What do you need to convince a prospective customer to place an order online? Three things: a website that looks trustworthy, high-resolution product photos, and a compelling product description.
Have you already designed the website and taken the product pictures? Now it’s time to write an effective eCommerce product description.
Here is a step-by-step guide that will help you to create a great product description that sells itself.
Do the preparation work
Before you jump to writing, you should do some prep work. You should analyse different aspects of your eCommerce business and choose a suitable writing strategy.
Define your target audience
First of all, you should define your target audience. Why is it so important? Only by knowing who your customers are you can choose the right approach to describing your product.
First and foremost, you should define demographics:
- Age
- Gender
- Family size
- Religion
- Ethnicity
- Education level
- Income level
After that, you should go the extra mile and learn more about your target audience’s attitudes, beliefs, and shopping behaviour. You should find out what websites your customers like to visit, how much they spend online, and what factors influence their buying decision.
Let’s consider an example of how the knowledge of your target audience can help you describe your product the right way. Imagine you sell soap. Basically, your product can be used by literally anyone. But if you want to boost your sales, you should target a more specific audience. For instance, if you decide to target Millennial females who support sustainable development, you will need to emphasise that your soap is made of natural ingredients and is packed in a plastic-free package. If you target parents of large families, you will write that your product is economical in use and suitable for all family members.
In other words, when you know what your customers care about, you can describe your product in a more appealing way and drive more sales.
Know your product
What makes your product special? How does your product differ from other products that are available online? Answer these questions before you start writing a product copy.
Today it’s not enough to convince shoppers that your product is “a good one”. If you want people to buy from you, you should make them believe that your eCommerce product is “the one they are looking for”. Your task is to analyse your product’s value from different perspectives and explain how it satisfies specific customer’s needs.
Analyse the competition
There are many eCommerce businesses out there that sell the same or similar products as you do. All of them use different strategies to write product descriptions. Some of these strategies work well; others fail.
It would help if you browsed your competitor’s websites to see what they do wrong and what they do right. You should define the most effective practices and use them to boost your content marketing efforts.
For instance, if you see that your biggest competitor leverages storytelling, you should consider doing the same. Since you and your competitor target the same audience, you can expect that this writing method will work for you too.
Keep in mind that you are not allowed to copy someone else’s writing style and steal product descriptions published on other websites. You can read and analyse your competitor’s product copies with only one purpose – to get an idea of what works well in your niche.
Jump into writing
Now let’s talk about what you should write in the product description and what formatting you should use.
Focus on the benefits
Product description writing is not about listing the technical parameters of the product. It’s about highlighting the most significant benefits of the product.
As we have mentioned before, customers do not really care about your product. The only thing they care about is whether your product can make them happy.
When shoppers read your product description, they have one question in mind, “What’s in it for me?” And the more specific answer you will provide to this question, the more orders website visitors will place.
Here are a few examples of how you can turn your product’s features into customers’ benefits:
This laptop is powered by XYZ technology. => Thanks to XYZ technology, you can open and use up to ten different tools and apps simultaneously without experiencing any technical issues.
This lotion is made of organic aloe and has a great smoothing effect. => This aloe lotion will make your skin smooth and glowing.
This dress was designed by a talented Italian designer. => This stylish, well-cut dress will flatter your body shape.
Add more adjectives
Online shoppers can’t touch and feel products before ordering them. For this reason, it’s important to describe products in a way people will be able to imagine how it feels like to hold these products, use them, or wear them.
One of the simplest ways to make your product copy more vivid is to add more adjectives that characterise your product.
Take a look at the following screenshot. This description of a cashmere robe is just a perfect example of how one can use descriptive adjectives. The words like “luxurious”, “incredibly soft”, “naturally warm”, and “biscuit-coloured” helps shoppers to imagine how it feels like to wear this robe. This product copy convinces shoppers that this item is worth buying.
Use keywords wisely
Naturally, when you create content for your eCommerce website, you should follow the best eCommerce SEO practices. You should define the keywords you will add to your product copy. I highly suggest using Google Keywords Planner, Ubersuggest, or similar tools to choose the most relevant high-traffic primary and secondary keywords.
Let’s say you’re writing a copy for a red dress. What keyword will you use? The keyword “red dress” is not the only option. You should analyse popular search queries and find more specific low-competition keywords.
Use bulleted lists
There’s nothing worse for a shopper than reading a product description that’s just a wall of text.
If you don’t want to scare away your prospective customers, you should make your copies easy-to-scan-through. You should use bulleted lists to improve text readability and make your product description look more engaging and visually appealing.
How to create a perfect bulleted list?
- Make sure that your list includes from three to ten bull points.
- List your product’s features and benefits from the most important to the least important.
- Each bullet point should be one or a maximum of two sentences long.
Keep it simple
To attract more customers, you should make your product description look simple. You should keep your sentences short, avoid passive voice, and use only simple words that everyone can understand.
Why is it so important? We live in the fast-paced era of mobile commerce, where no one wants to spend a few extra minutes on a website trying to figure out what that sophisticated word means.
Modern shoppers want a few simple sentences to grab the idea at a glance. If they like the idea, they will stay on a website and learn more about the product. If not, they leave a website and never come back.
Write every new copy from scratch
Do you sell many similar products? It would help if you wrote unique descriptions for each of them.
If you use one copy for multiple products, it will not work in your favour. Can you guess why? Basically, there are two reasons. The first reason is that Google doesn’t tolerate duplicated content. The second reason is that duplicated copies will confuse shoppers. It will be challenging for people to understand how your products differ from one another, so they will not be able to make a final purchasing decision.
Well, it will take you lots of hours to write every product description from scratch, but the results will be worth it. You will drive more traffic to your website and get more orders.
Proofread it
It goes without saying that you should proofread and edit every product description you create. You should check grammar, spelling and ensure that the text is 100% error-free.
Poor quality of the product copy will scare away website visitors and negatively affect your SEO rankings. So please, take proofreading seriously. Use AI-powered grammar checkers or any other tools that you find helpful but always make sure you write your website content as humanly as possible.
Rewrite it, if necessary
One of the most common WordPress mistakes is that website owners create a product description once and never bother to improve it.
We live in an ever-changing world, and we need to revisit our content marketing strategies from time to time.
The preferences of your customers are constantly changing. Strategies of your competitors are continuously improving. And you also should be ready to incorporate some changes.
Review and analyse the effectiveness of your product descriptions once in a few months to make sure that you keep up with the marketing trend. It will allow you to ensure that you will achieve your long-term goals.
Conclusion
A well-written eCommerce product description can do a miracle for your business. So don’t hesitate to put your time and efforts into crafting a compelling product copy. Make these 11 steps and take your eCommerce business to the next level.
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