How to write good product descriptions
Buying online goods and services online is very different to “real world” shopping. When you go to your favourite high street store you can touch things, try them on, and test them out, as well as getting a sales assistant to answer your specific questions.
The web is so much different.
Your text copy is usually the only avenue the customer has to find out about the product, and hence heavily influences them to buy or not.
Unfortunately many shop owners neglect product descriptions, provide too little information, or even supply too much irrelevant information.
Put your customer head on
The first step in writing a good product description is to think like your customers might so. When you go to buy something what questions do you ask that might make your mind up to get out your bank card?
Let’s use a “UFO alarm clock” as an example because you want one for your kids to get them up in time for school.
On many shopping sites you might see a very short description like:
UFO alarm clock, 8cm x 25cm, battery powered, lights up when alarm rings
Not very useful! As a customer you might want to know a few specific things:
- I don’t understand centimeters, what’s that in inches?
- My kids can be clumsy, will it break easily if they drop it?
- Are there any sharp edges?
- Does it do anything fun?
- How loud is the alarm? Will it actually wake them up?
- How long do the batteries last? Are they included?
I’m sure you could think of a lot more questions. Now lets write a more useful description:
Make waking up fun! Your kids will love this unique alarm clock, at wake up time it starts glowing and “rings” with the sound of a UFO taking off. Fantastic!
Made of sturdy plastic it has no sharp edges and won’t split if you drop it. The ring volume can be adjusted from quiet up to x decibels.
Runs on 4 AA batteries, typical battery life 1 year. What’s more batteries are included!
Dimensions: 8cm (approx 3”) tall and 25cm (approx 10”) wide
Weight: 0.5kg (about 1.1lbs)
See how much more informative this description is? Simply by thinking about what questions your customer might ask you can dramatically improve your chances of making the sale.
Other ideas to add value
- Video, combined with a narrative, is a useful tool to demonstrate how to use a product, or to display some of it’s features working.
- Additional product images are also useful for showing the product from different angles, zooming in on finer details, or different states such as “open” or “closed”.
- Show similar or related products. The one on display might not be quite right for the customer so offering them alternatives for comparison may help them choose to buy.
- If the product relies on additional products (such as the inevitable batteries) then consider including batteries with the product, or offering variations of the product, eg Product including batteries and Product without batteries.
- If the product is complex consider splitting the description up under specific sub headings such as Description, Features, Measurements and so on. This make scan reading far easier.
If your sales are slow then have a look at your product descriptions and ask yourself how you’d feel if you were the customer.
Happy writing!
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