Learning how to write a product description is an essential skill for ecommerce store owners.
Besides describing product features, well-written product descriptions can entice customers to buy, increase sales, and boost the visibility of your online store.
As crucial as it is, coming up with great product descriptions can be difficult, especially when there are a lot of details to note.
What Is Product Description?
A product description provides essential information about the features and benefits of a product and why it’s worth buying. A winning product description informs and excites, appealing to a potential customer’s logical and emotional sides.
An effective product description:
- Boosts product sales.
- Attracts your brand and audience.
- Helps your online shop rank higher in search engine results.
Understanding the Ecommerce Decision-Making Process
Before potential buyers make a purchase decision, they undergo a decision-making process called the buyer’s journey.
Ecommerce is unique in the sense that ecommerce business owners have the opportunity to optimize the process and influence customers every step of the way.
The buyer’s journey has three stages, namely:
- Awareness.
- Consideration.
- Decision.
During the awareness stage, buyers realize the need for a product. In the consideration stage, they look at and compare products. It’s likely at this stage that they visited your website and product page.
A good product description is able to capture the audience at the consideration stage to help them convert to the final decision stage.
Thus, marketers and retailers alike will benefit from learning how to write a product description.
How to Write a Product Description
- Define your target audience.
- Do keyword research.
- Use brand voice to tell a story.
- Ensure readability.
- Include high-quality photos and videos.
1. Define Your Target Audience
The first step in how to write a product description is to define your target audience.
By doing so, you’ll determine which features are most attractive to your potential customers, and you’ll learn how to write a product description that highlights these product details.
Establish buyer personas for each target customer segment. Imagine what they’re like and list the following to come up with an ideal customer and brand voice:
- Demographics.
- Behaviors.
- Motivations.
- Pain points.
Learn how to create a customer profile here >>
2. Do Keyword Research
Part of learning how to write a product description is to figure out how to optimize product descriptions for search engines.
Search engine optimization (SEO) can be an effective way to attract customers to your product page, and every SEO strategy begins with keyword research.
Keyword optimization depends on which stage of the buyer’s journey you’re in, but because you’re writing product descriptions for product pages, long-form and specific keywords with navigational and transactional intent are your best bet.
To further optimize your product page, place these keywords strategically in:
- Product title tags.
- Meta descriptions.
- Image ALT tags.
- Product copy.
3. Use Brand Voice to Tell a Story
Although the ecommerce decision-making process seems like a rational and straightforward journey, it’s actually an emotional journey.
A winning product description appeals to two sides of a customer: logical and emotional.
The logical side describes a product’s benefits, while the creative description appeals to the customer’s emotions.
The brand voice you came up with in the first step comes in handy when writing a creative product description.
Be descriptive. Use superlatives and “power words” that influence customers to buy, but do so in a natural and conversational tone.
Telling a story that appeals to a customer’s emotion is critical to any ecommerce content marketing plan. And when done well, it's what makes them buy.
4. Ensure Readability
Over the years, people’s attention spans have gone down. Because so much information is available, most people resort to scanning instead of reading.
To make it simple for customers to find information, use bullet points to describe product benefits and features. Creating bulleted lists also makes it easier to create product description templates.
For example, an Amazon page for a T-shirt lists the product’s features in a bulleted list for customers to skim through quickly.
Incorporate a lot of white space and use different font styles and sizes that follow the best practices for combining fonts.
5. Include High-Quality Photos and Videos
The best product descriptions always include high-quality product photos and videos, and the majority of customers consider visuals to be an essential part of their purchasing decisions.
Related reading: 5 Tips For Snapping High-Quality Product Images on a Budget >>
Not only do visuals support what’s written in your product description, but they also show customers what the product looks like and how it works, which is crucial when customers can’t physically examine the product.
Outstanding photographs don’t always require a product photographer — you can learn how to use your smartphone to take product images for your ecommerce site.
Final Thoughts: How To Write a Product Description That Grows Sales
Now you know how to write a product description that sells. Learning how to write a product description is an essential skill to have when you own an online store.
The best product descriptions attract customers to your ecommerce site, boost product sales, and contribute to website visibility.
Writing effective product descriptions requires an understanding of your target audience’s buyer’s persona in order to address pain points and offer value propositions.
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