Writing Product Descriptions That Sell

When it comes to your online store, your product descriptions are your opportunity to make a connection with your customer. A good product description should supply customers with important information about the features and benefits of the product so that they’re compelled to buy.

A big mistake you can make is to do no more than simply describe your product. Great marketing copy should entice and persuade your customer. Let's look at some key ways to write great product descriptions and get out of the trap of writing too blunt or simple product descriptions.

Know Your Target Customer

Writing compelling content starts with knowing who you are trying to persuade to buy. Promoting products to athletic minded college kids will differ a great deal from to selling to first time moms, for example. Take what you know about your target audience and write with their interests and lifestyles in mind.

Emphasize Your Products’ Biggest Benefits

As the seller, you are excited about your products and their details and specifications. It's understandable that you want to show your customers that you did a really good job making or sourcing your products. Yet, most customers aren't too interested in a long list of features and specs. Too often they get bored and lose interest quickly.

Write instead with the perspective of how your product will address your customers' needs and desires. Consider the benefit of each of your features. Think of highlighting the benefit of each feature and tell your customers how happy, healthy, or more productive they will be after they buy it. Ideally, you want to address which problems and inconveniences your product help solve.

Avoid Cliches

When you start writing your ecommerce product descriptions, you need a rich vocabulary and a lot of inspiration. However, there can be also moments when you feel stuck and you might use bland descriptions like “top-quality product”. An unoriginal cliche like that will leave your customer thinking that your product is like all the rest.

In order to avoid a lackluster reaction from your customer, you should be as specific as possible. Rather than using hackneyed and boring descriptions of your products, you should describe each technical detail along with its benefit. Talking about product details adds credibility.

Use Storytelling

Does your product or brand have a backstory that’s particularly special to you? Chances are it will be particularly special and endearing to your audience too. Use that story in your product description to add more character to your items. You're engaging your audience and winning hearts and minds.

You can add your story after your benefits description so that the customer can choose to read further or not. When it comes to telling a story about your products, ask yourself:

• Who made the product?
• What inspired them to make the product?
• What obstacles did they overcome on the way?

Use Social Proof

Your online visitors might feel a bit insecure whether you are a legitimate and professional seller or not, particularly if you are new on the market. These customers are likely to search for suggestions or recommendations to check whether your products are really as you describe them to be. Your customers are much more likely to close the deal when a product has a high number of positive reviews.

By including personal reviews of your previous customers in the ecommerce product description, you will add more credibility to your brand and establish a more personal connection with your buyers. If you have had your products reviewed and featured by someone reputable, you can really add to the trust-worthiness factor.

Make Your Description Scannable To The Eye

Lastly, make sure that your product page design is encouraging visitors to read what you have. Presenting your product descriptions with a clear, scannable design makes them easier to read and more appealing to potential customers.

Here are some tips that you can use to make your product descriptions more visually appealing to your customers, and can be seen in the image above:

• Entice your web visitor with headlines
• Use easy-to-scan bullet points
• Include plenty of white space
• Increase your font size to promote readability

Conclusion

In eCommerce, product descriptions are the best form of communication you have with your customers to get them to buy. Therefore, you should know who your target audience is and personalize your content in such a way to speak “their language”. A good product description will change the way they think about your product and they will become more open to trying it.