Having good product descriptions on your online shop is as important as having great images or a technically flawless website. Not only does it contribute to a positive customer experience, but it contributes to the credibility of your store, it can help your online shop rank higher, and boost conversions for your site’s visitors.
Before we get started, here is a small table of contents to show you what you'll learn today:
- What is a good product description?
- Why is a product description so important?
- How do you write a good product description? (7 Tips)
- Conclusion
What is a good product description?
Before we get into the nitty gritty of how to write a good product description, let’s define what makes a product description good in the first place.
For starters, an effective product description will boost sales on your site. When customers are well-informed and make a connection to your product, they are more likely to buy your product. In essence, your product description is your sales pitch, isn’t it? It informs the customer just like a salesperson would. It’s also one of the final steps consumers take when making a purchase decision.
A good product description reflects your brand and your target audience. It can really help bridge the gap between what your brand is and who your customers are.
A good product description will help your online shop rank higher as well. You probably already understand the cyclical nature of SEO. With more people finding your site, you’ll get more visitors and more sales. Higher conversions signal to Google that you are a good website and this will help you rank even higher. Having great texts in your product descriptions will get you there.
Why is a product description so important?
At this point, you now understand that good product descriptions can boost conversions, strengthen your brand voice, boost trustworthiness, and improve your site’s SEO. However, it’s important to see what actual consumers have to say about everything.
Here is a chart from eMarketer showing what US smartphone owners say are the most influential factors of a product page in their purchase decisions.
Clearly, many elements influence consumers during their online shopping experiences. 83% of all respondents talked about product page elements as being most influential (i.e. product images and product descriptions).
It’s worth noting that product reviews and star ratings also cracked the top 4, both with an overwhelming majority of respondents responding to those elements.
Did you know your product reviews can also end up affecting your SEO. With the right reviews provider, your product reviews (and service reviews) can end up appearing in Google searches, especially in Google Shopping. They can really help drive traffic to your site. Learn more about getting star ratings to appear throughout Google in our whitepaper:
How do you write a good product description?
There are a lot of things to think about when putting together a good product description. Here are a few tips on getting started!
1. Answer important questions before writing
Before you begin writing, you should ask yourself a few questions to help guide your product descriptions:
- Casual or formal language: How do I address my customers (also in emails and on the phone)?
- Who is my typical customer?
- Why do they need this product?
- What do they expect from the product?
- Where will they use the product?
- What additional information can I offer them to improve their customer experience?
These questions are basically a mix of product questions and customer questions. Product questions are relatively easy, especially with regard to specifications. However, knowing how you want to address your audience and what kind of language they use is essential for the "vibe" of your online shop (i.e. your brand).
Answering a few questions about the product (and product use) before you start writing will make it easier to know what features to highlight.
With regards to asking questions about your audience, more on that below.
2. Know your audience
Knowing who your audience is is important for creating a good product description.
If you haven’t yet created a buyer persona, you really should. Creating a profile of your ideal customer can help a variety of teams throughout your company. When it comes to product descriptions, a good customer profile will help you realise what is really important to them.
For example, if you sell high-end, professional headphones (like the ones in the next section), you probably have a different target audience than someone who sells gamer headphones or trendy, designer headphones. Knowing your customer's intent and motivation for buying these headphones should definitely affect how you write about your products.
If you work in a niche market, then you already know about how important it is to focus on your core audience and “speak their language”. However, if your target group isn't very niche, you might be better off avoiding too much technical or industry jargon.
Recommended reading:
How to Sell Unique Products to Niche Markets
3. Focus on benefits and features
A good product description should focus on the product’s features and benefits. Obviously, the features are a bit more clear cut. The benefits will require a bit more creativity and understanding of your target audience.
However, both features and benefits allow for creative writing. Be sure to use some positive adjectives that highlight them.
In the example below, you can see the product description talking about the “elegant design”, “remarkable sound performance” and “outstanding tonal balance”. Considering these headphones are at a higher price point than your average headphones, the product description reflects that in its language.
The product description touches on both the product features and its benefits.
Click to enlarge. (Source: Future Shop).
There is also an extended product description further down the page which goes into greater detail about the headphones’ features, benefits, and specifications.
Not only does the description inform the site’s visitor about a high-end product, but all these relevant texts and keywords will help the product page’s SEO and, in turn, help the page rank higher.
The product description goes on further down the page. Future Shop knows that their customers are very knowledgeable when it comes to audio equipment, so they give as much information as possible. Click to enlarge.
4. Use storytelling
Once you know who your audience is, make sure you try to touch on their emotional side as well by applying storytelling strategies.
In advertising school, copywriters and designers are always taught that babies and puppies sell products. Now, we can’t always use puppies and babies to sell everything (or can we?), but the core concept remains relevant: Emotions inspire people.
Source: Shutterstock/GaudiLab
Let's have another look at the same Future Shop product page as before. Towards the bottom, there is a section dedicated to the makers of this particular product, a company called Focal. If you’re a true audiophile, this company description will surely touch you. Here is one paragraph from this text:
Focal’s ambition is to make every occasion you listen to music a moment of privilege, where music is respected and emotions are roused. For them, innovation and tradition come together to enhance the performance of hi-fi sound and the beauty of music. Their desire is to open a gateway to new sensations and emotions, giving you the chance to experience pleasure in its purest form. Focal products are also lifestyle objects, objects of everyday life. That’s why every tiny detail has been researched, designed and tweaked. This makes them exceptional products capable of flawless performance with a distinguished style.
If this poetic product description were recorded into music, wouldn't you want to listen to it on a pair of Focal headphones?
5. Make it easy to read - Use bullet points
Generally speaking, extremely long product descriptions aren’t necessary. In the case above, this is a product selling at an extremely high price range, so it is fitting that the product description is a bit longer than usual.
In most cases, however, you’ll want to make the product description a bit shorter and easy to read. Bullet points can really help with this.
On the following product page, Dotty Fish does this really well. Along with the detailed product images and clean design, the product description does a great job highlighting the products and features in these bullet points.
This product description from Dotty Fish does a great job of blending storytelling and highlighting benefits and features. The bullet points also make it much easier to read.
Some important points highlighted in the bullet points include information on:
- the material (breathable leather)
- non-slip sole (so our babies won’t get injured)
- perfect first shoes (emotional touch)
- podiatry tested (our babies’ health)
Remember, sometimes your users will skip the rest of the description and just skim the bullet points. That’s why it’s important to highlight the most important features and benefits here.
6. Think about SEO - optimise with keywords
Although this will probably happen organically if you write a good product description, it’s important to keep your keywords in mind. From a search engine optimisation (SEO) perspective, using the right keywords is going to help bump your pages up in the search rankings.
On a side note, we touched on product reviews already in one of the earlier tips. Besides building up credibility, collecting and displaying product reviews bring SEO benefits to your product pages as well. The biggest benefits being:
- Adding relevant keywords to your product pages
- A consistent update of your product pages with “new content”
Again, thinking about those important keywords from an SEO perspective is going to benefit your page immensely.
7. Use photos and video
Of course, when we think about product descriptions, we think about texts. However, you shouldn’t ignore those other product page elements as they are also extremely important to conversions.
Images might generally lack words (ahem, your images’ alt texts should be optimised for SEO), but they do answer consumer questions. Be sure to include as much as possible regarding the different angles and uses of your product in the images.
Conclusion
Product descriptions are not something to be overlooked. They can tell stories, answer questions, and speak to your target audience in a way that builds connections. They can also really help boost your page’s ranking in search engines and bring more traffic to your online shop. Make sure they get the attention they deserve!
16/03/21
