When you walk into a brick and mortar store to buy something, you meet with different salespersons who persuade you to buy products by using certain language and terminology, describing offers and providing you with the best bargains. The same stands true when it comes to describing products on an e-commerce store.
If you want to convert your online store visitors to customers, your product descriptions should be:
- Able to attract the attention of customers;
- Good enough to explain the physical and emotional experience of buying the product;
- Crisp, clear and concise;
- Able to answer the common concerns and questions about the product, and
- Up to the mark and include different components like images and videos.
Product descriptions should be such that both your customers and Google search engines love them. Ideally, product descriptions, along with images should be part of your e-commerce website development strategy itself. If you are on the right track at the initial development stage itself, you can build up on it further as and when your business expands and you increase your product portfolio.
Here are few guideline on how to write product descriptions that sell:
1. Play with your audience’s imagination
A study found out that the desire to buy a particular product is more if the product is held in hands. Now with an e-commerce website, customers cannot touch or feel the product. And that is why you have to play with your audience’s imagination through words so that they can know what it would feel like to touch, taste or feel your product.
Take a look at this description given by Green & Black’s for one of their Almond bars.
The description given by using sensory adjectives like nuttiness, cocoa-rich etc makes users experience the product while reading it.
However, you must use adjectives wisely and they must add value to your copy. With food descriptions, you can use words like crisp, velvety and smooth.
2. Create an online persona of your product
How would you give the product description to someone in front of you? What would be the tone of your voice? Would you sound funny, serious or rather be causal? While selling something, you must understand who your target audience is and hone the personality of your product accordingly.
Take a look this description given for the Southern Belle dress on the website of J. Peterman Company for example.
“She heard I was in Charleston for the weekend and invited me to a “little get-together” at her family’s estate in the Old Village. I arrive (along with 200 other guests) at the most pristine white colonial I’ve ever seen, Susanna fluttering about the manicured lawn in a swingy belted dress that would’ve put Scarlet’s velvet curtains to shame.
Is it a coincidence that six of South Carolina’s most eligible bachelors amble hopefully behind Susanna and her dress as she hands out red velvet cupcakes? There’s charming the Tarleton twins on the front porch and then there’s Susanna’s method (a touch more subtle). Flirtatious and chaste aren’t always polar opposites, you know!”
Southern Belle Dress (No. 4191). Universally flattering faux wrap dress in 100% cotton sateen. Classic fit-and-flare shape. Softly shirred skirt with fold-over pleats all around. Invisible zipper at back neck. Bra keepers.
Covered belt, buckle, and loop. Mid-calf length. Imported.
Hence, when you create a particular setting in the mind of readers and create an online personality, it makes a lot of difference.
3. Help buyers get over the guilt
In the article “How to Write Product Descriptions That Will Make Customers Love Your Brand” by Martina Mercer, she says that there is a buyer’s guilt in everyone. Usually, when they are buying something for themselves, they often go on a guilt trip for spending on themselves.
So when you write a product description, make sure that they do not feel bad after the purchase. Mercer asks sellers to use certain terms and tactics along with product descriptions. These include:
- Complimenting customers for finding a good deal
- Give the necessary product descriptions
- Project it as a one-time offer
- Make the product look unique
- Describe the multiple attributes of it
- Tell them it’s a bargain
- Explain why it is a money saving deal
- Don’t use words like “treat”, “splash,” or “expensive”
4. Establish a link between features and benefits
Features, as we know are the specifications or details of a product. And benefits, of course, are the ways in which the product can prove to be useful to your customers. When the customers are buying the product, they are mostly aware of the features as that is why they started looking for it in the first place.
However, if you want the customers to keep coming to your store, you have to write about the advantages that each product provides along with the benefits.
Let them know in what way a specific product is useful to them and why should they buy it from you.
5. Use keywords correctly
You probably want to rank high on search engines with your product descriptions. And to make that possible, you use certain keywords repeatedly and stuff them. Some people think that keyword stuffing will resolve all their purposes. This is not true. Keyword stuffing can make your copy look extremely weak (and funny sometimes).
To avoid this, use your keywords in a smart and a natural manner so that your content easily shows up on search engines. Most of the times, a well-written title is good enough. But a good Meta description with the first 100 words written creatively also helps up to a great extent.
In a nutshell
Product descriptions are very important for e-commerce success. If need be, narrate stories to provide with the tiniest details.
Don’t be monotonous, repetitive and write with interest and enthusiasm. It will definitely turn tables around for your business. Happy writing!
About the Author
Maulik Shah is the founder & CEO of Biztech IT Consultancy Pvt Ltd., one of the leading web design and Development Companies in India. He also runs Biztech Blog, where he shares insights from the world of eCommerce and other web based technologies.
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Source: SEO For Growth