Here is your mantra forever: every piece of content you write and publish is a part of your marketing. This goes for your blog, your social media posts, and, yes, your product descriptions.
Think about your blog posts and your website content for a minute. You use language that appeals to your target demographic; you focus on the value you can bring to your audience; you appeal to the pain points and the problems that your products/services can solve. It’s all about the customer.
And so it should also be with your product descriptions. The words that you use to describe your products or services should be geared to those pain points and problem solutions. Further, they should establish an emotional connection with your customer in the same way that your other content strives to do. The goal is to move a customer to take action – to buy the product.
The way in which a product is described can make or break a purchase. Further, these descriptions, like other content, will be indexed by search engines. A product with an image and only a word or two in the description will not be indexed.
[bctt tweet="A good product description will “guide” a consumer and convince them to buy." username="relevance"]
It should not just describe the product but should speak to value and answer a consumer’s questions about it before they are ever asked.
Think about how you write your other content, and apply the same thinking to your descriptions:
You do this in your other content, and the same is true with your product descriptions. You know your customer persona – match your descriptions to that.
A great example of descriptions is that of ModCloth, a clothing retailer that appeals to millennial women. It has clothing divided into categories and provides snappy, witty descriptions of the general category, as well as the individual pieces. Here is the category description for work clothing.
If you are selling products of other manufacturers, do not use their descriptions. They are impersonal and cold, often filled with industry jargon. Your content should be unique, creative, and personal.
One of the biggest mistakes content writers make with product descriptions is sticking to a description of just the features. Of course, features are important, but the customer needs to know what the product will actually do for him or her. This is where the value is created.
Bill Wickersham, an editor for the review site Rated by Students, states:
“If the customer cannot see a benefit very early in a product description, he is likely to move on. In most cases, he just needs to be reminded that he needs the product to solve a problem. So, remind him early on.”
Consider a short video that will not only describe the product but show it in use or action. These can be a short as 15 – 30 seconds and can be far more impactful than any text description. To see a great example, check out the product video for Man Crates, a company that sells gifts for men and delivers them in a wooden box. It’s 21 seconds long and says it all.
One of the most engaging types of product descriptions is to tell the story of its origin or how it came to be a product you wanted to offer. Going back to man Crates for a minute, here is the story behind one of its gift boxes, the Sunrise Cocktail Crate:
If your description requires lots of information, then by all means use bullet points. Customers want to scan and this will let them do so.
What bullet points can do is give product information in very short, descriptive phrases. This is the place for answers to questions, such a capacity, materials, power, accessories, etc. It is not the place for creative language or keywords. They belong in another part of your description.
These can go in your title tag, image caption, and in your copy. If you can get it in your product title, that is definitely a good thing. If they fit very naturally in bullet points, put them there. But, just as with any content, do not stuff, and only place them where they will work in very naturally.
If your description can “place” the product in an environment your customer will find appealing, useful, or problem-solving, then you have made major progress toward a sale.
Dyson Vacuum does a good job of this, with its visuals, but also with its videos. A shopper can access a video of every vacuum in action.
Product descriptions require imagination and creativity. And here’s the rub. While marketers may be skilled content writers, writing those descriptions is a special challenge. For this reason, many companies seek creative writers with successful histories of product description writing. All Top Reviews is a website that provides evaluations and testimonials of actual writing services that have creative writing departments. You may have to try a few before settling in on one that works for you.
