By Elise Dobson
Introduction
Selling products online is tough. Potential customers cannot touch, smell, or see the product in a real way. Instead, they rely on the copy written by marketers to describe the product features, the problems it solves, and how it makes buyers feel – all to increase sales.
Copywriting is a skill that most eCommerce business owners have not taken the time to develop. You have other hats to wear, right?
However, strong copywriting skills have the potential to persuade more readers to click links, sign up, or make a purchase. Engaging copy helps potential customers envision how they will feel when they own a product. They can imagine 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 the potential customer in mind? This guide shares the copywriting process you’ll need when writing any copy for your online brand.
Goal: Write words that reward you.
What is eCommerce Copywriting?
eCommerce copywriting is the process of crafting copy that persuades a target audience to take a specific action. For example, you can convince your audience to visit your eCommerce site, join your email list, or purchase a product. It is often referred to as direct response writing or promotional copy for this reason.
Get your free eCommerce copywriting template
Do you want to write persuasive copy that convinces visitors to your website to click links, sign up, or buy? Master high-converting eCommerce copywriting and boost your sales with our easy-to-follow framework. Learn more
Benefits of eCommerce Copywriting
Strong, no-nonsense copy is key to increasing sales without investing more in acquisition, which is why stellar copywriting across every touchpoint is one of the most effective ways to move leads or buyers through the sales funnel.
“Archer and Olive, a retailer of bullet journal supplies, increased their revenue from $72,000 to $1.9 million in the first year of having copy on their website,” says Kayla Holatz, a freelance copywriter.
“We revamped the headline to highlight their eco-friendliness. We communicated the brand’s unique selling points on the product pages. Although this growth cannot solely be attributed to copywriting, it played a significant role in their success.”
Highlighting the standout homepage copy of Archer and Olive, a retailer of bullet journal supplies.
Where is Copy Applied?
No matter where you place this copy, it is a critical element of the entire digital marketing strategy. This includes:
- Homepage: You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression. Strong copy must quickly and clearly communicate what you sell and why it’s different so users don’t bounce.
- Product Descriptions: Why should people buy the product you’re selling? Help the potential customer visualize owning, touching, or using it through your product description copy.
- Category Pages: Sometimes, website visitors come to your site hoping to solve a problem but aren’t sure which product will help. 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 site through the copy on your About page.
- Headlines
Web snippets: Search engines pull these snippets from texts and display them on the search page. The text is the only medium here – there are no images or videos to influence the decision. Writing SEO text can be the difference between clicking on your website or a competitor’s site. - Email: Every type of email marketing campaign, including promotions, abandoned cart campaigns, and purchase confirmations, should be written with the customer in mind. The email text takes the customer 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 push them away from social media and toward your online business.
- Direct mail: Writing posts and postcards that attract customers in your local area to visit your physical store.
- Ads: Whether it’s a Google ad, a Facebook campaign, or a billboard, advertising is really about the intersection of text and creativity. Mix eye-catching visuals with ad text that keeps your target audience around long enough to influence the sale.
Bison Coolers’ product description uses strong writing to make a dull product (a cooler) seem more interesting.
Great brands make every word count, even on a shipping policy page just like any other page. Freelance copywriter Summer Ouis explains: “Whenever I want to evaluate how seriously a brand takes its customer experience, I check the pages in its footer. FAQs, Contact Us, Shipping and Returns – these are the pages that customers who are very interested in your brand will check out.
“Most brands treat these pages as an afterthought. Yes, very few visitors will stop by them, but those who do will have a much higher chance of becoming long-term customers or brand ambassadors.”
The bottom line? If you’re losing potential customers at a touchpoint before the product page, you could have the best text on it and it won’t matter.
Have you ever wished the product description would write itself? With Shopify Magic – Shopify’s AI tools designed for commerce – that will happen. Sign up for the Shopify Magic waitlist.
You are just a few steps away from enhancing your Shopify product descriptions using Shopify Magic. Join the waitlist.
7 Proven Tips for Writing E-commerce Copy
Writing good e-commerce copy is relatively easy to learn, but difficult to master. Great writers test their copy and measure it to ensure it delivers real results. It takes time to be great.
The first mistake in copywriting is writing without research, but we’ve already covered that in detail. The second mistake is making obvious errors. Here are eight more steps to writing great copy.
1. Mirror the customer’s tone
What’s the point of your research in copywriting if you don’t use it to write your copy?
Go back to your research table and extract the terms your customers used in reviews, interviews, or surveys. You’ll likely find specific terms for each demographic or persona. Including the same vocabulary in your e-commerce site builds rapport. Customers arrive thinking, “This brand gets me.”
Harper Wilde is a great example of this. Throughout its e-commerce site, you’ll find phrases that its target audience likely uses (or at least are familiar to them) – such as the idea that its bras are so comfortable “you won’t believe they’re not butter.”
2.
Selling Benefits, Not Features
It’s hard not to fall into the trap of shouting about how fantastic your product features are. While you may think it showcases your products in the best light, the truth is that most purchases are based on emotions.
The fact that your comforter has 400 threads doesn’t evoke the emotions that make someone say, “I need to buy this!” But a luxurious and cozy duvet cover that makes you fall asleep immediately? That’s the point.
Your copy and user experience should work together. There are many ways to sum up the quick facts that customers care about – using icons, badges, or bullet points – without boring people with detailed specifications. So, each time you list a feature, follow it up with a benefit.
Eight Sleep showcases the unique selling points of its mattress by listing benefits alongside product features.
This leaves you more room to use precious real estate, especially headlines and product descriptions, for selling rather than telling.
There are many benefits you can leverage in your copywriting; each depends on the reason customers are buying the product. Does it solve a problem? Does it increase happiness and enjoyment? Does it make people feel like they are part of a community?
For instance, you might have an oven that heats up quickly. This feature makes a person more relaxed about preparing dinner on time. This benefit is an increase in enjoyment (feeling more relaxed) and makes cooking less stressful (removing the pain of pressure). It’s been shown that these feelings of joy and anticipation increase the performance of eCommerce landing pages.
Identify all these features and benefits before you start creating your product pages. Planning what you need to write helps you craft more persuasive copy faster.
The homepage of Kettle and Fire straightforwardly illustrates the benefits of using the product.
3. Sprinkle Copy without Bias
Imagine you’re browsing two websites. The first one is written by a copywriter extolling how amazing the product is. The second site does the same, but some of the copy is written by happy customers who can affirm what the copywriter says.
Which one would you prefer to interact with? Most likely the second. It uses social proof – reviews from other happy customers – to make you trust the product more.
Social proof is a type of content that makes the copy seem less biased. Testimonials, reviews, and user-generated content are among your most powerful e-marketing tools, proven to increase conversion rates on sales pages by 34%.
Surely provides social proof with the title “Over 20,000 customers love this wine” above a display of positive customer reviews.
4. Avoid Empty Words
Words like “market-leading” and “innovative” are used so often that they’ve lost a lot of their impact. Now they’re just filler – taking up space without adding meaning.
Put on the discussion hat and ask yourself about every sentence and every word, ask yourself: What does this mean? If you can’t provide a specific answer right away, cut it or rephrase it until your copy is concise and meaningful.
❌ Empty Words: Innovative desk notebooks from a market-leading company.
✅ Try instead: Desk notebooks with back support used in over 150,000 offices across the U.S.
Empty words distract the reader and make them feel bored. In contrast, facts and figures enhance your credibility. Wherever possible, include numbers and write them as numerals (7) instead of words (seven) because numbers catch the eye.
5.
Restricting Adjectives
Adjectives help us explain the appearance of our products (looks), what they do (features), and how they make buyers feel (benefits).
In moderation, adjectives are helpful. They help customers visualize the appearance, feel, and smell of the product – often your unique selling point. But overusing adjectives causes headaches for the reader, as it makes the content hard to read. Take this sentence, for example:
This is a beautiful, romantic, and incredibly comfortable kitchen set, with a unique, modern yet classic look, resulting in the perfect addition to your kitchen.
The problem with too many adjectives is that they slow down and confuse the reader. What about simply saying:
This is a romantic kitchen set that fits most kitchen styles.
When using adjectives, follow these basic practices:
- Use only one adjective before the noun. Instead of “beautiful and romantic kitchen set”, choose “romantic kitchen set.”
- Don’t use adjectives to point out the obvious. Don’t describe the appearance of the product if you’re displaying it in a picture.
- Choose sensory or emotional words. Words that evoke senses or emotions make the reader feel something. Words like “good” or “effective” are somewhat dull. Instead, opt for “delightful” or “joyful” or “tempting.”
Check the balance of the copy on Studio Neat’s product page between descriptive adjectives and focusing on benefits.
6. Tell Stories, Not Facts
When potential buyers read stories, they forget they are being sold something. The pre-existing barriers to your sales messages are lowered, 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 story and fact. Stories engage the reader, while facts help justify the purchase. Our brains are wired to think in stories. For that reason, helping the customer visualize the product in their lives is the hidden essence of crafting direct response copy that drives them toward a 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 but continued to experience back pain.
A simple story can help potential customers 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 increase appeal or enhance perceptions of high quality.
So, how can you weave these little stories into your online store? Here are three quick tips:
- Learn from investigative journalists. Dig deep to discover interesting details. Talk to your suppliers and current customers. The more you listen and learn, the more stories you will have to tell.
- Keep your stories simple and tangible. Focus your story on just one simple idea.
- Avoid the obvious. Tell unexpected stories to attract, entertain, and sell.
For example, Meow Meow Tweet offers new subscribers a short story about the brand’s history in their welcome message.
Sometimes, you need to mention certain things on the product page in light of laws or compliance. In a study conducted by Harvard University in 1978, researchers found that using the word “because” increased compliance from 60% to 94%. So, when listing facts that should be known, tell people why they matter. For example, “This type of adhesive is excellent because it is legally required.”
7. Own a Strong Opinion
Many large e-commerce sites seem as they are: big companies without spirit. They don’t communicate, don’t engage, and don’t sell the value of the products they offer. They just provide bread, butter, beer, and toothpaste.
But
No one likes talking to a faceless company. No one enjoys calling a call center devoid of spirit. So why write copy that sounds like a boring company?
Great copy can change the way people think about a particular idea or problem, along with the role that your product plays in the solution.
To connect with your readers, you need a touch of personality on your e-commerce site. Think about the brand voice – if your website were speaking to a real customer, how would you want its voice to sound? What stories could it tell? What jokes could it make? What words could it choose?
Remember to envision a single buyer and write as if you were talking to them in real life. Ditch the corporate language and use text that feels more realistic and conversational.
GREATS uses phrases that its ideal customers understand, including “Friends with Benefits” and “Drop Us a Line” and “Get Priority First.”
Intensive Course in E-commerce Copywriting Research
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 copywriting is often viewed in many businesses.
Source: https://shopify.com/blog/copywriting
Leave a Reply