We spend a lot of time talking about conversion techniques, ranking strategies and optimisation here at ASC, and while they are all crucial, in our opinion one thing never changes:
Copy is king.
A well-written product description uses creativity, copywriting techniques and product benefits to pull users through your conversion funnel and drive sales.
While the product description isn’t the only thing that drives conversions (things like the product title and especially the product photos obviously have a huge impact), it is one of the main driving forces regardless.
If you don’t know how to write a good product description but your product is ranked well, you are essentially wasting your position and will never get the number of sales that you could with some effective product descriptions.
Luckily, we’re here to solve that for you!
This guide will show you how to offer more value, benefits and urgency than your competitors, in order to grow your sales, reduce your return rate, and develop sustainable long-term growth.
Most importantly, we will use product description templates and some of the most effective product description examples from around the web to teach you how to write a great production description that sells!
Without further ado, let’s start at the beginning:
What is a product description?
An eCommerce product description is the text on the product page that describes the product to a reader, along with the benefits and features, in an attempt to get that reader to purchase the product.
In other words, it’s a description of a product – although writing great product descriptions is a little more complicated than that.
The first tip is to put yourself in the mind of the reader.
If you were the reader, what features and specifications of the product would you want to know?
What questions would you have, and how can you make sure your product content writing answers them?
What problems does your product solve, and why is it better than the competitor’s products?
Answering these questions in a brief, clear manner that can easily and quickly read is the key to writing great product descriptions.
How Should I Write my Product Descriptions?
It can sometimes be confusing to see so many creative product descriptions around the web, all using different formats and styles of writing.
If you’re stuck wondering which style could work best for you, it always comes down to being aware of your target audience and what they’re looking for.
When it comes to buying clothes, customers are likely to check the photos first – since how the product looks and fits is the #1 concern.
Once they are happy with the image and open to potentially buying the product, they may check the product description to answer any further questions they have.
This is why the ASOS example above is so effective, giving all of those answers as concisely and clearly as possible with no fluff or filler.
When it comes to writing Amazon product descriptions, you have a specific character limit and layout to work with so the focus switches to getting as much information and as many benefits as possible into that space to maximise what you have.
If this is your main concern, check out our full guide to Amazon product optimisation.
The context changes again when looking at technical description examples, especially products in a particularly technical niche such as computer hardware, musical production hardware, scientific equipment, etc.
In this case being concise and easy to read is a little less important, as you know the people reading are knowledgeable about the subject and looking for as many technical details as possible to compare your product to others.
Check out this sample product description for a guitar from musical instrument specialists PMTonline:
It’s a completely different world to the ASOS one right?
But if you were a studio musician looking for a new guitar, this is all crucial information with each point being a chance to push the sale!
If you are unsure how much is appropriate, split testing is always the best way to figure out what works best, but you can get pretty close immediately just by spending some time thinking about what your customers will want to know before purchasing.
Do I Actually Need Product Descriptions?
While there have been cases of products improving their conversion rates after removing their descriptions (mostly products that focus more on imagery such as clothing), in general, it’s a hard yes.
A study by Robert Cialdini, professor of marketing and author of classic marketing books such as Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, found that when simply asking people to sign up “because” and providing a reason, raised signup rates from 60% to 94%, regardless of what the reason was.
Ignoring the huge conversion benefits of copywriting for a second, accurate product descriptions also optimise your product pages for Google, leading to more organic traffic. They can also answer questions about the product that customers might otherwise contact you to ask, saving your customer service team a lot of time.
Now that we’ve covered the ‘why’, let’s take a look at some data-backed tips on how to write product descriptions:
Use power words that convert
There are a variety of words that sell out there and it’s worth getting yourself a good reference list or book to get ideas from.
Examples include:
- Free
- Instant
- Miracle
- Quick
- Comprehensive
- Introducing
- Now
and more!
Keeping this in mind will allow you to keep your product descriptions emotive and provocative, and prevent you from falling back on the same words repeatedly.
Let’s take a look at some more tips on how to write a product description:
1. Know Your Target Audience
We already briefly discussed this in regards to how technical and comprehensive or concise and readable your copy should be, but this is important for the context of what you’re talking about too.
If you’re selling cheap party or novelty gifts you can be light-hearted and funny, attempting to match the mood of the person shopping – if you’re first aid kits or funeral services, you should probably be a lot more sincere!
Either way, keep in mind exactly what these potential customers are looking for and how closely you can align your product descriptions with that!
2. Use Brand Storytelling Techniques
Telling the story of your brand and how you’re different can be a great way to increase brand loyalty and conversions.
Likewise, telling a story about the customer and their problems, focusing on how your product could solve them, is likely to push more sales too.
We recently wrote a guide to product storytelling including the 6 best examples from around the web, so check that out to learn more about some of the best product descriptions and ads around.
3. Optimise for Google
It can be awkward trying to keep your product description writing as concise and full of selling points as possible, while also optimising them for keywords.
However, using the correct keywords will drastically boost the traffic towards your product pages and so it’s more than worth the effort of juggling both aspects.
4. Check Your Grammar and Spelling
This is one that’s easy to forget and if you’re not naturally good at spelling, it can also be very easy to miss.
While Google can tell misspelt keywords and still rank you for them, and some customers may not even notice; for the ones that do, spelling errors make you look unprofessional and can drastically reduce conversion rates.
A study from RealBusiness found that 74% of web users pay attention to the spelling and grammar of a website and over half (59%) would avoid doing business with a company if they saw multiple spelling mistake – that’s a huge potential drop in sales for such a small and avoidable error!
5. Make it Easy to Scan
Some people have no interest in reading an eCommerce description in it’s entirety, preferring to scan for the specific details that matter to them.
Using things like:
- Bullet points
- CAPITALISATION
- Bolding
- Coloured Text
…and more can draw these people’s eyes to the details that matter, securing the purchase from them whereas a block of plain text would lead to them giving up.
Writing good product descriptions is as much about making the information as easily as possible to digest and scan as it is about making sure the correct information is all there.
6. Benefits, not Features
By this we don’t mean ” don’t list the features”.
As we’ve just been discussing, this is actually necessary especially when selling a product in a technical niche.
However, it’s good to translate these features into benefits, then talk about the benefits of those benefits.
This allows you to essentially translate those features into ways the product will directly influence your customers’ lives, appealing to them more personally and directly.
For example, don’t just say a laptop “comes with a free antivirus”, say it “comes with a free antivirus so you never have to worry about the devastating effects of spyware and viruses again.”
This creates a problem the buyer may not have even thought of, and positions your product as the solution.
Do We Offer a Product Description Writing Service?
If you’d rather hire an experienced product description writer than spend time doing it yourself, we do offer this service, however generally only to our partners and the companies we work with closely to manage their entire marketing solutions.
If you’d like to become part of this exclusive group of companies, request a proposal now to see how we can boost your conversions and traffic in the long term!
You could also try using a freelancer from a site like Fiverr, but realistically, this guide gives every detail you need on how to write great product descriptions – so the most cost-effective way is likely to do it yourself.
In the long term, you’ll need to test descriptions against each other to find out what really works and make progress.
Keep this in mind when writing product descriptions, and stick to the tips listed here, and you can’t fail!
We will be back with more actionable guides, but in the meantime check out our process page to see how we rank hundreds of Amazon products and provide the only Amazon ranking service that’s guaranteed to work, every single time!
