Schema & Product Snippets for eCommerce Websites

Driving revenue through organic search requires three things; A product worth buying, an SEO strategy that generates rankings, and search results worth clicking

For a long time there were just two levers we could pull to get potential customers from the search results, directly onto our product page:

1. Title Tags
2. Meta Descriptions

But if you want to compete in the search results now, you are already behind if you don’t have product snippets. The three most important snippets are:

1. Reviews
2. Price
3. Availability

Straight away, your search result goes from this:

To this:

Increasing Click-Through Rate with Product Snippets

Adding additional, useful information to the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) allows you to advance the user purchase journey before a potential customer even reaches your product page.

Reviews: Social Proof & Trust

Price: Transparency & Competitiveness

Availability: Immediate Gratification

A text only product result can hardly compete.

Here are some case studies that illustrate the impact product snippets can have in a relatively short amount of time:

Avid Technology

Avid Technology added Product Schema and within 3 months most products had rich results, leading to:

• 21% increase in clicks
• 19% increase in impressions

Across the year, Avid Technology saw:

• 243% growth in clicks
• 290% growth in impressions

With Product Snippets: 6.2% CTR

Without Product Snippets: 1.82% CTR

Home Hardware

Home Hardware Added Product Schema and within the first year their quarter-on-quarter results were significant:

• 290% more product page impressions
• 190% more product page clicks

There are countless more examples of product snippets having a singular impact on revenue driving product page clicks.

Implementing Product Snippets with Schema Markup

Product snippets are generated through schema markup, which is a code standard that search engines use to better understand your content.

Your schema markup is inserted into your HTML, JSON-LD (JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data) is the most recommended format for this markup.

There are two ways you can implement schema markup on your website:

Manual Implementation (Advanced)

Product Review App (Recommended)

Manual Implementation

With most platforms you will be able to create a template within the code, here is an example using Shopify variables to fill in the correct information for each product:

But, without a method for generating reviews, you are only going to get the price and availability snippet.

You can supplement this with a product review app to ensure you are getting all three, but most product review apps will include a product snippet option that generates all three snippets out of the box.

Product Review Apps

There are lots of options when it comes to product review, here are some of the top options, covering 4 of the largest eCommerce platforms:

Neto (Maropost) – Reviews.io

Offers SEO-friendly review features, including rich snippets and product schema. Integrates with Neto and offers photo reviews, in-email review forms, and more.

Shopify – Yotpo

Provides customer reviews, Q&A, and visual marketing. Includes rich snippets and the ability to collect reviews via email, and has excellent customer support.

Magento – Mageworx SEO Suite Ultimate

An SEO toolkit that covers product reviews, with product snippet schema, as well as a host of other SEO features.

WooCommerce – WP Review Pro

Supports rich snippets, and includes multiple rating systems. Extremely customisable.

The most challenging part of implementing useful product snippets is generating product reviews, utilising features like post-purchase review request emails, and small incentives like discounts and freebies can help you speed up the process.

Product Snippet Troubleshooting & Reporting

Google Search Console now provides a report to track your product snippets, you can see any errors, monitor fluctuations and verify them by selecting product snippets under the shopping menu in the left sidebar:

Conclusion

Product snippets have become a fundamental part of any eCommerce strategy – More users are able to investigate, compare and make purchasing decisions within the SERP, if you aren’t providing the same information as your competitors you risk being ignored completely.

Using a product reviews app with the option of product snippets can be quite straightforward, with more apps popping up every month. We recommend using one of the better known apps, and prioritising customer support.

Review generation will be the most time-consuming part, but the CTR benefits are clear, and it is a lever of every SEO and eCommerce store should be pulling.