Tips to Writing Amazing Product Descriptions for Optimum Conversions

According to BigCommerce, 80% of Americans shop online at least once every month in 2018, and about 5% buy something online daily. Statista estimates the total annual retail e-commerce sales would amount to over 3.5 trillion in 2019. These numbers prove that e-commerce is getting bigger and better.

One of the most essential components of an e-commerce store is the product description. A product description is content that describes the features and benefits of a product. However, a successful product description does more than that by offering value-adding information in such a compelling way that the customer would think they cannot get by without the product.

Why Are Product Descriptions Important?

A compelling and well-worded product description has the power to move the customer through the sales funnel. Although most customers do base their purchase decision on the product’s picture, it is the product description that helps fill the gap and confirm whether or not the product is the right fit for them.

By educating potential customers on the unique value propositions that the product will provide, your product description can help increase sales, reduce post-purchase dissonance, lower the risk of a refund, and build customer confidence.

Aside from that, a well-written product description can bring you loads of other benefits:

They Offer SEO Value

A product description is not just a creative way to sway the buyer. If done right, it is also great for SEO.

Our expert Amazon product description writers know how adding relevant keywords in your product descriptions — particularly in bullets —boost search engine page rankings.

Take a look at one of the top results for high-waisted yoga pants on Amazon:

If you type the same search query, “high-waisted yoga pants” on Google, you will see the Baleaf brand appear on the top results as well.

You need to understand that this approach does not work for all sorts of keywords. In fact, experts determine that one or two strategically put keywords are much more effective than keywords littered all over your product description.

For example, a keyword in your product has a greater impact on SEO than those placed in bullet points. However, many pages that ended up as the top search results also have the keywords in their main product descriptions.

They Tell a Great Story

All of us love a great story. Bedtime stories, star-crossed lovers stories, ghost stories, and middle-school-awkward-phase stories. We have always heard that stories have power — and this holds particularly true if you use stories as a marketing tool.

Take a look at this cottage which you can book through airbnb:

The online agency could have simply listed down the features and amenities that the place is equipped with. Instead, it opted to influence the reader’s emotions by describing the beautiful sunset and the white sand beaches you will get to experience by booking the cottage.

A great production description like this can fill in any cognitive gaps that potential customers may have about the product. If the picture isn’t enough for the customer to book the place, this beautiful description of the cottage’s charm is sure to break down any further barriers.

They Convert a Consideration into a Purchase

Product descriptions that use certain power words are able to convert a hesitant visitor into a paying customer.

Here’s a list of power words that can make your web copy more enticing and alluring to visitors.

If you use these words in your product description, alongside relevant keywords and emotive phrases, they can make your copy that much more compelling. This means you have a greater chance of hooking your customer into a purchase.

How to Write Great Product Descriptions that Boost Conversions

Great product description help increase sales, and to do this, they speaks to the customer on a personal level. These descriptions answer questions that you have, but they’re written in a way that it’d seem like you’re having a conversation with the brand.

Compelling Copy

The best production descriptions have compelling copy. It uses the word “you” in its text, and keeps in mind its customers’ concerns and buying motivations.

To do that, it needs to be honest, down-to-earth, and transparent. Saying a product is of the highest quality when you have heard many bad negative reviews from other customers erodes brand trust and hardly makes your copy compelling.

Being honest means not trying to hide your flaws, but highlighting the strengths of your brand. For example, if you are advertising stability shoes that have a thinner upper, you can mention it in your copy so that the customer will know what they are buying. In fact, honesty can go a long way to increase trust towards your brand, and make the customer feel even more compelled to buy your product. Additionally, being honest also means placing emphasis on things that make your product stand out.

You will also want to hook your customers by using the word “you” in your copy. This can help your customers envision themselves as part of the story. Also, make sure you keep things nice and casual as if you are talking face to face with someone. Stuffy, pompous sounding product descriptions can turn off many customers.

Try Too Hard to Sell

One of an e-retailer’s worst nightmares is a sales deal that goes out the window just before they arew about to be closed. This happens more often than not, and often times a major reason is overselling.

Expert product description writers and content marketers understand that it is so easy to fall into the trap of trying too hard to sell a product. This often happens when a brand is not able to meet its sales goals, and becomes desperate. However, this is a sure-fire way to erode customer’s confidence and trust.

When you try too hard to sell your product, you often promise your customers more things than what they need — and more things than what you can deliver. These things raise doubts in the mind of the customer like because it may sound too good to be true, and right at the time when they are making a buying decision.

So while you may be thinking you are just reinforcing your offerings’ benefits, overselling can make your customer pause and ask whether your product is actually what they need, and if they are paying too much for it. Often, you raise false, unrealistic expectations that cannot be met, and this damages your credibility as a seller.

Apart from looking good to your audience’s eyes, your product descriptions should also be attractive to the search engines. Here are some tips to help you write product descriptions that’ll help you rank.

How to Write SEO-Optimized Product Descriptions

Includes Keywords

Adding keywords to your product descriptions is a great way to make your descriptions appealing to the search engines. However, it’s important to remember that the type of keywords you need to use should be relevant to the product you are selling, and should be the ones that your customers are using to search for your product.

Shopify suggests that you add your core keywords to four main places:

• Your page title
• Main product description
• Meta description
• The alt tag

Most people would use the exact same keyword in their meta descriptions as they would in their product descriptions. However, some may feel like creating better and more fun product descriptions rather than just listing down keywords. You can use LSI and long-tailed keywords for that, and this approach may work even better for you.

Write an Awesome Meta Title and Meta Description

The meta title and meta description tags are what show up as a preview when your page is displayed on Google’s search result. Since Google is the place where 80% of your website traffic comes from, great meta tags are very important for your online store.

From an e-commerce perspective, your meta tags should ideally have:

• The relevant keywords: Make sure your copy is based around your most important keywords that also showcase your USPs. This way, when someone Googles the keyword, it will be displayed in bold in your meta tags.
• Action verbs: “Discover,” “browse” “shop” and “buy” are some action phrases that you should include in your meta tags. These phrases can draw in people who are browsing with the intent to buy a product.
• Accuracy: Make sure that your meta tags stay true to the product or service page that they land you on. Don’t use your product description as a false clickbait as nothing annoys customers more than landing on a completely unrelated page. This will increase your bounce rate and damage your SEO rankings.

What Does a Great Product Description Look Like?

The best types of product descriptions offer both features and benefits to the customer, are detailed, and evoke the right emotions.

Take a look at this beautiful bracelet by Sivana, a lifestyle brand that promotes “conscious living.”

Rather than simply labeling the product as a multi-colored bead bracelet, Sivana leveled it up by spinning a tale of spirituality and serenity offered by the amethyst, amazonite, and rainbow fluorite stones. Not a bad way to make a customer forget that they will be dishing out almost $40 for a simple set of bracelets.

Another great product description is given by Hum Nutrition, a company that offers a dietary supplement:

The product description starts in a whimsical way that leaves the customer delighted. It then lists down all the main ingredients found in the products but goes the extra level by adding what benefit it provides to the customer.

The CERAMIDES (written in all caps) are the feature, but the benefits they provide is making your skin “pillowy soft,” “protect it from moisture loss & improve texture.”

Although this product description is more detailed than the first one, all its points provide value-adding information to the customer.

Citizen Watch “Bella” also goes the extra mile to reel in customers:

Although the product description is less than a hundred words long, it encapsulates words like “elegant beauty,” “sweeping motif,” and “hint of a movement” which are power words and move the customer towards the product. In addition, it also adds its USPs, which includes “Eco-Drive Technology.” No wonder, customers don’t mind shelling out $396 for this watch.

How Long Should the Product Description Be?

Obviously, shoppers who scroll through the products are interested in knowing about your offerings. However, there is no fixed amount of words that can be used for every product.

When choosing the length, sellers should first focus on product features and benefits. Generally, a good product description that is 350 to 400 words long can easily address all the benefits offered by a particular product. However, as we saw above, sometimes even a product description under 100 words can have a huge impact on the customer.

Some brands go overboard and offer product descriptions of over 1000 words. This may not be a bad idea if your product has a lot of features and benefits to offer. However, if you repeat the same information multiple times in the product description, it will be difficult for shoppers to find the information they are looking for easily in the clutter, which can be annoying.

The bottom line is that the length of your product description depends on the type of product you are selling.

Understanding the Benefits vs. the Features Sections

To be clear, features are the product specifications and ingredients that a product is equipped with. However, customers today have become a lot smarter and are not that interested in what specs and ingredients a product has. Rather, they want to know what kind of problem would it solve and how it can improve their lives. Therefore, adding benefits alongside your product feature is fast becoming one of the key aspects of e-commerce marketing.

These days, you don’t sell a product; you sell an experience, an emotion, or a feeling.

This is best explained by Hum Mighty Night dietary supplements that have been listed in the “Examples of Great Product Description.” Not only does the product description list the features in Hum Mighty Night (ceramides, ferulic acid, ubiquinol) but it also offers the corresponding benefits of each ingredient (pillowy soft skin, protection from cell damage, and helping combat signs of aging).

Are Meta Tags Part of the Word Count?

Typically, meta tags are not considered part of the word count of your product description. However, they do have an important role to play in grabbing customer attention and awareness.

Meta tags, like meta titles and meta description, is the text that you preview when your page pops up in Google’s search results. Since customers view your meta tags even before they land on your website and see your actual product description, meta tags need to be beautifully and creatively worded, and should contain all the relevant keywords.

When to Hire a Product Description Writer?

It is always good to write your own product descriptions. However, if you are struggling to write a great product description for your offerings, you might want to hire a product description writer.

Here’s why:

Amazing Quality (Stories that Convert)

Anyone can write down the fact and specs of their products, but for a great product description, you need to do more than that. A compelling copy not only includes a list of features and benefits, but it should also have certain power words that can grip the customer. It should also be emotive and take the customer on a sensual journey.

A professional product description writer can help you create product descriptions in different styles and formats that can add more value for your customers.

SEO Expertise

Successful product descriptions should be optimized for SEO; otherwise, they will never be visible on the internet, and your potential customers will never know your product even exists.

Professional product description writers can help you create the ideal descriptions that contain relevant keywords and meta tags so that your product stands apart from the clutter.

Easy to Scale and Super-Quick Delivery Times

The great thing is that most product description writing services will work with you to deliver your content within your deadline. Many of them also offer services to post your product description directly to your e-commerce website.

In addition, you can scale up anytime and order bigger projects if you like their service.

Not only does this allow you to work on your core competencies, but it also means your e-commerce site will constantly stay updated.

Setting up a Process

If you want to hire a product description writing service, setting up the process is easy:

Finalize the Template You’re Happy With

Since it’s your product, you should specify your preferences with regard to how you want your product descriptions to look like. This includes sharing the desired word count of the description; those can be anything from 50 words to over 600 words. However, it also depends on the type of product you are selling.

Visual products (like clothes and fashion accessories) may only require a picture and a couple of lines to define the product. However, other products demand detailed descriptions with technical aspects, features, and other detailed information in separate tabs.

Still, there are others that require information in bullet points.

You can also send a link to the type of product description you like and ask your product description writer to take inspiration from them as well.

The choice is yours.

Organize Spreadsheets to Streamline Process

Coordination is key when you hire a professional content writer to create your product descriptions. Therefore, they can also help you get organized through spreadsheets.

If you want to add any new topics to your product description order, all you need to do is to access a shared spreadsheet and update it. From the writer’s side, the sheet is updated to show you which product descriptions are currently being worked on, which product descriptions are in the process of being reviewed, and which of them have been published to your e-commerce site.

This makes it easy for you to know if your work is being done on time and if your website is being updated.

Review and Publish

One of the worst things that can happen to an e-commerce seller is that a product description gets published without approval. Perhaps, you wanted more story-telling and less technical specifications? Maybe the descriptions aren’t maintaining your brand voice.

To ensure that this never happens, professional product writing services offer multi-layer editing and reviewing processes that streamline all your content, and only publish it to your website when it is virtually perfect.

Some questions that writers ask themselves when writing a product description:

• Is the full story included in the copy?
• Is the product solving the problem?
• Are relevant keywords and power words included in the copy?
• Does the product description match the copy?
• Does the product description place the customer first?
• Does the language of the product description reflect the way you would recommend the product to a friend?

Using Product Descriptions to Boost Conversions

Once the formula of the product description is created, professional product description writers will test them. If they lead to increased sales, you can go ahead and make the same changes to all the rest of your copy.

Just remember the core thing: you write product descriptions for your customers. Therefore, you need to understand their needs and meet them at their level. Spin them a great story and show how the product will meet – if not exceed – their expectations. Then sit back and watch as the money comes rolling in.