How Ecommerce Brands Can Leverage the Second Person to Drive Conversions

An engaging website starts with you!

That’s right, using second-person pronouns like you, your, yours, yourself, and yourselves can be a great way to engage with visitors on your website.

Speaking directly to visitors can help establish a personable customer experience and encourage them to convert. With this in mind, it’s no surprise that many ecommerce brands leverage the second-person point of view in website copy to aid their conversion rates.

Keep reading to see how leading ecommerce brands use the second-person point of view across different site elements to keep visitors on their toes and of course, convert more.

If you’re a B2B marketer on the hunt for examples of this technique head over to this blog.

Let’s get into it.

Second-person Headline: S’well

Looking for a bold place to test out the second-person point of view in your website copy? Follow in the footsteps of water bottle retailer, S’well, with a bold homepage headline!

In the example below the company uses an upcoming holiday, in this case, St. Patrick’s Day to inspire a clever and direct headline. Not only does the “Lucky You” headline address visitors directly, but also suggests that they’re lucky to have access to free select green items with a $50 purchase.

Second-person Subheadline: Warby Parker

Another great place to incorporate the second-person point of view into your ecommerce website is in subheadlines. Glasses brand, Warby Parker uses the word “you” in its subheadline explaining a promotion. Followed by not one, but three calls to action (CTAs) this subheadline effectively engages visitors.

Second-person Call to Action: Our Place

The median ecommerce CTA click through rate (CTR) is 1.56%. Let’s face it, that number is quite low. So, why not add some more experimental CTA variations to the mix to see if you can exceed this industry benchmark? 

Take inspiration from the direct-to-consumer (DTC) cookware brand, Our Place. On the brand’s homepage, it includes a “Pick Your Pot” CTA. This bold CTA which features some light alliteration not only directly addresses visitors but also reiterates that the brand is running a promotion on pots.

Second-person User-generated Content Copy: Parade

Sustainable undergarment company, Parade, is no stranger when it comes to leveraging user-generated content (UGC) on its site. Something that sets Parade’s UGC apart is the brand's use of a second-person headline to introduce the content. The brand lets visitors know that the content they’re seeing is from real people like themselves—not models.

Second-person Product Description Examples

According to Rishi Rawat, Product Page Optimization Specialist at Frictionless Commerce, an effective product description appeals to what he calls “Healthy Skeptics.” This category of consumers is defined by essentially being undecided about buying a product—they’re skeptical but can be convinced. To appeal to this persona, many ecommerce brands leverage the second-person point of view on their product detail pages (PDPs).

Because this is such a popular practice for ecommerce brands, we’ve dedicated the rest of this blog to examples of this particular strategy.

Summer Fridays

By beginning the product description with a second-person question, Summer Fridays directly addresses visitors that are on the fence about buying the brand’s Jet Lag Mask. It’s clear that if a visitor’s answer to this question is “yes”– they should continue reading and ultimately purchase.

Great Jones

In the below example, Great Jones uses the second person in a product description to show prospective customers that this product will allow them to uplevel their specific banana bread game. Yum!

Everlane

Clothing company, Everlane, leverages the second person along with a whimsical product name to draw visitors’ attention to the product description.

Kyte Baby

Not only does Kyte Baby leverage the second person in its below product description but also leads with a benefit rather than a feature. That’s a smart move for Kyte Baby since most consumers typically find benefits more compelling than features!

Youth To The People

Youth To The People begins its product description for the 15% Vitamin C + Caffeine Energy Serum with an attention-grabbing one-liner that features the second-person point of view.

The Sill

The Sill’s product description for its Coffee Plant is working double duty! Not only does the product description use the second person to grab visitors' attention but also includes fun facts about coffee that are sure to engage and educate prospective buyers

Joe 2.0

Joe 2.0 Coffee has everything you need to own your day and the brand behind the product isn’t afraid to let prospective customers know! 

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We hope these five examples give you the inspiration you need to start experimenting with the second-person point of view in your ecommerce website copy.

If you’re already using Intellimize, sign into your account now to start testing out new variations of your headlines, subheadlines, CTA buttons, and many other site elements.

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