Running an online store means you need to persuade buyers in a short amount of time to take action. A product description is more than just “describing” a product. It needs to share benefits, present a solution, and tell a good story about the product to provoke the customer to buy.
In a short (most of the time) product description, the goal is to tell the buyer why the item will make their life better:
- What problem does the item solve?
- What does a buyer gain from it?
- How does it stand apart from similar products on the market?
One e-commerce study found that 20% of purchase failures are potentially a result of missing or unclear product information. The main goal of a product description is to explain what it does and why someone should buy it. If you are selling a basic product, you don’t need to add in extra mumble jumble. For more unique products, it helps to add in more information to better explain the features.
Check out Buffer’s list of words that convert: https://buffer.com/library/words-and-phrases-that-convert-ultimate-list
SEO benefits
Writing optimized product descriptions will organically boost your website’s SEO, but don’t just throw in a bunch of keywords to check the boxes. Use keywords in a fluid way to be useful in your descriptions. Don’t feature to optimize all product and collections pages making it easier to google to rank the page.
Great Photos
Great photos can help sell a product. Even if you have a great description and a bad photo of the product, it may lead buyers away.
Know your Audience
Sounding too vague and like you’re trying to get everyone to buy can turn away buyers because they will not feel like the message is personalized for them. Pretend you are speaking to your target buyer so the description sounds more like a conversation.
Scanability
Let’s face it people are not always going to read something, make the description easy to skim by highlighting the key features and making bullet points that are quick to read.
- Entice your web visitor with headlines
- Use easy-to-scan bullet points
- Include plenty of white space
- Increase your font size to promote readability
Tell a Story
Product descriptions should tell a story about a product’s benefits or why it is useful to solve a problem. If your target audience takes a liking to comedy, don’t be afraid to pull out the jokes.
Testimonials & Reviews
Ask happy customers to submit reviews and leave comments after they purchase. An email autoresponder is an easy way to get feedback from buyers. The product page is also a good place to include testimonials of photos, videos, or great quotes from a past review.
Social Proof
Include a brand hashtag and entice buyers to post on social media with a product. Feed these images onto the product page so potential buyers can see other people bought the product and love it just as much!
Writing product descriptions should be fun. There are also many copywriters out there that can help turn your descriptions up a notch. Need assistance with SEO, getting your products seen on Amazon, or product pages ranked on Google? Eminent Digital can help!
