You put a lot of thought into choosing quality products to offer your target audience. Don’t let lukewarm, uninteresting product descriptions overshadow your collection.
Not only do unengaging, incomplete product descriptions do your collection a disfavor, but they impact your bottom line. A study shows that 20% of unsuccessful purchases happen because of a lack of product information.
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Like any good piece of content on your website, well-written product descriptions serve SEO goals and serve your audience. So, how do you go about writing product descriptions that help your customers move further along their buyer journey?
Use these nine tips, including creating a customer avatar and formatting your descriptions, to connect with your audience and help them see the benefits of your products.
- 1. Create a Customer Avatar
- 2. Concentrate on Practical Benefits and Emotional Needs
- 3. Craft SEO-Friendly Descriptions
- 4. Avoid Overused, Generic Language
- 5. Paint a Picture With Your Words
- 6. Infuse Short Stories Into Your Descriptions
- 7. Use Testimonials
- 8. Think of Vital Details Customers Need To Know
- 9. Think About Description Formatting
1. Create a Customer Avatar
Customer avatars or personas go beyond simple demographics. A robust customer persona exemplifies all your ideal buyers’ traits. These traits don’t simply include common denominators such as gender, age, marital status, etc. Instead, they go deeper.
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There are several approaches you can take to creating a detailed customer persona. The more you understand your audience, the easier it will be for you to write product descriptions for them.
This is a time-consuming but important step in your marketing efforts. You may consider working with an eCommerce SEO agency that can help you conduct in-depth research and use their resources and experience to cultivate a well-defined avatar. Supplemental eCommerce SEO services, such as keyword research, can help you get the most out of product descriptions.
Tips for Creating Your Avatar
Thinking of vital questions while building your customer avatar gives you “gutter guards” that keep you moving in the right direction. For instance, what questions spring to mind when thinking about your target buyer? Does your ideal customer use specific phrases, language, or slang? What hobbies, interests, and passions does your target customer have?
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As you mull over these questions, think about the words your quintessential customer would use to answer them. By including the same language in your descriptions, you’ll have an easier time forging a bond with your customer base.
2. Concentrate on Practical Benefits and Emotional Needs
Consider how your products make customers happy and what emotional pain points your products address. Once you have the answer, draw direct attention to the matter in your description. Go a step further and think about whether these items solve a practical or emotional problem.
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Tips for Meeting Your Customer’s Emotional Needs
When thinking about your audience’s emotional needs and how to meet them, consider your target customer’s goal or task while shopping at your store.
Remember, you need not limit yourself to solving immediate needs. For instance, if you sell lip balm, you could not only talk about the moisturizing benefits of your product, but you could also highlight other features that could be important to your audience — think botanical ingredients, long-lasting comfort, and recyclable packaging.
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Tips for Turning Product Features Into Practical Benefits
Note product features in your descriptions, but write them like benefits. Do this by breaking down your descriptions and listing features and their advantages. For example, if your lip balm contains organic lavender, stress the flowering plant’s tension-taming properties. Maybe you don’t use synthetic ingredients in your balm, which benefits the environment and your customers’ health.
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3. Craft SEO-Friendly Descriptions
Not only must your product descriptions attract customers, but they must also answer the call of search engine algorithms. Search engine optimization may seem like more of a headache than a solution, but once you get the hang of them, meta descriptions, keywords, and image alt tags help get eyes on your products. This is another area where eCommerce SEO services become an invaluable resource.
Tips for Creating Optimized Descriptions
One great thing about SEO-friendly product descriptions is that the effort you put into crafting them pays off. Use keyword tools to identify high-volume keywords and phrases to include in descriptions. Save time by scoping out your top competitors to see which keywords they use for products similar to yours.
Look for opportunities to add meta-descriptions and titles on product pages. These are brief descriptions site visitors see on search result pages, which means they also affect your site’s click-through rate. One must-know fact about meta-descriptions is they can help attract visitors to your company even if your company doesn’t claim a top spot on the first page of search engine results.
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If customers reviewed or rated your products, include that information for search engines. This may involve adding some HTML code to your product landing pages. Not only do reviews help get eyes on your products, but they also give potential customers an idea of the quality of products you sell.
It must be added that while it’s important to incorporate SEO-friendly text in your product description, using black hat techniques, or inaccurate product descriptions won’t do your website any favors.
4. Avoid Overused, Generic Language
Get critical about the words and phrases you use to describe your products. Cliches may spring to mind immediately while brainstorming the perfect description, but go beyond overused language.
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Tips for Dodging Cliches
The way to craft elevated product descriptions is to focus on specifics rather than generalities. Pinpoint a particular product feature and explain what makes the characteristic great. Think about why you picked a specific feature for your product and why your audience needs it. Using previous customer reviews is a great way to get an insight into how your customers feel about these features and how they use them. If you have employees, ask for their input, too.
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Another way to overcome cliched language is to support your claims with facts. Not only do facts make you a more trustworthy business owner, but they also help educate site visitors. The only thing better than selling your product is educating your target audience while selling your product.
Tips for Rephrasing Cliches
At first, you may struggle to keep cliches out of your descriptions. When you notice them, ask yourself what the cliche really means. Take the phrase, “at the end of the day.” Think about synonyms that replace the cliche and turn it into something original, such as, “when you take everything into consideration.”
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Another way to rephrase overused language is to ask yourself if you need the expression in your descriptions. You only have a small window to capture a customer’s attention, so maximize every word you use.
5. Paint a Picture With Your Words
Besides describing your products with words, look for opportunities to create images with descriptions. When your writing appeals to the five senses, you take advantage of sensory marketing. Even if you cannot use physical items and scents while engaging with your target audience, you can use words to recreate an experience. When customers feel like they already have your product in their hands after reading a description, the next logical move for them is to make a purchase.
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Tips for Turning Descriptions Into Sensory Experiences
When drafting product descriptions, think about accessible comparisons and specific adjectives. For comparisons, think about something familiar to your target customer. Using the lip balm example, you could describe the abrasive feeling of dry, chapped lips, then pivot to how your product softens your customers’ lips so they feel like velvet. When making comparisons, think of what your product smells like, how it feels in your hands, and how it tastes or what the taste reminds you of.
Exercise restraint when inserting adjectives into descriptions and comparisons, as too many may make your writing awkward to read. Specificity becomes your best friend for adjectives. For instance, rather than saying your lip balm is “fragrant,” go deeper and use a specific fragrance. Does the balm have a “tart” fragrance, a “honeyed” fragrance, or a “rosy” fragrance?
6. Infuse Short Stories Into Your Descriptions
You may find opportunities to include short stories in product descriptions. Devoting one or two sentences to processes and backstories helps you create a human connection with viewers and provides more details about your products and company.
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Use your customer avatar to help decide which stories your customers want to read. For instance, if you cater to an audience that cares about sustainability, share how your product and the processes you use to create it support the environment. If you sell luxury items, you can briefly describe your quality control and quality assurance process in your description.
Tips for Telling Effective Stories
If you want to describe how you make your product, think about what’s unique about the process. For instance, do you only use locally sourced ingredients or materials? Perhaps you trust a family recipe or technique to produce your items. If you owe your product’s appeal to an unusual method, share that in the description.
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You may have specific values that guide your company and the products you offer. Share whether you support artisans in your area, if you donate a portion of your sales to charity, or if you run a family-operated business.
7. Use Testimonials
Encourage your customers to leave product reviews and testimonials. When they do, add their words to your product descriptions. Not only do customer testimonials boost your conversion rates, but they also make it easy for your target audience to trust you. While videos, images, and feature lists pique a shopper’s interest, reviews and testimonials are more likely to turn a prospective customer into a committed customer.
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Tips for Maximizing Reviews & Testimonials in Product Descriptions
If you have the perfect review or testimonial to supplement your descriptions, add them higher on the page. Most shoppers don’t bother scrolling down for reviews, so build trust sooner rather than later on the page.
It’s also better to avoid going overboard with testimonials and reviews. Pick out the cream of the crop, and make it easy for visitors to see these glowing words.
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Aside from customer reviews, consider including awards you’ve won for your products and media mentions you’ve garnered for your product or service. Did you recently break a sales record? Share that in your descriptions.
8. Think of Vital Details Customers Need To Know
While writing descriptions, think about details customers want and need to know to make a purchase without a second thought. For instance, for food descriptions, include ingredients, allergens, where you sourced the food from, and whether the food’s vegetarian- or vegan-friendly.
For clothing item descriptions, detail the fit and other item specifications, the model’s size and height, your brand’s story, and how to take care of the garment. If you ethically source your materials, let customers know that, too.
While writing electronics product descriptions, let your audience know if you have a warranty and what kind, the materials used to make the item, specifications, and packaging details. You may also want to add brand details like manufacturing techniques, company values, and your backstory.
Tips for Choosing Essential Details
With so many details clamoring for your and your audience’s attention, how do you decide which to include in your descriptions? Thinking like a journalist and asking yourself who, what, where, why, and when points you in the right direction. Here’s how to break that down:
- Who do you see using your product?
- What specifications make your product unique?
- Where do you intend customers to use your product?
- Why should people buy your product instead of a competitor’s?
- When should people use your product?
For each question, condense your answers into one or two sentences.
9. Think About Description Formatting
Once you have the perfect product description, it’s important to format it properly. The right formatting makes descriptions easy on the eyes without leaving out vital facts. You need not answer every question a person may have about your items, but at least cover the broad strokes. Then, let visitors know where to get more information, such as by calling a number or submitting an online form.
Tips for Laying Out Great Descriptions
Make descriptions easy to scan by using bullet and numbered lists, subheadings, and white space on the page that lets your words “breathe.” Include visuals like graphs, videos, charts, screenshots, and creative illustrations.
Once you know the elements of compelling product descriptions, they become a breeze to write. Plug in these tips to better understand your product, your business brand, and your customers.
