By Elise Dobson
Introduction
Selling products online is challenging. Prospective customers can’t touch, smell, or see the product in a real way. Instead, they rely on the copy written by marketers to describe the product’s features, the problems it solves, and how it makes buyers feel – all to drive sales.
Copywriting is a skill that most e-commerce business owners haven’t spent time developing. You have other roles to fulfill, right?
However, strong copywriting skills can convince more readers to click on links, sign up, or make a purchase. Excellent copy helps potential customers envision how they would feel owning 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 brand online.
Goal: Write words that pay you back.
What is E-commerce Copywriting?
E-commerce copywriting is the process of crafting text that persuades the target audience to take a specific action. For example, you might convince your audience to visit your e-commerce site, join your email list, or buy a particular product. It’s often referred to as direct response writing or promotional copy for this reason.
What are the benefits of e-commerce copywriting?
Strong, unembellished copy is key to increasing sales without investing more in acquisition, which is why excellent copywriting across all touchpoints is one of the most effective ways to move prospects or buyers through the sales funnel.
“Archer and Olive, a retailer of bullet journaling supplies, increased their profits from $72,000 to $1.9 million in the first year of their website copywriting,” says Kayla Holatz, freelance copywriter.
“We adjusted the headline to highlight the eco-friendly aspects of their products. We reminded visitors of the brand’s features on the product pages. While this growth can’t be solely attributed to the copywriting, it played a significant role in their growth.”
Where is Copy Applied?
No matter where you place this text, copy is a crucial element in the entire digital marketing strategy. This includes:
Homepage Copy
You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression. Powerful copy should quickly and clearly convey what you’re selling and why it’s different so that users don’t bounce away.
Product Descriptions
Why should people buy the product you’re selling? Help the potential customer envision owning, touching, and using it through your product description copy.
Category Pages
Sometimes, website visitors are searching for a solution to a problem but aren’t sure which product will help them. Explain the collection of products 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 site with copy on your About page.
Search Headlines and Descriptions
Search engines use this text snippet and display it on the search page. Text is the only medium here – there are no images or videos to influence the decision. Interesting text can improve your website’s click-through rate compared to a competitor’s site.
Every type of email marketing campaign, including promotional offers, abandoned cart campaigns, and purchase confirmations, should be written with the customer in mind. The copy takes the customer out of the inbox and directs them to your site through a call to action.
Posts
Social Media
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 push 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. Combine eye-catching images with ad copy that keeps your target audience engaged long enough to influence the purchasing process.
The Perfect E-commerce Copy
There are many types of copy you can use in writing e-commerce text. Among them:
Mimicking Customer Tone
What good are your research findings in writing copy if you don’t use them? Go back to your research spreadsheets and extract the terms your customers used in comments, interviews, or surveys. You may find that each age group or specific persona has distinct vocabulary. Using the same vocabulary on your e-commerce site builds trust. Customers arrive thinking “this brand understands me.”
Selling Benefits, Not Features
It’s hard not to fall into the trap of advertising the amazing product features. While you may think it showcases your products in the best light, the truth is that most purchases are driven by emotions. The fact that your duvet has 400 threads doesn’t evoke the emotion “I need to buy this!” But a luxurious, cozy duvet cover that makes you fall asleep instantly? That’s the ticket.
The text and user experience should work together. There are many ways to summarize quick facts that customers care about—using icons, badges, or absolute points—without making them bored with the detailed text of specifications. So, every time you mention a feature, follow it with a benefit.
A Dash of Unbiased Text
Imagine you’re browsing two sites, and a copywriter is raving about how great the product is. The second site does the same, but some text is written by happy customers who can attest to what the copywriter says. Which site are you more likely to engage with? Probably the second one. Social proof—recommendations, reviews, and user-generated content—are among the most impactful digital marketing assets, proven to increase sales page conversion rates by 34%.
Avoid Empty Talk
Words like “market leader” and “innovative” are used so frequently that they’ve lost much of their impact. They become mere filler—taking up space without adding meaning. Put on your critic’s hat and ask yourself: what does this mean? If you can’t give a specific answer right away, cut the text or rephrase it until your copy is concrete and meaningful.
An example of empty talk: “Innovative office chairs from a market leader.”
Try instead: “Office chairs with back support used in over 150,000 offices in the United States.”
Empty talk distracts the reader and makes them feel bored. In contrast, facts and figures enhance your credibility. Whenever possible, include numbers and write them as digits (7) instead of words (seven) because numbers catch wandering eyes.
Restrict the Use of Adjectives
Adjectives help us describe how our products look (appearance), what they do (features), and how they make buyers feel (benefits). When used sparingly, adjectives can be helpful. They assist customers in visualizing how the product looks, feels, and smells—often your unique selling point. However, overusing adjectives can cause a headache for the reader, making the content difficult to read. Look at this sentence, for example:
This
A beautiful, romantic, and very comfortable kitchen set, with a unique and modern look that makes it perfect for your kitchen.
The problem with many adjectives is that they slow down and confuse the reader. What about simply saying:
This is a romantic kitchen set that suits most kitchen styles.
When using adjectives, follow these basic practices:
- Use only one adjective before the noun. Instead of “comfortable and romantic kitchen set,” opt for “romantic kitchen set.”
- Don’t use adjectives to state the obvious. Don’t describe the appearance of the product if you’re showcasing it in a picture.
- Choose sensory or emotional words. Words that evoke the senses or emotions make the reader feel something. Words like “good” or “effective” are somewhat boring. Instead, choose “enjoyable” or “delightful” or “appetizing.”
Storytelling, not facts
When potential buyers read stories, they forget they are being sold something. The pre-existing barriers to your sales messages diminish, and your content becomes more engaging and persuasive.
Facts increase the credibility of your product description, but facts alone do not make your content persuasive. Facts are cold. Facts lack the spirit or personality of the brand.
The most compelling product descriptions include both storytelling and facts. Stories encourage the reader to engage, while facts help justify the purchase. Our brains are programmed to think in stories. That’s why helping the customer visualize the product in their lives is the hidden essence in crafting direct response copy that drives them toward the purchase.
The story can be very short. Imagine you’re selling an office chair with back support. You could tell a simple story about a customer who tried many chairs and continued to feel back pain.
A simple story can help potential buyers visualize the benefits of your products – especially if they are complex. But stories also add personality. You can tell stories about product development, testing, or sourcing to make them more appealing or to enhance the impression of high quality.
So, how can you weave these little stories into your online store? Here are three quick tips:
- Learn from investigative journalists. Look for interesting details. Talk to suppliers and current customers. The more you listen and learn, the more stories you have to tell.
- Keep your stories simple and tangible. Focus your story on just one simple idea.
- Avoid the usual. Tell unexpected stories to attract, entertain, and sell.
A crash course in writing e-commerce copy
Writing copy is like a crossword puzzle where the key to the answer is the words your customers use to describe their problem. To write effective copy, you need to research – you need to understand your customers’ motivations and obstacles.
This is very different from how many e-commerce traders see it, where it often relies on the belief that more creative text wins.
There is a process consisting of four steps that professional copywriters use to craft effective copy and increase conversion rates – you can steal it and use it yourself. For simplicity, let’s assume you are trying to understand how you can increase initial purchases on your site for the rest of this article.
Step 1: Identify your audience and categories
Effective copy meets the right person, with the right message, in the right place, at the right time. There is a significant difference between converting a new user on your homepage and re-engaging someone who added a product and left it in the cart.
Here are some common categories you might want to explore and survey or interview:
- Abandoned carts. Identify friction points before conversion (anxiety, concerns, frustrations, etc.) that prevent visitors from buying. Remember, leaving the cart is not natural; it’s just common. People don’t leave full carts for no reason.
- New customers. You will identify more friction points before conversion. What almost stopped them from buying? Why did they choose you over competitors? What was frustrating during checkout? Additionally, you will gain insight into product quality and understand how well you present your value proposition.
- Customers
- The repeaters. Get to the essence of products that fit together, the purchase cycle duration, and the customer cycle appearance.
- Inactive customers. Get to the bottom of lifetime value (which can help in planning spending on paid ads) and retention. How many purchases have they made in total? Why did they stop buying from you? What can you do better?
- Internal interviews
- Surveys
- Customer interviews
- Extracting testimonials and reviews
- Live chat
- Social media
- Text messaging
- What questions are commonly asked by visitors? What needs do they frequently express? What problems are they trying to solve when they come to your site? What benefits do they hope to achieve when they reach your site? What objections do they face when purchasing? How can I effectively address these questions and objections when I encounter them?
These general categories can apply to any store. However, you may want to become more specific. For example, isolating customers based on product categories or new customers who have bought from you twice in six months.
Step 2: Conduct Qualitative Research
When you know what you want to find out 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, overlooking, or ignoring, it’s that every e-commerce conversion is the 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 subject them to testing by asking the questions you know your customers are asking when they enter your site. You can take their answers, and then go back and incorporate them directly into your copy, in your customers’ language.
“I don’t know of any other factor that makes a bigger difference in the results of your copy than the quality and depth of research you conduct.”
So, what types of qualitative data should you collect? Text-based research can be conducted using these four methods:
Internal Interviews
Before you talk to visitors and customers, it helps to know the channels they are already using. Talk with your sales and support team (if you have one) and gather existing data from internal sources such as your CRM system.
Among the most popular channels are:
Getting direct contact with people through their preferred channels – whether it’s email, chat, or phone – means you are starting things off on the right foot.
Ask yourself the following questions:
During these internal interviews, James Turner, founder of SNAP Copy, advises to “let your customers talk for a long time, moving from the ‘best business answer’ stage to the ‘but really, this is it’ stage.”
Checking support logs during this process helps prevent neutral answers. Review support logs from the past three to six months. Highlight recurring questions, needs, benefits, objections, and frustrations. Add this information to the “Customer Survey Results” tab in your e-commerce copywriting research template.
Surveys
There are two types of surveys you can use to discover which copywriting styles respond best to your target audience: on-site surveys and customer surveys.
On-site Surveys
There are two types of surveys you can use to discover which copywriting styles respond best to your target audience: on-site surveys and customer surveys.
There are two types of surveys you can use to discover which copywriting styles respond best to your target audience: on-site surveys and customer surveys.
You can
to assist you both in understanding the initial purchase decision. A great survey really depends on your goal or the questions you want to ask. However, there are some good practices to consider when designing your copywriting surveys:
Customer Interviews
Customer interviews are valuable in the copywriting process at any stage of growth, but they are especially useful when you are small.
The important thing to remember here is not to start and just interview anyone who says yes. You want to spend your time wisely; only interview those who can provide the most inspiration.
Source: https://www.shopify.com/blog/copywriting
Leave a Reply