By Elise Dobson
Introduction
Selling products online is challenging. Potential customers cannot touch, smell, or see the item directly. Instead, they rely on the texts written by marketers to describe the product features, the problems it solves, and how it makes buyers feel – all to drive more sales.
Copywriting is a skill that most e-commerce business owners haven’t spent time developing. You have other hats to wear, right?
However, strong writing skills have the potential to persuade more readers to click links, sign up, or purchase. Compelling copy helps prospects visualize how they feel when they own the product. They can picture it in their hands, solving a problem or making their lives easier.
So, what does good copy look like? And how can you write with potential customers in mind? This guide shares the copywriting process you’ll need when crafting any text for your online brand.
Goal: Write words that reward you.
E-commerce Copywriting: What Is It?
E-commerce copywriting is the process of crafting text that persuades your target audience to take a specific action. For instance, you might persuade your audience to visit your e-commerce site, join your email list, or purchase a product. It’s often referred to as direct response copywriting or sales copy for this reason.
Benefits of E-commerce Copywriting
Strong, no-frills copy is key to driving sales without investing more in acquisition, which is why compelling copy at every touchpoint is one of the most effective ways to move prospects or buyers through the sales funnel.
“Archer and Olive, an online bullet journal supply store, saw their revenue increase from $72,000 to $1.9 million in the first year of writing their website copy,” says Kayla Holatz, a freelance copywriter.
“We modified the headline to highlight the eco-friendliness of their products. We mentioned the brand’s unique selling points on the product pages. While this growth can’t be solely attributed to copywriting, it played a significant role in their growth.”
Where is E-commerce Copy Applied?
Wherever you place this text, copy is a critical element of the overall digital marketing strategy. This includes:
Homepage Copy
You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression. Strong copy should quickly and clearly convey what you’re selling and why it’s different so that users don’t bounce.
Product Descriptions
Why should people buy the product you’re selling? Help the potential customer envision owning, touching, or using it through your product description copy.
Category Pages
Sometimes, website visitors land on your site hoping to solve a problem, but they aren’t sure which product will help them with that. Explain the product grouping on the page and provide guiding snippets about individual products.
About Page
Website visitors want to see information about the company behind the site they’re viewing. Make people fall in love with the brand behind the website through the text on your about page.
Effective Web Headlines and Descriptions
Search engines pull these snippets of text and display them on the search page. Copy is the only medium here – no pictures or videos to influence the decision. Engaging text for optimizing SEO copy can be the difference between a click on your site or on a competitor’s.
Electronic
Every type of email marketing campaign, including promotional offers, abandoned cart campaigns, and purchase confirmations, should be written with the customer in mind. The text takes customers out of their inbox and directs them to your site through a call to action (CTA).
Social Media Posts
The average person spends about 2.5 hours browsing social media each day. By focusing on the text in your social media posts, you can drive them away from social media and towards your online business.
Direct Mail
Write newsletters and postcards that encourage customers in your local area to visit your physical store.
Advertising
Whether it’s a Google ad, a Facebook campaign, or a billboard, advertising is really about the intersection of text and creativity. Pair eye-catching images with ad copy that keeps your target audience engaged long enough to influence the sale.
Perfect E-commerce Copy
There are many types of copy you can use in writing e-commerce text. It depends on the purpose, context, and target audience. However, these types of copy can be used as a starting point:
Replicate Customer Language
What’s the point of writing research if you don’t use it in your copywriting? Go back to your research spreadsheets and extract the terms used by your customers in reviews, interviews, or surveys. You’re likely to find specific keywords for every demographic or buyer persona. Including the same vocabulary on your e-commerce site builds trust. Customers land there thinking “this brand understands me.”
Sell Benefits, Not Features
It’s hard not to fall into the trap of shouting about how great your product features are. While you may think it showcases your products in the best light, the truth is that most purchases are made based on emotions. The fact that you have a 400-thread-count duvet cover doesn’t evoke that emotion of “I need to buy this!” A luxurious, comfortable duvet cover that makes you fall asleep instantly? That’s the one.
Your copy and user experience should work together. There are many ways to summarize the quick facts that matter to customers – using icons, badges, or bullet points – without boring them with the precise specifications of the product. So, every time you list a feature, follow it up with a benefit.
Unbiased Copy Resonance
Imagine browsing two websites. The first is written by a copywriter who praises how amazing the product is. The second site does the same, but some of the copy is written by happy customers who can attest to what the copywriter says.
Which one would you prefer to engage with? It’s likely the second. Social proof – testimonials, reviews, and user-generated content – makes you trust the product more. It has been shown that social proof increases conversion rates on sales pages by 34%.
Avoid Empty Rhetoric
Words like “market leader” and “innovative” are used so frequently that they’ve lost much of their impact. Now they are just filler – taking up space without adding meaning.
Put yourself in the critic’s position and ask yourself about every sentence and every word, asking: what does this mean? If you can’t provide a specific answer right away, cut it or rephrase it until your copy is clear and meaningful.
The distraction of empty rhetoric overwhelms the reader. In contrast, facts and figures enhance your credibility. Whenever possible, include numbers and write them as digits (7) rather than words (seven) because numbers catch wandering eyes.
Restrict Adjectives
We help you
the audience and categories involved with your product. Understand who your buyers are and what specific needs or desires they have. Conduct thorough research to identify your target demographics, their preferences, and behavior. Knowing your audience allows you to craft messages that resonate deeply with them.
Step 2: Identify pain points
Dig into the challenges or problems that your customers face which your product can solve. Use surveys, interviews, and reviews to gather insights on what frustrates them or what they wish could be improved. This information is crucial in presenting your product as the solution they have been searching for.
Step 3: Develop key messages
Based on your understanding of the audience and their pain points, create messages that communicate how your product addresses their needs. Highlight features, benefits, and experiences that your product delivers. Make sure these messages are clear, concise, and focused on the value your product offers.
Step 4: Test and refine
Once you have your copy written, don’t hesitate to test it with real customers. Use A/B testing to see which messages resonate more effectively and result in higher conversions. Gather feedback and continue to refine your copy based on what you learn from actual customer interactions.
By following these four steps and focusing on your audience’s needs and emotions, you can create compelling e-commerce copy that not only informs but persuades and converts.
The right message, to the right person, in the right place, at the right time. There is a huge difference between converting a new user on your homepage and re-engaging someone who added a product and left their shopping cart.
Here are some common categories you may want to explore and conduct a survey or interview on:
- Abandoned shopping carts. Identify friction points before conversion (anxiety, fear, frustration, etc.) that prevent visitors from making a purchase. Remember, leaving a shopping cart is not normal; it’s just habitual. People don’t leave filled carts for no reason.
- New customers. Identify more friction before conversion. What nearly stopped them from purchasing? Why did they choose you over competitors? What was frustrating during checkout? Additionally, you will learn about product quality and understand how well you are providing the promised value.
- Repeat customers. Discover the essence of products that fit together, the length of the purchase cycle, and the appearance of the customer lifecycle.
- Inactive customers. Discover customer lifetime value (which can help in planning spending for paid ads) and retention. How many purchases have they made in total? Why did they stop buying from you? What can you do better?
These general categories can apply to any store. However, you might want to become more specific. For example, isolate customers based on product categories or new customers who have purchased from you twice in six months.
Step 2: Conduct Qualitative Research
Once you know what you want to learn and the categories that can help you find the answers, you are ready to start qualitative research.
Joel Klettke from Business Casual Copywriting and Case Study Buddy explains why: “If there’s one thing most businesses are missing, or ignoring, it’s that every eCommerce conversion is a result of a conversation the potential customer is having with your copy.”
“With qualitative research, you have the opportunity to look at the answers before you do the testing by asking the questions you know your customers will have when they visit your site. You can take their responses and then go back and integrate them directly into your copy, in your customers’ language.”
“I don’t know of another factor that makes a bigger difference in the results of your copy than the quality and depth of research you do.”
So, what types of qualitative data should you collect? You can conduct this kind of writing research using these four methods:
- Internal interviews
- Surveys
- Customer interviews
- Extracting testimonials and reviews
Internal Interviews
Before talking to your visitors and customers, it helps to know the channels they are already using. Talk to your sales and support team (if you have one) and gather existing data from internal sources like your customer relationship management system.
Some of the most popular channels include:
- Live chat
- Social media
- Text messaging
Getting direct contact with people through their preferred channels – whether that’s email, chat, or phone – means you’re starting off on the right foot.
Ask yourself the following questions:
- What questions are commonly asked by visitors?
- What needs are frequently expressed by visitors?
- What problems are visitors coming to your site to solve?
- What benefits are visitors coming to your site to obtain?
- What objections do visitors have in making a purchase? How can I successfully address those questions and objections when they arise?
During these internal interviews, James Turner, founder of SNAP Copy, advises to “let the customers talk for a while, moving from the best-business-answer phase to the ‘but really, this is the thing’ phase.”
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It is useful to check support records during this process to prevent biased answers. Review the records from the past three to six months. Highlight the recurring questions, issues, benefits, objections, and frustrations. Add this information to the “Customer Survey Results” tab in the writing research template.
Surveys
There are two types of surveys you can use to discover which writing style resonates best with your target audience: site surveys and customer surveys.
Site Surveys
There are two types of surveys you can use to discover which writing style resonates best with your target audience: site surveys and customer surveys.
There are two types of surveys you can use to discover which writing style resonates best with your target audience: site surveys and customer surveys.
Site Surveys
There are two types of surveys you can use to discover which writing style resonates best with your target audience: site surveys and customer surveys.
There are two types of surveys you can use to discover which writing style resonates best with your target audience: site surveys and customer surveys.
There are two types of surveys you can use to discover which writing style
Source: https://www.shopify.com/blog/ecommerce-copywriting-research
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