If you’re running an ecommerce store, then product descriptions are going to be a huge part of your business. But they’re also a tricky part of your business. Let’s face it, they’re difficult to write, and depending on your niche, sometimes there’s just nothing to say about the product. Sometimes, a great picture’s all you need – but how do you know?
Well, truth is, you should always have a product description: people are looking for information, and it’s all about how you package that information. Research shows that they do matter, however, and that without a great description, some 20% of sales never happen.
Now, that doesn’t mean you have to write huge and sprawling descriptions. But it does mean that you need to explain what your product is – and why people want it. You do this through 3 key areas:
• EXPLAIN what the product is, and what it does
• TELL people what the benefits (or value) of the product is
• ADD any relevant information
Essentially, just tell people everything that they need to know. For simple products, that won’t be a lot – for more complex products, you might need to expand your description. Now, you might be wondering if there’s anything else you can do to imrove beyond this simple tip.
Of course!
Ideally, you already know from your research who your buyer is. If not, know your buyer persona. That’s who they are, what they like, and what they are looking for in your product. If you’re selling lipstick, then it’s likely a woman in her 20s – 30s, rather than a guy in his 50s.
Think of things like where they live, their age, their gender, and their primary interests. You might also need to know their education level, the average income of your customers, and even the language they speak. All of this information goes together to give you a clear avatar of the person reading your description, which gives you a better idea of what you need to write to attract them.
Of course, you’ll want to focus on the benefits and features that buyers are looking for. Your products solve a solution, whether that’s makeup to look better, or a new bike tire pump which does the job quicker. Generally speaking, you’ll want to introduce not just the feature that makes the product awesome, but also explain the benefit of this awesomeness.
This might seem like overkill with some products, especially the ones where the use cases are glaringly obvious, but consider it a part of the sales pitch, pre-answering questions and even doubts with a smooth pitch that edges your prospective buyer closer to clicking the order now button.
In between all of this, you’ll want to reflect your brand’s tone of voice. If you’re brand is a professional one, you will want to reflect this. If you’re more down to earth and relaxed, your product descriptions should reflect this, and so on. Consistency matters here, so you may also want to come up with a word list to keep a tone throughout all your descriptions – unique, quality, smart, or cool, rad, and awesome as a couple of examples.
AT the same time as you make these lists, it’s worth compiling an additional list of power wordsthat influence and persuade people. I’m talking about words like now, revolutionary, amazing, hurry, quick, magic, miracle and many others – typical ‘ad’ words… for a reason. They work, and people do genuinely respond to them! In other words, these words give your description that little extra ‘pop’ that people respond to.
Above all else, don’t forget to use bullet points. Amazon is the king of product descriptions, and they place a huge emphasis on these babies. Why? Because they’re easy to scan, and pretty much shrink a long description into the key features. People don’t want to read a lot, just get the gist of it – and a good bullet point list does just that.
Don’t forget that you still want people to find your products, and to optimize your copy using SEO. Yes, this isn’t fun, but it’s one of the necessary evils of modern day life. Keywords that people will use to find your product are the most important here, and using them in your title and headlines can have a major impact on your placement in search engines.
Not just on the page, either – you should also add them to page titles, meta descriptions, and ALT tags. This behind the scenes work gives you that extra push in the search engines, lifting you up even further.
It’s not just about words, though – are you going to use a lot of images and even video in your product? Video marketing is a huge sales tool, but if you’re not ready to make that jump just yet, having multiple images is useful. After all, a picture speaks 1,000 words, and many people may just want to see what the product actually looks like, especially if it’s a fairly common item where there’s a lot of choice and not much variation except for the actual looks.
In fact, research shows that 63% of consumers think a good image is incredibly important – far more so than the actual description. In other words, show don’t tell. This doesn’t just stop with photos of the actual product in all its barenaked glory, either. You can also highlight sales, or key information using images.
The visual eye is much more attracted to this kind of information, so it’s always worth considering adding really important product information to your images as well as in the product description, as some people simply won’t read your carefully-crafted description, and instead go for whatever highlights are shown in the picture.
All in all, writing a product description isn’t necessarily a difficult task, but it can be a taxing one. In the main, the shorter it is, the better. We live in an age of information, and for many people, there’s simply too much information out there and not enough time to digest it.
But if you follow the various rules here, you will find that you can write short, powerful product descriptions that get straight to the point and tell your readers what they need to know, while making it very SEO friendly at the same time.
This is a formula that has been tried and tested by some of the world’s biggest ecommerce giants – Amazon, Shopify, and even eBay all push their users into using this style, and as time has gone by, it’s become the expected standard.
By knowing who your buyer is, who your brand is, and delivering a consistent message that quickly reveals to people the benefit of owning any single product with plenty of attractive images, you win 90% of the battle when it comes to selling to people.
If all else fails – or you simply don’t have time to dedicate to this, then I recommend seeking out an experienced writher to help you nail it without having to spend hours poring over the perfect description yourself.