A Guide To Writing Strong And Effective Product Descriptions
In our world in which people now shop online more than ever before, the copy we use to exemplify our products and offerings is also more crucial than ever. Think about it. When a customer is looking to purchase a product online, they can’t physically go into a store to experience the product in person to help them decide if they definitely want to buy it or not. Therefore, the product description that you create to describe your product is a powerful deciding factor into whether or not your customer will ultimately add the item to their cart or not and it can truly make or break your sale.
By now, you probably know how important copy is in communicating information and delivering messaging effectively to your audience as well as strengthening your brand identity and cultivating trust with your audience. The copy you use in your product descriptions serves a different function than other content you may have such as your web pages or blog posts. Product descriptions are a form of direct response marketing copywriting that need to be strategically created to provoke your audience to take action to purchase your items, adding profits directly to your bottom line!
So, how can you craft killer product descriptions that exemplify your products and offerings in the best way possible to help your products do what they were designed to do — sell?
We will be tackling this question today to offer you top tips to create strong and engaging product descriptions to more effectively capture and target your audience and better sell your products.
But, first let’s take a closer look at product descriptions to deepen our understanding of how they are written and what their purpose is.
What is a Product Description and What is Its Role?
While you may have additional product copy that is used to help better tell the full story of your products and offerings, a product description has its own specific and important role. Product descriptions are types of marketing copy that are designed to do exactly what they sound like: describe your product. This means that they typically go into detail and depth about what a certain product you offer entails including information about its features and benefits, as well as may possibly offer information about its appearance, dimensions, etc. The goal of your product description, is of course to convince a customer that your product is worth buying for various possible reasons such as helping to enhance their life and lifestyle in some way and/or solve a problem of theirs, etc. and then motivate that customer to purchase your product. You want to leave your customer feeling confident and empowered that any questions they have about your product are answered, and that they understand exactly what they will be getting from your product.
Depending on the online platform in which you are creating your product description, you may write a product description a little differently to stay in compliance with the guidelines of a certain platform as well as optimize it for that specific platform. Also, depending on the needs of your product, you may delve more deeply into its benefits and features or offer instructions about how it should be used, etc. Therefore, there is no one official formula or format to write a product description as it depends highly on your particular product and the platform you are creating it for.
However, there are certain strategies you can use to make sure your product description is better optimized to sell your products no matter what platform you are using.
What are Top Strategies You Can Use to Create More Effective Product Descriptions?
1) Understand Your Target Audience
Like any other copy you may write, crafting a strong product description begins with having a deep understanding of the audience it is designed to target. Think about who your ideal buyer may be to help you determine what they could be looking for in a product description that would encourage them to make a purchase.
Is your target audience composed of young millennials and Gen Z’ers who may appreciate more trendy, laidback and transparent language, or are your ideal customers busy, concerned moms and therefore, a product description chock full of benefits and features that also addresses their concerns would better resonate with them? What kind of tones and words would more deeply connect with your audience? Would they enjoy more cheeky terminology and humor or are just looking for the facts of the features and benefits of your products, no bells and whistles necessary?
Once you understand who your target audience exactly is, your aim is to write your product description directly to them, almost like you are having a conversation with them in person. You may think that you would want your product description to reach the biggest pool of potential customers it can reach. However, you have a much better chance of connecting with and resonating with audience when you have honed into exactly who your audience is and speak personally and directly to them.
2) Tell the Story of Your Product
There is a theme to copywriting these days in which it not only brilliantly exemplifies the topic it is covering, but approaches the subject in an engaging way that feels almost like the flow of a story. You can use this approach in your product descriptions as well, and in the case of your product descriptions, the goal of your story would be to paint a full picture of your product, exemplifying what it is and how it can potentially offer value to your audience.
How you would actually create your product description would depend on the particular needs and features of your product. For example, you would most likely write a product description for a fashion garment a little differently than that of say, a baby’s stroller. Therefore, a product description for a piece of clothing may offer suggestions of how to incorporate that item into your style and wardrobe, while a product description for a stroller may focus more heavily on information such as the safety of the product as well as directly address safety concerns.
And don’t think that this means you necessarily need to add a laundry list of benefits and features into your product description. At the end of the day, you want to entice your customer with strategic information they need to see to be motivated to make a purchase. Therefore, you can’t just be communicating all the features and benefits of a product, you also need to clearly explain the main takeaways of it, and highlight those that you believe will most resonate with your customer.
And remember, this product description and the image of your product may be the only thing your customer has to go off of to decide to make a purchase or not. So, consider crafting the language of your product description to not only sell the product itself, but the experience the product offers as well, to enhance their life and solve a problem. This goes back to the idea of telling a story in your product description. That being said, some brands do actually employ very creative routes in their product descriptions, literally telling stories. Hey, if it works, it works!
3) Use Romantic and Sensory Language to Attract Your Audience
Certain wording can have a more effective impact on your audience by creating deeper emotional appeal. Again, since your customers reading your online product descriptions don’t have the ability to see and touch your product in person, it is up to you and your product description to exemplify the experience of what it would be like to own your product. To do this, you can use certain romantic and sensory words that beautifully describe and elevate your product while creating a visceral impression of its qualities and features. It is easy to understand what sensory language is and the power it beholds if you look more closely at the kinds of words that are used to describe food products: smooth, crunchy, rich, decadent, velvety, etc. These types of words can spark a potential customer’s appetite as they read your product description and even possibly make their mouth begin to water!
Romantic wording can also be used to captivate your audience and tempt them into making a purchase. You may choose these certain types of language to attract your audience, as well as create a clear impression of the personality and vibe of your brand and products. Words like exquisite, dreamy, flowy, etc. which all point to the physical characteristics of a product can drive a sensory experience for your customer of what it would be like for them to own the product. You can also consider including a hook to capture your audience’s attention from the get-go.
3) Optimize Your Product Copy to be Easily Searched
As we have discussed in other blogs, writing eloquent and effective copy is only half the battle. It doesn’t matter how spectacular and well-written your product descriptions are if your audience can’t find your products. Therefore, you need to make sure your product descriptions are alsso optimized for various search engines as well as the platforms they are on. For example, there are certain SEO strategies you would employ to make sure your product descriptions can be found on an ecommerce platform like Amazon. This means that you will need to zero in on the crucial keywords for you to include in your product descriptions and then make sure you incorporate them into your copy in strategic ways. You can think of these keywords as the exact types of words or phrases a potential customer would type into a search query on a search engine to find a product like yours. You can also use various keyword research tools to build your list of keywords.
For example, if you sell a product like women’s loungewear, certain keywords that you might focus on are “pjs for women,” women’s sleepwear,and “leisure wear for women” to name a few. These are also the types of phrases that would come up if you were to search for the query “women’s loungewear” in a search engine.
Once you have determined your keywords, you want to make sure these target keywords are being strategically used throughout your product description, as well as the title of the product page, your image tags, and meta descriptions. Speaking of, we have a very informative article you can check on that to learn how to create effective meta descriptions.you can’t forget about the importance of meta descriptions. Also, to make sure your product pages are properly optimized, you want all of your products to have products schema as well.
Here at Firon Marketing, we have passionate wordsmiths who get seriously excited about everything copy-related. And we even specialize in product copy. Why? Because we know how important effective product copy is to a company’s success in helping them to actually sell their products and it’s pretty fun to write as well. What can we say? We’re not just strong marketers, we’re creative and strategic storytellers. Anyway, if you need help with amping up any of your copy or content, reach out to us.
