Introduction
Most product descriptions are poor. Who really reads the text on your product pages? There are so many other things that can be done on the website in terms of improving the conversion rate that product descriptions can’t really impact sales, right?
Wrong. In fact, evidence from an e-commerce study conducted by the Nielsen Norman Group indicates that 20% of failed purchases are due to a lack of relevant information in product descriptions.
E-commerce business owners and marketers alike are prone to a common mistake in writing descriptions (even professional writers make it sometimes): writing product descriptions that simply describe your products.
Why is this wrong? Because excellent product descriptions need to enhance your product pages by selling your products to real people, not just being a source of information for search engines (although SEO can’t be an afterthought, of course).
Let’s take a look at how to write a product description that convinces visitors on your online store to buy.
Writing the Perfect Product Description
What is a product description? How to write product descriptions that sell. Creating your own product description template. A compelling product description always comes back to you. Frequently asked questions about product descriptions.
What is a product description?
A product description is written text that provides essential information about a product or service being sold online. It typically includes details such as features, benefits, specifications, and usage instructions.
The purpose of a product description is to inform potential customers about the product, persuade them to make a purchase, and enhance their overall shopping experience.
A well-written product description can significantly influence sales, customer satisfaction, and brand reputation.
A well-crafted product description drives buyers down your conversion funnel. If you add a bit of creativity, your product pages become instantly more persuasive, leading to more conversions from passing shoppers.
To succeed in writing product descriptions, you need to answer the questions that customers have about your products: What problems does your product solve? What do customers gain from your product? What makes it better than the competition? Your product description should answer these questions in an engaging and interesting way.
How to Write Product Descriptions That Sell
E-commerce store owners often make the mistake of leaking product features when writing product descriptions. This likely leads to fewer conversions because people don’t understand how the product helps them.
Let’s take a look at how to create the perfect product descriptions that sell for you:
1. Focus on the Ideal Buyer
Understanding how to write product descriptions requires putting yourself in the position of your target audience. When writing a product description with a large audience of buyers in mind, your descriptions become vague and end up not communicating with anyone.
The best product descriptions address your target audience directly and personally. They ask questions and answer them as if you’re having a conversation with them. They choose the words that the ideal buyer uses. They use the word “you”.
This is how the retailer The Oodie starts the product description for the I Love Plants Oodie in one example of a product description. ? Can’t stop buying plants? Can’t believe it. Don’t worry – we are too! Snuggle up in our new I Love Plants cushion! For every I Love Plants cushion sold, one tree is planted across Australia.
When writing your product descriptions for your online business, start by envisioning the ideal buyer. What kind of humor do they appreciate (if any)? What words do they use? Are there specific words they dislike? Can they accept words like “bad” and “poor”? What questions do they ask that you need to answer?
Think
on how to talk to the ideal buyer if you’re selling your product in-store, face-to-face. Now, try to incorporate that language into your e-commerce site so you can have a similar conversation online that touches the depths of souls. Get your free e-commerce copywriting template.
2. Attract with Benefits
When we sell our own products, we feel excited about individual features and specifications. We live and breathe our company, our site, and our products.
The problem is that potential buyers are not interested in boring features and specifications. They want to know what it will do for them – how it will solve their major problems. Writing effective product descriptions requires highlighting those benefits for each feature and overcoming cognitive biases.
A great example of a product description comes from Dr. Squatch. Made from real pine extract, this exceptional bar is as powerful as a fresh bat. It’s one of the standout players in bathing, removing dirt with its rough texture and masculine woody scent. Add to that the soothing exfoliating oatmeal and shea butter, and you get a blend of natural ingredients that will eliminate any foul odor. Dr. Squatch offers the benefit of its product not only in cleaning you during a shower but also in its power to overcome any foul smell, no matter how tough your day is. It also guarantees some product benefits including “natural ingredients” and “exfoliating oatmeal” to attract the ideal buyer.
Consider the resulting benefit from each feature you have. How does your product make customers feel happy, healthy, or productive? What problems, shortcomings, and troubles does your product help solve?
Don’t just sell a product, sell an experience.
3. Avoid “Yes, Yes” Statements
When we find ourselves stuck for words and don’t know what to add to the product description, we often add something boring like “The product quality is excellent.”
This is a “yes, yes” statement. As soon as the potential buyer reads the phrase “The product quality is excellent,” they think to themselves “Yes, yes, of course. That’s what everyone says.” Have you ever heard someone describe their product’s quality as mediocre, not very good, or even bad?
It becomes less convincing when the potential buyer reads your product description and starts saying “yes, yes” to themselves. To avoid this response, be as specific as possible.
In a recent study, no shopper could find the information they needed in the product description, so they left the site to search Google for more information about the product. During their search, they found another site that had the same product, a more complete description, and a lower price.
For example, Beardbrand does not describe the quality of their product as excellent. Instead, they describe every detail along with its benefit. No matter your style, Beardbrand Styling Balm is versatile enough to handle it. Designed to work with all hair types, it provides enough hold to keep thick, curly hair under control, prevents fine hair from collapsing, and keeps stubborn beards straight – all while maintaining your hair’s flexibility and touchability (no stiff or hard hair here). This product does its job of keeping you looking good all day. Whatever your style, wear it confidently with Beardbrand Styling Balm.
Product details add credibility. Product details sell your product. You can never include too much technical detail in your product descriptions. Be specific.
4. Justify with Superiority
Superlative qualities seem insincere in product descriptions unless you clearly demonstrate why your product is the best, easiest, or most advanced.
Amazon explains why the Kindle Paperwhite is the thinnest and lightest e-reader in the world.
The word
“Signature” gives the reader the impression that this is something special. Amazon continues to heavily cite pixel density (300 pixels per inch) and how the reader has a glare-free screen and less storage compared to previous generations.
If your product is truly best-in-class, provide specific evidence that this is the case. Otherwise, soften your product text or quote a customer saying your product is the coolest thing they’ve ever used.
5. Targeting the Imagination of Readers
Scientific research has proven that if people are holding a product in their hands, their desire to own it increases.
You are selling things online, so visitors to your website cannot hold your products. Large, clear images or videos can help, but there’s also a trick to writing e-commerce copy that increases desire: let the reader imagine how it would feel to own and use your product.
This is how Firebox excites your imagination by describing its Fizzics DraftPour product. It illustrates how the product solves common problems when going to the pub for a pint of beer. “Nothing beats a fresh pint of beer in your favorite pub – except maybe a fresh pint of beer in your own home. No battling crowds, no struggling for a seat, and you don’t have to stand outside on the sidewalk just to enjoy your favorite brew again! The Fizzics DraftPour gives you nitro draft beer from any can or bottle. Even the cheaper budget beer can be transformed into a premium pint with just one pull of the lever. The DraftPour may be a sleek piece, but it has high-tech features under the hood, using sound waves to convert the natural carbonation in the beer into a smooth micro-foam. These delightful little bubbles create the optimal density to enhance aroma and flavor while giving the mouth a silky smooth texture. Get a fruit machine and some piggy boxes, and you’ll have fully replicated a local pub. No sticky bar and no suspiciously stained old carpet included.”
To practice this technique in writing commercial texts, start the sentence with the word “Imagine,” and end the sentence (or paragraph) by explaining how the reader will feel when owning and using your product.
6. Breaking Mental Barriers with Short Stories
Including short stories in your product descriptions reduces mental barriers against persuasion techniques. In other words, we forget we are being sold something.
For example, wine sellers like Laithwaites include short stories about winemakers. “The Dauré family owns one of the best estates in Roussillon, Château de Jau. At the Christmas dinner table one year, they agreed it was time to spread their wings and look for new horizons for their wine. The women (Las Niñas) missed Chile and ultimately won, achieving their dream when they created a vineyard in the Apalta Valley of Colchagua. The soil is excellent and close to the star neighbor, the Chilean Montes winery.”
When it comes to including your product description to tell a story about your products, ask yourself: Who is making the product? What drove the creation of the product? What obstacles did you have to overcome to develop the product? How was the product tested?
7. Tempting with Sensory Words
Restaurants have known this for a long time: sensory words increase sales because they engage a greater amount of brain processing power. Here’s a great example of a product description from chocolatier Green & Blacks.
The adjectives not only refer to taste but also to sound and touch: “Crispy” and “Smooth.”
Adjectives are tricky words. Often they do not add meaning to your sentences, and it’s better to delete them. However, sensory adjectives are powerful because they make the reader feel the product text while reading.
Surprise
Read detailed product descriptions. Think of words like “soft”, “smooth”, “crunchy”, and “bright” if you are selling food products.
8. Tempt with Social Proof
When visitors to your website are uncertain about which product to purchase, they look for suggestions about what to buy. They are often influenced to buy a product that has the highest number of positive reviews and testimonials.
The gym wear retailer Gymshark includes customer reviews on every product page. It also features a rating system that allows shoppers to quickly and easily access product information.
Try to include a customer photo to add credibility to your display. It makes you more relatable and empathetic. You can even incorporate social media feeds filled with user-generated content showcasing real people sharing success stories about using your products.
9. Make Your Description Skimmable
Does the design of your website encourage visitors to read your product descriptions?
Here’s a great example of a product description from Kettle & Fire. The brand uses bullet points to quickly and easily communicate the product benefits. It also replaces the standard heading “Benefits” with “Why You’ll Love It”, personalizing the shopper experience on the product page.
Making your product descriptions clearly designed and skimmable makes them easier to read and more appealing to potential customers. Leaving shoppers’ questions unanswered can hinder sales or even cause shoppers to abandon their purchase or the site altogether.
Here are some areas to focus on when designing yours: attract your website visitors with catchy headlines. Use easy-to-read bullet points. Leave plenty of white space. Increase font size to enhance readability. Use high-quality product images.
10. Set Goals and KPIs
The goal of the product description is to move the shopper towards making a purchase. But how do you know if your descriptions are working?
You’ll want to establish a set of metrics to track on your product pages. Defining these metrics will help you understand which product descriptions are performing best and improve the ones that are underperforming.
Some common key performance indicators to monitor include: conversion rate, cart abandonment rate, return rate, support inquiries, and organic search ranking.
You can then run different A/B tests using a tool like Trident AB, which will lead to increased conversions and sales for your e-commerce site.
Creating Your Product Description Template
Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all template that can write product descriptions for you. Every product and audience is different and has different buying influences. That’s a good thing, as you want your product descriptions to be unique to your brand.
If you’re struggling to write a product description, here are some suggestions that can help you create a product description template that works for your products and business.
First, answer the following questions:
Who is the ideal customer? Knowing who your product is for is crucial to writing a good description. What are the key features of your products? Write down any dimensions, materials, functions, care instructions, and sizing details (if you are selling clothing). When is the product best used? Is your cozy blanket perfect for cold winter nights with a cup of hot cocoa by the fireplace? Or is it more for chilly fall evenings when the sun goes down? Provide ideal scenarios for when the customer should use your product. What makes your product special? Think about the unique benefits of your product and why it is better than your competitors.
Once you have this information in a document, use the following template to write your product description:
Write a specific title that grabs the attention of your target customers. Keep your ideas simple with an immediate presentation of the product’s benefit. For example, if you are selling a yoga shirt with a pattern, call it the Fleck Studio Shirt. Create a short paragraph based on the key features and usage information mentioned above. Look at the examples above for inspiration on writing an engaging description. Add a bullet point list consisting of product features and benefits. Include any necessary technical details. Add social proof. You can use a customer review app to capture product reviews on your website and integrate them with reviews from third-party sites like search engines or Facebook.
Now
You are ready to add a product (or adjust an existing product) to your online store!
An enticing product description will always pay off
As you prepare to write compelling product descriptions for your online store, remember: share your knowledge about your product. Tell stories and explain even the smallest details. Strive to avoid being boring and instead wow your website visitors with tempting descriptions. And above all, write with enthusiasm, because your passion for your products is contagious.
Source: https://www.shopify.com/blog/8211159-9-simple-ways-to-write-product-descriptions-that-sell
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