. Cheap plastic encasing or a flimsy unbranded box can signal low effort and diminish the product’s perceived value. Go beyond basic packaging to create moments of genuine delight with thoughtful inserts, premium tissue paper, and other branded elements.
Unboxing is also an opportunity to educate. As online shopping lacks the personalized guidance of an in-store sales associate, use your packaging to inform customers about your brand and product.
For example, a vintage film camera might include a branded insert explaining how to load film and capture the perfect shot. A delicate gold necklace could come with a care guide on how to avoid tarnish. These extra touches can boost customer satisfaction, reinforce your brand storytelling and values, and create a positive product experience.
Product experience FAQ
What is an example of a product experience?
How a customer interacts with your brand’s ceramic vase is an example of the product experience. Interactions could include reading about its materials and dimensions online, viewing its glazed finish in detailed photos, unpacking it at home, feeling its weight and texture, filling it with water and arranging flowers, and even getting support from your customer success team. Promote product-led growth by tailoring the experience to their full customer journey.
What is the difference between customer experience and product experience?
While product experience focuses on interactions with the item itself, customer experience (CX) encompasses the complete customer lifecycle. CX touchpoints include payment processing, loyalty programs, email marketing, or customer service interactions. They guide users toward completing critical tasks like updating billing info or passwords.
How can you measure the success of product experience?
Product teams measure success through indicators like product page bounce rates, customer feedback scores, time spent viewing product details, number of returns citing product misalignment, and number of repeat purchases. A holistic product experience view could also track conversions, cart abandonment, and refund rates.
