10 Steps: How to Write the Best Product Descriptions

While running a business in the area of eCommerce, one of the crucial factors that influence a website conversion is a product description. In this dynamically changing and competitive industry, you need to optimize your website and campaigns constantly. To stand out from your competition, you should not only follow trends but also think outside the box. 

Even though preparing an effective product description is not rocket science, many online stores fail this task. Fortunately, we are here for you! We decided to gather quite a few good practices for creating appealing yet informative product descriptions. Do you think that your product descriptions pass the test? Let’s find it out. Check out our guideline and improve your conversion rate statistics today.

What is a product description?

Long story short: a product description is copy that includes information about the product’s features and specifics. It has that one obvious goal – to describe a product in terms of technical aspects. But there is also another significant purpose of a well-crafted product description. It should trigger shopping impulses. With marketing tactics, such as creating a sense of urgency, taking advantage of social-proof and using powerful call-to-actions, your product page can perform much better and deliver you more results you desire.

Additionally, you should be aware that a perfect product description should also drive traffic to your website through search engines. If you use the right keywords and phrases that are often searched, you  will notice increased traffic to your online store. It can also have a significant impact on your position in marketplaces, if you choose to sell your products or services that way.

10 must-know tips for writing product descriptions

The tips presented below can be applied while crafting new product descriptions but also for optimizing existing ones. Sometimes by adding a few small elements you can make a huge difference, and improve your business performance. In other cases, writing great product descriptions  may require a bit more effort , but will pay off in the form of higher conversion. And that is what you want, isn’t it? Follow our practices and get inspired for boosting your strategy.

#1 Identify your audience

Every marketing action should be taken, considering the target audience. You have probably already established your customers’ preferences for marketing purposes, but it is worth specifying. Do your research and create buyer personas. A buyer persona is a detailed profile of your ideal customer. It should combine the most characteristics of your target market.

Creating a complex buyer’s persona will help you in product development, as well as describing your products on the website. Knowing your customers, their needs and requirements, their thoughts and doubts, it is easier to reflect their desires in a particular product description.

You also need to write down customers’ problems and pain points, and more importantly, how your brand and products can solve these issues. Your offer should be a response to actual consumers’ needs and, to be fair, totally nail it.

While writing product descriptions you need to keep in mind what you have learned while preparing  buyer personas.

Moreover, it is worth being aware of the source you get the traffic from on your website. Asking better questions will get you inside your customers mind. For instance:

• Why would the customers even be interested in your offer?
• How would they describe your products to their friends?

Once you get all of the answers, you can start creating your creative product descriptions.

#2 Pay attention to SEO

Your product page will probably be a landing page for your social media and Google Ads campaigns. However, you should not forget that product page can also be entered via a search engine results page, so that you can reach people who actively look for such products. It is worth optimizing your e-commerce landing page to get more organic traffic. If you think that it is not a walk in the park, let us calm you down – sometimes it is a matter of just adding a few elements to help your site be positioned in a better way.

How to optimize a product page? Use keywords and phrases that can be used while searching for products like yours. If you are not sure what keywords could suit your product best, and what kind of keywords your competitors use, you should befriend research and some SEO tools. Pay attention to titles, alt text of images and meta descriptions to attract users while they decide which link to click on the search engine results page.

Search for keywords in Senuto Keyword Explorer!

#3 Use customer’s language

Take a customer-centric approach to achieve the best result. Your description should be easy to understand for your target group. Otherwise, it can be discouraging for them to read your copy and they will be put off from exploring your brand and offer. Natural language and tone will be the most beneficial, because it will shorten the distance between a brand and a customer and help them get familiar with your product.

Think about the user experience. Complicated and long sentences are not pleasant to read. During the research, you should pay attention to wording which is used by your ideal customers, based on the profile of personas you created earlier. That way, you can write copy that will be more powerful and suits their preferences.

#4 Highlight product’s benefits

Actually, people do not buy products. They are focused on the values and appreciate the customer experience they encounter. Your product is not just an item. It has practical benefits that help your customers, they buy it via results they can get by using it. If you provide them with flawless customer experience, they will not only buy from you, but stay for longer, making loyal customers.

However, let’s come back to your potential clients’… problems. For example, if you sell jackets, consumers can be interested because they want to be protected from the rain. They want to solve the real problem. So in fact, they do not buy a piece of fabric, but they purchase the possibility to walk in the rain while staying dry.

Use value proposition to express the benefits of a given product. That way you can directly express the advantages of your offer. It can be really rewarding to show that your brand stands out from the competition (by using a unique value proposition that only your brand provides). But do not use so-called empty phrases or buzzwords, with no actual meaning, like great, awesome, amazing, and so on. Use words that indicate an existing feature. For example, you can say that the fabric of your product is durable and water-resistant. This is way more useful   than sayng it is “great”.

Recommend the right products with structured data

On the marketing operations side, you want to use the same “technical” aspects and use them in an organised manner. Tagging the product, product color, category, but also customer shopping data etc – so you are able to see the patterns.

People will be able to browse and search your site in different ways (for instance price points and color) and you as a marketer are able to use that structured data to better recommend the right products to the right person. Recommended products was first made popular by Amazon – but now is very common in eCommerce. Most companies use the input for knowing what to send subscribers in their eCommerce email marketing strategy, and – also very popular – site based real-time recommendations.

But it isn’t all about the data, remind your visitors what challenges they are, or may be, facing and present an easy solution – your product. Once you present them directly and help your visitors realize their problems and existing solutions, there is more chance to trigger shopping impulses.

Some brands take it a step further, implementing some FOMO (fear of missing out) strategies. For instance, they show what you can miss if you do not purchase the product now. In some cases, it is about prices that are going to be increased, in others it is enough to say about the very last sale.

#5 Tell your story

Add an emotional touch to your product descriptions. As humans, we live for stories. We get hooked and curious while reading books, watching movies, listening to podcasts. The same happens when we see a good TV commercial or even read the company’s blog. Why would not use storytelling in the product descriptions?

In fact, every marketing message should be a part of a brand’s story. For some people, storytelling may have become a buzzword, but in fact, it makes your brand 22 times more memorable. That is how you can stand out from your competition and win over customers’ hearts. It is a perfect moment to realize what you want to be remembered for.

What are the most important specifics you want customers to remember, and hopefully, to talk about with their friends? Visitors can forget what exactly you wrote, but they are more likely to remember how your brand made them feel.

Explain the idea behind the brand and products. Tell the story of the challenges you faced and how you came up with an idea. It can be really personal, as many entrepreneurs create innovations to solve their own problems. Additionally, it can be very beneficial to explain how the products are created and tested. We are entering an era of the customers that are aware of environmental changes. If you cooperate with local manufacturers, use eco-friendly fabrics and packaging, you should definitely give your customers a shout about it. Who knows if such a practice wouldn’t get you some more new clients?

#6 Stimulate the imagination

An effective tactic can be sensory marketing which means to connect with customers emotionally by creating a multi-sensory experience. Such description should relate to senses (sight, smell, hearing, touch or taste).

You can also use comparisons to explain the particular features of your product. It works best when marketers compare their products to things that everyone is familiar with. That way, customers can imagine, for example, what the flavour of your product is.

Make your copy more descriptive and enable your visitors to imagine your products being used and how does it make them feel. Create an appealing image in their minds so that they can not resist buying your products.

#7 Use power words

Strengthen your copy with words that can truly impact a customer’s decision. That way, you can create a more emotional message and bring you closer to consumers. Sensory and emotional words can also be included in the list of power words. Additionally, you can use seductive words that are nudging people to take action. Use all of the types of words in a balanced combination to get the most resultful effect.

Nevertheless, remember not to exaggerate. For example, if you would like to say that your product is the best on the market, you need to back it up with numbers or results of opinion polls. That is how you can justify using superlatives.

You can use call-to-action in your product descriptions to activate your store’s visitors and get more conversions.

#8 Make the most of social proof

One of the crucial challenges for e-commerce is to build trust. Social-proof methods can help you with that. People are more likely to buy products online if their friends recommended them, or if they are sure that a lot of people are already satisfied with their purchase. Customer reviews can significantly increase the conversion rate of a product page.

Recommendations can be very helpful for potential customers because they can learn about the user experience. It regards not only product features, but also customer support, delivery, payment and returns.

Moreover, if your industry specifics require expert-level knowledge, try to acquire professionals opinions, media mentions, and other evidence that can prove your brand’s quality. Use quotes with authors’ pictures to make an opinion more personal and trust-worthy.

Add product rating in points or stars to give your visitors a short overview of the satisfaction of other customers. Such a rating is easily visible and does not require scrolling as reviews do.

Rating can be used in several places, not just exclusively in your product catalogue. We already mentioned marketplaces, but think about your own  email newsletters, and social proof in abandoned cart emails work like magic

If you have any certificates, awards or other forms of your e-commerce legitimization, you should inform your visitors about them. The same relates to your partners. For example, you should add a logo of a payment aggregator you use or a delivery company you cooperate with. This details can be essential for making a purchasing decision.

To trigger shopping impulses, you can not only publish a number of customers that already trusted your e-commerce and bought your products but also to view a number of visitors who are viewing the same product page at a given time.

Kontentino uses social proof to inform how many clients use its tools.

#9 Keep it easy to scan

Work on the visual perception of your product descriptions. You probably have a lot of important information, stories, emotions and technical specifics to communicate. Nevertheless, you need to present them in the clear and easy to scan form. Use tables, lists, bullet points, bolding and other visual tricks to highlight the crucial information.

Remember that your customers can have different preferences. Some of them can seek for long, descriptive copy filled with detailed information, while others only need brief description stressed in bullet-points. Try to find a golden mean to satisfy everyone. A good idea can be to present basic information and specifics at the top and put more details beneath the product’s photos.

Easy to scan Zalando’s product page.

#10 Complete product descriptions with visuals

Even the best product description in the world can not replace photos. A visit on your online store supposed to give all of the information important for making a purchasing decision, photos or visualization is a must-have.

Make it complement your copy, so that you can present the same features, ideas, mood or atmosphere. Moreover, adjust text colours and fonts to the kind of impression you need to create.

You can use icons to present the ideas mentioned in the description. That way, your visitors will learn about the most significant features immediately. Once you drug their attention, it will be easier to explain more details in the text.

On the Lefrik’s product page, you can see many beautiful pictures that enable visitors to learn about features, such as a pocket designed for carrying a laptop. Moreover, you can see significant features thanks to close-up pictures, that let you take a closer look at zips and other details.

Lefrik’s product page with features and specs.

Lefrik’s product page with icons and colour options.

Lefrik presented the most crucial features with icons to inform that the backpack is waterproof, made from recycled plastic bottles, vegan and can fit 15” laptop. In a straightforward form, Lefrik presented practical benefits and emotional values.

Key takeaways

To sum up, it is worth to highlight once again that product descriptions have more than an informative goal. It can also prompt customers to choose your offer. Use this opportunity wisely to improve your e-commerce sales.

Always take a consumer-centric approach to communicate better with your potential customers. Use right wording and simple construction, as well as show the best features of your products. Moreover, remember to make it SEO-friendly. Do not overdo it! Use every tactic mentioned above, but do it in a way that they complete each other, not exclude. If you overload your product descriptions, it will not be honest and clear. Present your copy to a few people and get feedback to find out if it is easy to read and attractive.

We hope that our guide will help you refurbish your products’ descriptions and increase your online store’s revenue. Do not hesitate to try out a few options of product description in different campaigns to find out which one works best for your target group. You might find out that a product page with just bullet points may convert better than long, interesting description. But you will not find out until you try!