How To Create Product Descriptions That Sell

E-commerce companies face many a challenge when it comes to moving customers along in the buying process. The ease with which a site visitor can leave and go to a competitor’s store cannot be matched in the brick-and-mortar world.

Many things on a website can facilitate this such as helpful navigation and overall site design and layout. Individual product descriptions take on high priority in the virtual shopping space and can make or break a customer’s decision to click “buy”. Understanding how to write product descriptions that help to convert visitors into customers is of the utmost importance for anyone responsible for creating e-commerce content.

Step #1—Answer Basic Questions

The first thing that any product description must do is give shoppers the information they need in order to buy with confidence. You can think of this in terms of answering the questions that shoppers would logically ask about the product.

Depending on the nature of your products, important product description information may include:

• Fabric, material or ingredients
• Method of construction, fabrication or creation
• Available sizes and sizing charts
• Available colors
• Special features and their uses or benefits

For any feature that has an associated use or benefit, that should be clearly stated when and where possible as this transforms the description into something truly focused on the shoppers’ needs.

Step #2—Differentiate

Whether you exclusively sell your own product line or are a reseller of another manufacturers’ sold on multiple sites (including the manufacturers’ own sites), your product description content must differentiate each item from others like it, and even from the same product sold on different sites.

Think of your own online shopping experiences here. You no doubt have been on a website and found more than one product that may work for what you need and you need to select which one to buy. If the product descriptions do not clearly differentiate one from the other, how can you feel confident in your purchasing decision? You may even go to a competitive site to get that information—and then potentially to purchase as well.

The same concept holds true when you know customers are assessing your unique product against that found elsewhere. Your content needs to tell them why your product and your company are better.

Step #3—Use Your Entire Toolbelt

A hammer alone cannot get every job done and neither can copy-only product descriptions. Your online page design should include widgets and other elements where you can highlight some features such as color or size, for example.

Product compare features or tables as well as resource or how-to guides can be highly beneficial selection tools that keep shoppers with you during their entire decision-making process. Images and videos on product pages offer you the power to show as well as tell and can adjunct your on-screen copy nicely. These can also provide added SEO benefits.

Make the Sale

E-commerce marketers can be in need of product descriptions for three primary reasons. New product introductions logically require such work. Sometimes you may want to refresh existing content either to better fit a page redesign or to offer better information to shoppers. For resellers, editing manufacturer-provided content is a must in order to avoid duplicate content (unless you are the sole reseller for a specific product line, other resellers are also given the same product descriptions that you are).

No matter the reason for your product description content work, make sure that you put yourself in your customers’ shoes and try to think about the questions they will have and answer them up front.