So many of us are selling offers these days that require product description copy. That can make all the difference in the world when you’re selling online.
You can have absolutely exquisite imagery plus mock-ups and beautiful design but if the copy isn’t getting that add to cart action to happen and getting them to actually check out, then what’s the point? Doesn’t matter how close we get to the end zone, we have to actually score that touchdown and it’s the copy that typically converts in the end.
In this blog, we’re going to help you to learn tips for writing product description copies that sell.
7 Rules to Write Product Descriptions That Sell
Now let’s talk about how to write a good quality product description that will get your products noticed by your customers and search engines. The following 7-step process is the one that you can use whenever you create product descriptions for your clients.
Step 1: Understand your audience
You need to find ways to speak to your audience directly. You’ll do this by understanding more about who your target audience is.
Creating a “buyer persona” can help. This is a summary of the characteristics of the people that already buy from you, or those that you want to target. Once you create a buyer persona, you can use this to make your descriptions more personal and relatable.
Let’s look at an example. Suppose you’re selling outdoor shoes in your online store. A generic product description might sound something like this:
“These outdoor shoes have a waterproof feature and a non-slip grip. They come with a perforated pattern and quality guarantee.”
This description does a fine job of describing what the product actually looks like, but it isn’t exactly speaking to the audience.
“These extraordinary waterproof features and non-slip grip shoes are the perfect accompaniment for nature lovers with their stylish and comfortable structure. The superior quality of the uppers keeps your feet cool, dry and completes your outfit.”
Do you see the difference? The first description is purely that: descriptive. The second is talking directly to a specific audience and providing suggestions for how it might meet their needs. Even the language that you choose to use in your product descriptions makes a difference.
Inserting the words that your audience typically uses and avoiding jargon is a great way to build rapport.
Step 2: Find your tone of voice
A ‘tone of voice’ is how your audience perceives your brand emotionally in a written form. The aim is to communicate in a manner that your audience would expect. Generally, companies do a pretty good job of conveying their tone of voice across the general copy on their website and their blogs. However carrying the tone of voice through to the product descriptions can be a little tricky.
Many factors determine your tone of voice. You can convey it through:
1. The type of words that you use
Does your vocabulary make you sound excited, happy, professional or friendly?
2. The pronouns you choose
Do you address your audience more informally or directly, as though you are having a conversation with them, using “you”?
3. Your sentence structure
Do you use long, flowing sentences or short, snappy sentences that get to the point?
Step 3: FAB: Features, Advantages and Benefits
After you settle on a tone of voice, you need to get down to the details of your product or service. You do this by introducing FAB.
The features, advantages and benefits of this product or service. The Features are the factual elements. This could include the technical specification, such as size of RAM for a computer.
The Advantages include what the product does as a result of these features. In this case it would be ‘Run demanding applications such as video editing, CAD or hardcore gaming.’
The Benefits are the results of that advantage. So in this case, you’d tell the customer exactly why they’d need the RAM.
‘Don’t waste any more time buffering and glitching. Seamlessly use a huge number of applications all at once and play games with ease.’ When writing these details in your description, you need to consider two things:
First of all, describing the product or service accurately. And the second is explaining how the customer would use the product or service. Always bear in mind your audience’s concerns and motivations.
You can include these as bullet points in your product descriptions or even in the body text.
Step 4: Use Bullet Points
Bullets points can make the product descriptions easier to scan, meaning that customers can find the information that they want so much quicker.
Many customers, for instance, will use the bullet points to compare products when deciding which to buy. Bullet points are also essential for technical products. Check out the following example from accounting software company, Twilio.
Step 5: It’s All About The Detail
Detail matters when writing product description but what kind of detail?
Essentially, businesses should include any additional information that will encourage the customer to convert. The following are some examples that you could use in your product descriptions.
- Shipping Information: Providing shipping information is a great way to incentivise your customers if you offer free shipping, discounts or deals.
This example, a popular online retailer, displays shipping perks in a shipping availability checker tool.
- Size Charts & Product Dimensions: Include product dimensions in your product descriptions wherever applicable.
Sellers of bulky items such as home and garden furniture might want to include some plans alongside their product dimensions. This’ll help to make it even clearer to their customers who need to know if it’ll fit in their homes. Missing details like these could make or break their decision to buy from you.
- Guarantees & Care Plans: Be sure to mention any additional guarantees or services that you offer alongside the main product or service. For instance, if you sell computers, you could talk about your care and repair services. Discuss your warranty too and whether you include any servicing or maintenance in the asking price.
Step 6: Include A USP
A USP is your unique selling point. You need to think about the key things that make your product different to your competitors and include these within the description.
It will not only help to differentiate your product among users, but for Google too. Google will then crawl your product description and select the most relevant keywords to rank the page for the most relevant search terms. Using the USP to tell an emotive story can also build brand value enormously.
Step 7: Power & Sensory Words
Using power and sensory words creates an immediate emotional response in your customers. Using them effectively throughout your product descriptions can elevate them tremendously.
Power and sensory words tend to have strong meanings because they’re so easy to visualize.
Here are some examples:
Passionate, Aromatic, Genius Remarkable, Affordable, Ethical, Genuine.
Most of these words relate directly to the senses. When consumers read them, they automatically imagine how your product or service might make their lives better. And this could be all the incentive they need to convert.
How To Search Engine Optimize Your Product Descriptions
Writing compelling product descriptions for your users is one thing, but making sure that they perform well in search results is important too. Optimizing your product descriptions for the search results means you’re more likely to appear at the top for converting keywords. This will enable you to get more traffic to your website.
Here’s how to do it:
1# Write For Users, Not For Google
By this we mean, avoid stuffing your product descriptions with keywords. Although keywords are important, your descriptions need to be written with your users in mind. A search engine’s main concern is ensuring that the information on the webpage that it displays is relevant to the user.
Google has a new way of determining how well a website should rank, called Page Experience. This means that Google will take into account the perceived experience a user will have when interacting with that web page. This means ensuring that the copy and content on that webpage is easy-to-read, well-written and targeted at the user.
2# Focus On Those Benefits & USPs
This ensures that your product description stands out to Google. Focusing on the benefits and USPs creates more compelling, interesting copy, and helps Google to determine the content of your pages.
3# Create Unique Product Descriptions
When you have a lot of similar products, it’s easy to think that it’s OK to write one product description and copy and paste this across your website on all other products. But as discussed, writing unique product descriptions enables you to differentiate yourself from competitors selling similar products online.
Google will choose to display your products over other generic product descriptions. Ultimately, the more unique your content is, the more likely Google is to choose your page to rank at the top of the search results.
4# Target The Necessary Keywords
You’ll need to look for the specific keywords that customers are searching when looking for your products or services online. If you don’t know how to do this, you can check out our step-by-step video guide to keyword research which I’ll link up here.
Once you’ve found your keywords, you’ll want to use these across your product descriptions, meta titles and meta descriptions. This step is critical because search engines present users with the products that are most relevant to their searches based on the search term.
The more relevant you show the product is to the search term through your descriptions, the higher it is likely to rank.
Use SEMrush or Ahrefs Keyword Planner to find the keywords that people are actually using to search. Always insert these keywords naturally.
Conclusion
Consumer shopping and spending habits look different today. Opening your online store allows you to be just one click away from your potential customers who want to shop from their comfort zone.
Shopiroller helps potential customers find your store using search engines and supports SEO best practices like customizable H1, title, and meta tags. Your customers will be able to access your Shopiroller store from anywhere and any device with internet access.
