You sell products. You’ve got pictures and descriptions of those products on your website. But are you making the most of product descriptions? What makes a description of a product special? If you’re not sure you’re hitting the mark, here’s what you need to know.
Why fabulous product descriptions matter
If you’ve ever clicked on an Ebay listing simply because it describes an item as ‘beautiful’, even though you can clearly see it isn’t beautiful at all, you’ll know how influential product descriptions can be. A well-written product description is powerful stuff. It moves customers smoothly through the sales process by supporting good buying decisions, helping them decide whether a product is right for them. Done properly it can even reduce returns and refunds as well as building essential trust in your brand.
How to write a great product description
- A winning product description describes the product in a way that both fires the imagination of buyers and supports the images of the product, closing any knowledge gaps so people know exactly what it is, how to use it, how it works, what it is for, what problem it’s designed to solve, things like that
- Creative, inspirational descriptions can work hard to catch the eye of and convert even the most casual site visitor
- Product descriptions are often anything between fifty and two hundred words long, which means there’s a strictly limited opportunity to create a story. And that’s crucial – every product description should tell a story, a consumer-centred story that people appreciate and enjoy
- Make every description as long as it needs to be to do a perfect job, rather than specifying a formal word count
- The more complicated the product, the longer the description often needs to be. The same goes for expensive products, since it usually takes more work to convince someone to make a decision when there’s a lot of money involved
- The facts are vital, of course. You have to give people all the facts they need to make an informed buying decision. But you also need to wax lyrical, use your imagination and get into the buyer’s head, all of which means leading your message with the consumer benefits of the product, not its features
- A great product description inspires the reader to read the entire description because it’s interesting and entertaining
- There’s no need to be overly modest. If a product is brilliant it’s fine to say so, even if you’re British and don’t feel comfortable blowing your own trumpet!
- It has to be accurate and true. If you fib, exaggerate or are economical with the truth you might convince people to buy from you once, but they won’t come back. They might even warn their friends, family and social media networks against you
- Include keywords to inform search engines about the product, helping search algorithms provide the best results to users
- You can use humour as long as it fits the products – if you sell fun gifts, for example, make them sound fun
- Write with your audience’s wants and needs in mind
- Be enthusiastic. You can’t expect someone to be enthusiastic about a product if the description isn’t
- Remember product descriptions should provide the information your prospects and customers want to hear, not what you want to say to them. Put your customers first
- If you’re selling on an affiliate basis or drop-shipping, the manufacturer or supplier might have provided product descriptions for you. If so, rewrite them so they’re unique. Google will appreciate the effort you make to avoid duplicate content
- If your descriptions are quite long, use things like bullets and lists to make them easier for people to scan and explore
- No idea which benefits appeal most to buyers? AB Testing is always a good idea, where you test one description directly against an alternative in a way that delivers empirically accurate insight
If you’re selling fashion, it’s important to tell people how good they’ll look and feel wearing it. If you’re describing health foods it’s vital to let people know how amazing they taste, how good they’ll feel eating them, and how good those foods are for them. If you’d like to refresh your product descriptions, rewrite them or create new ones from scratch, I can do that for you. Just ask and I’ll send you some samples.
