The product descriptions play an important role in your goal to achieve more sales. If your website’s content doesn’t entice buyers to purchase the products, the chances of increasing revenue are very low. However, there are several strategies you can rely on if you want to boost your description writing skills.
First of all, ask yourself this question: how powerful are your current product descriptions? If you’re getting the sales you’re aiming for; they are probably all right. If, however, you don’t find the number of buyers to be increasing, you need to make some immediate changes in this aspect. We’ll suggest few tips for you to implement to start writing amazing product descriptions.
The Descriptions Should Be Unique
We all know that copying content from the websites of competitive companies is easy and less time-consuming. You shouldn’t give into that temptation since plagiarism is a serious thing in the world of the Internet. Google is known to penalise those websites that steal content from other sites.
Even if you decide to rewrite the content just to avoid the penalties for plagiarism, you won’t achieve success with the product descriptions. Do you know why? The audience will recognise your trick. They don’t like seeing the same claims over and over again. They need something new, something unique! Unique product descriptions lead to real conversions.
Creating unique content for all your products can only benefit you regarding increasing sales. Every product has its advantages, so crafting a description that puts the focus on the product’s quality is crucial. Customers are more likely to opt for your product if the description reflects the personality of your brand.
The Focus Must Be on the Customers
Before you sit down and start writing the descriptions, you need to define your buyer persona. A buyer persona is your ideal customer – a person who represents what the clients of your company may require. When you’re selling a particular product, you should be aware of the person who would be interested in buying it, at what cost and under which conditions.
You can start writing an excellent description once you get the answers to these questions:
- Who is your customer?
- What problems do they have?
- How can your product help them solve those problems?
- How will they benefit from this investment?
- Why should they choose you over the competition? What are the advantages of your product, which give more value for their money?
Speak of Benefits, Not of Features
Creating a comprehensive, detailed list of the benefits of your products is a must. The truth is, no customer wants to hear about how you decided to sell the product. They don’t want to see detailed descriptions of every single feature your product has.
If for example, you’re selling a char, the description should only list the features without getting into too many details. Instead of elaborating on the type of wood you used and listing all features of that material, you can explain what exactly makes that material better than any other. Explain how the wood is a better investment in the long-term.
A feature makes a product useful and effective, and while it can make your company stand out from the competition, features are rarely the ultimate factor behind your sales.
The Descriptions Should be Easy to Scan
People are too busy to read detailed, endless descriptions of every product they find interesting. Usually, they look at many options before choosing the perfect one, and that can be very time-consuming. Therefore, the majority of customers will probably just scan through your product description and base their decision on what they see. Statistics show that people read an average of 16% of the words of a website.
Keep in mind that the reader will give only a few seconds to your descriptions. In those few seconds, they should understand what exactly this product is and how they can benefit from it. If you make them interested, they might read the whole thing.
To make your description enticing regarding scanning, you need to use big and bright fonts, especially for the most important parts. Include key selling points into your headlines and use bullet points or lists instead of paragraphs. A description is your sales pitch, not an essay. If you have to write few paragraphs due to the nature of your product, make them as brief as possible. Use short sentences with words that a kid in fourth grade would easily understand.
Optimise Your Descriptions for the Search Engines
This is an important tip, but it does not mean that you should forget to focus on the customers. When writing a product description, you must find a way to focus on both your customers’ needs and the search engine optimisation. This approach allows you to rank higher on the search engines and with that, it brings more customers on the website. However, once a visitor is on your website, your descriptions still need to show that these are the exact products they are looking for. That’s the only way to convert a visitor into a paying customer.
Optimising the descriptions is a two-part process that must consist of both SEO and a customer-oriented strategy. Without any of the two, you cannot enjoy an increase in sales and traffic. When you manage to attract traffic to your website, you’ve done nothing if the content does not entice them to purchase. And even if the content is enticing and makes people want to buy the product, there will be no customers visiting the website if it’s not ranked higher in the search engine.
Plan Your Voice
The tone of your voice depends mostly on the audience you are planning to attract. If you’re aiming for a target audience consisted of teenage boys, for example, you’ll need to use their slang and address them directly so that they will feel familiar with the brand. You can also infuse elements of pop culture to attract this target audience.
Once you determine your buyer persona, you should think about the way you will present your product. Do you speak to an audience that requires descriptions that are more formal? Is your audience young? Would they appreciate a friendly, humoristic tone?
Whether you will sound like a corporation or like someone who wants to express a dash of humour, the choice is up to you. However, you need to understand that it is exactly your tone that will differentiate you from the competition. The tone of voice is what gives the customers an idea of the brand.
Hiring a writing service like Essay Scholar Advisor is a very smart thing to do when you can’t discover your writing voice. However, you’ll have to collaborate with the writers to help them determine the approach you need. Together, you’ll discover the style that works for your audience.
Start with a Draft
No one can write perfect content from the first draft. Even the best writers in the world need some proofreading and changes that they make on their second, third or even fourth revision. Therefore, you need to treat the first version of the description as nothing more but a draft. Express your thoughts and ideas, whatever they might be. You can always change them afterwards.
Once you know the buyer persona, your writing tone and SEO strategy, you are ready to write your first draft. When writing the draft, you should go through the features and benefits’ list and rank them in the way you want them to be presented in the description. Planning the format of the description is important since it has to be done in a way that it is easy to follow.
When writing your description, you should first focus on the most important benefits. It is a known fact that people don’t read everything, so starting with the most important points is a sure way to engage the customers.
Do not Forget that Details are Important
Details are a crucial part of every description. After all, purchasing a product online has many disadvantages, the biggest one being the inability to smell and feel the product. Therefore, your customers are quite limited in regards to seeing the product in front of them aside from the photos you will provide.
This is a big drawback, so you need to make sure that both your photos and the description fill in the blanks. Focusing on details like colour, shape, size and material is important.
Of course, you should always provide accurate details. Otherwise, you will ruin your reputation and lose many of your existing and potential customers.
Mind Your Grammar and Punctuation
As we said, a proofreading must follow after the first draft. Even though you should not pay too much attention to the grammar and punctuation in the first draft, this is an important thing to fix before publishing the description. The first draft is your time to express and manage the information and ideas, but no description will be taken seriously if there are grammar and punctuation errors in it.
When a product description is full of spelling errors, the visitors of the website are unlikely to take the company seriously. So make sure that all your descriptions are flawless regarding content quality and punctuality before you share it with the customers.
The Takeaway: Write Product Descriptions that Convert
As the technology advances, online sales are becoming more and more in demand. Therefore, businesses must conform to the trends and start selling their products online. To do this, you should pay special attention to the description. That’s the key factor in making the customers choose you over the competition. In the dynamic business environment of internet marketing and shifting customer loyalty, you will need all the leverage that you can get.
How about you? What is your favourite technique for writing product descriptions? Share with us your insights and tips in writing online copies that convert visitors into customers. Head over to our comments section as we’d love to know your thoughts on these.
Stacey Marone is a freelance writer and a social media marketer. She creates magnetic content optimised for search. In her free time, she also does volunteer work and organises some activities for children. Her passions involve painting, reading, and writing. You can follow her on Twitter.