You get only 2 seconds to convince your visitors about your relevance. If you fail, the visitor clicks the back button and leave your site for good. Here’s how you can stop it.
Based on the style of product descriptions I’ve seen most on e-commerce sites, I can easily classify them into two broad categories: seductive and cold.
Yes, some descriptions simply contains words that define their features in a passive and non-engaging style, with no connection with their audience whatsoever.
Others are thoughtfully crafted to capture the fancy of their audience and transport them into a state of desire, leading them to take an intended an action.
When it comes to creating product descriptions to increase your sales, here are some product description writing tips and tricks I have learned over the years.
Think Like a Journalist
The perfect product description writer should think like a journalist, answering every conceivable question related to the product. Make it informative enough for your audience by including the following details:
Dimension and Weight: Most important detail of any product description and especially critical to some items such as furniture and appliances.
Materials: It tells them about the quality of the product and its sturdiness.
Package Contents: If you’re selling an item that ships with a box, the potential customer want to learn about the contents therein.
Warranty Info: Tells the buyer that you have their back in case something happens to the product within a warranty period.
Manufacture’s Info: Offers the buyer ample insight into the manufacture’s details. In some cases, it helps builds loyalty.
Speak to Your Target Audience
Your product description can’t be dead. It has to sound alive and fun, based on the kind of stuff you’re selling. Sometimes, shoppers want to have fun while buying stuff on your site. Whether you should sound geeky or humorous depends largely on the type of audience you’re addressing. This is exactly why you should know your audience well enough even before you being to type your first words.
Let Benefits Compliment the Features
It’s important to know how to write a product description that sells. Some descriptions just state the features without any concerns about their potential benefits for the buyer. Others spell out the benefits and even address the concerns of some sceptical would-be customers, thereby, bridging the yawning gap between features and their benefits.
Customers wouldn’t care as much about an additional feature as they would about how it helped them get things done better and improve their experience.
Here’s an example:
Made from 100% natural rubber and painted with non-toxic food-grade paints, this handy teether won’t cause your baby any harm.
Use Verbs, Shun Adjectives
Semantically speaking, adjectives serve the purpose of boasting about the features of a product while verbs explain the benefits the customer will receive. In order to be effective, use more verbs and less adjectives. Psychologically, verbs -not adjectives – resonate with the audience.
Adjectives are picture words – they are helpful to create an imagination in customers’ mind and attract them to you. However, verbs can actually compel the buyers to take an intended action.
For example:
Cold: Our mattresses are smooth and great for your body.
Seductive: Our mattresses induce sweet dreams and infuse great sex.
Jettison Jargons
While educating your audience is critical to helping them make wise buying decisions, it can sometimes backfire when overdone. When you’re addressing an audience that is unfamiliar with technical details, avoid the jargon – the technical words that you believe will establish your authority and expertise. Too much jargon can actually confuse your buyers and turn them off completely. To trick is to explain the quick benefits upfront and hide the technical details under “learn more” for those who seek more information related the products.
The Take Away
Indeed, product descriptions are the mainstay of any e-commerce store and they critically influence the buying decisions of site visitors. It’s, however, surprising to see so many e-com site owners resorting to copying and pasting standard descriptions from other sites or manufacturer’s website. This not only turn off the visitors but hampers their site’s standing in Google as well.
Understanding the mindset/habits/behavioral patterns of your target demography is imperative to crafting the tone of your product descriptions. While it can be challenging to make each and every description equally compelling, it’s indispensable nonetheless.
Hope you find these product description writing tips useful for your next gig. If you have any questions let me know in the comment section below. If you find this useful, don’t forget to share this post with your friends and colleagues.
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