The Ultimate Guide to Writing Product Descriptions

Surya SK
November 19, 2021

A product description is meant to act as a medium that proposes your product to your target audience. Customers tend to decide if they want your product depending on the product description you provide. Therefore, a product description must be adequate to help you sell your product. So, let us give you a deeper understanding of what product descriptions are? How do you create them? and more!

Table of contents

What is a product description?

A product description is a crucial section of a product listing that provides an idea of the nature of a product to the buyer. It's a marketing element meant to draw in a customer to purchase your product. An efficient product description is touted as an integral part of a marketing strategy that boosts revenue, boosts a brand's presence in the market, and scales to different heights. 

An adequate product description should explain both about the product and tell the buyer how it can add value to the buyer. 

What is a product description

What are you supposed to include in a product description?

When you plan to write a product description, be sure to include certain critical elements in it:

1. Describe the whole product

When it comes to description, tell the buyer about the story of the product, tell how it functions and what benefit it adds to the buyer?

2. Talk about the benefits

Talking about the benefits will help the buyer imagine and analyze how the product could add value to their everyday living. 

3. Offer testimonies

Customer testimonials and reviews are your best proofs to claim that your product is legit. Add them to your product description if you have them.  

Why write compelling product descriptions?

Sellers make use of product descriptions to provide various business benefits and results. A few of the most efficient benefits of product description are:

1. Create trust with shoppers

A good product description accurately describes the product you're selling. With the help of product descriptions, shoppers can be reasonably confident that the product they have ordered will not disappoint them. When their expectations get satisfied, it helps to create a level of trust and bond between your brand and the buyer. Trust is a prime element to retaining customers and having return customers, which is necessary for any digital retail brand. E-commerce stores must put in more effort to build trust as customers can only view products online, and trying them or seeing them in person isn't really an option.  

2. Entice a sale

A strong product description should be able to convert to a deal directly. It should pertain to all the information a customer needs to know to help them decide on the product without them getting help or checking elsewhere for more details. Encapsulating all the details in the product description makes it easier for consumers trying to purchase your products. 

3. Improve SEO

Search engines are an essential asset to e-commerce stores, and a product description is an asset that helps stores rank in terms of organic search results when looked up. When product descriptions contain specific product keywords, they direct search engines to find the products during a search, which again directly improves your eCommerce site's positions. Marketers can take leverage of this and make the best use of SEO. 

4. Provide an informative resource

Product descriptions act as a source of information for customers who gather data before making a purchase. Understand that, Online consumers depend on research to purchase their products. Taking that into consideration, and to have the best possible chance of conversion, providing detailed product info in your product description can help you convert better. Make sure your customers don't have to leave your site to get more data. 

How to write a compelling product description?

A product description is a powerful medium, but only if they are written effectively in the right way. This is why it's vital that marketers understand the following steps to write a compelling product description:

1. Ask questions

While brainstorming your product description, a few questions can arise in mind, and here are a few basic questions you have to ask yourself. Ask yourself who these buyers are? are they your crucial customer base? Figure that part out. Next, break up the details of the product. Think about how you can showcase your product in the most informative way possible. Use important keywords to help you out. Give the customers answers to questions like "Why is the product essential for them?" "How can it be implemented into their life?" and more. These are some of the basic outline questions that are necessary. If you feel like you have a different set of Q&As, please do it by all means. 

2. Write for your target buyer

One of the pre-mature steps in the process of making the best possible product description is to write it with your target audience in mind. If you don't already have them in your mind, it's time to invest more time to learn about your target buyer. Having a broad idea of your ideal buyer's profile helps a lot. The best product descriptions are ones that almost look like it relates and caters to everyone. To sell your product, it's essential to be definite and to have a connection with your buyer.

3. Make formatting considerations

When working on your format, try including both paragraph content and list content. It is always advisable and better to make use of bullet points for the purpose of listing the tech specs of a product and how it benefits it. Paragraph sections work best when you're telling a story of how the customer should use the product. Try to explain it in small sentences in a descriptive and narrative tone. 

4. Implement KPI's

Create key performance indicators to ensure the effectiveness and overall success of your product campaigns. One way to determine KPIs is by using a technique called A/B testing or testing two distinct types of product descriptions against each other to see which has a better performance. With A/B testing, there are always higher conversion rates and lower cart abandonment rates as more purchases will potentially be made. 

5. Brainstorm

Brainstorm about the things you want to showcase in your narrative. It could be anything like extensive product testing, customer reviews, etc. Get deep about the details of your product and what makes it so exciting and practical to be implemented in the buyer's life, and create a storyline with it. If the product is leaning more on the technical side, feel free to include specific technical terms that will appeal more to your target buyers. Getting your tech specs right about the product can help eliminate most of the issues. 

6. Compile and refine

Keep your product descriptions brief, relatable, and concise. A short paragraph that illustrates an interesting story and provides all the answers to some of the key and essential product questions and tech specs in bulleted form can generate an excellent product description without any confusion. which is precisely what you need. 

Tips on using product descriptions to generate revenue

Try some of these efficient tips for creating and making use of product descriptions to boost revenue to your best possibilities:

1. Do your keyword research

Keywords act as the base of a decent product description. If you're starting out and don't really have a clue on which keywords to add to your description, an excellent place to start is to research competitors of your product and look out for their product descriptions. Try to identify the keywords that you feel would make sense for your product and add them to your product description. 

2. Stay specific

The more clear-cut you are in your product description, the better it is for your customers who depend on the data you provide about your product; this helps buyers to make confident purchasing decisions. When it comes to being specific, it means to include information that is only highly relevant to your product and nothing extra. 

3. Avoid manufacturer descriptions

Taking content from the manufacturer of a product you sell on your online store can optimize your search engine. Adding on to that, manufacturers are doing their best to rank for keywords that relate to them, not for your business requirements. It's always better to communicate with shoppers by staying true to your content that stands true to your brand. 

4. Proofreading

If your brand requires consumers' trust to stay alive, then it very well requires the development of brand confidence. When working in an e-commerce business setup, producing content that is free of errors is key to building brand credibility and adequately generating sales.

Proofreading

5. Unique phrasing and sensory language

Try to incorporate video and other forms of media often. Experiment with the use of sensory language that allows shoppers to feel a certain way about your product. By doing this, you are on pace to create more than just a basic product description; you develop an experience that shoppers can have with your product when they read the product description page.

6. Social validation

If your brand has some social recognition, take leverage off that. Try including customer testimonials and reviews from all your social platforms. This can help boost shopper engagement with your brand and gain more conversions. 

The benefits you can reap from hiring an agency for product description purposes

The benefits you can reap from hiring an agency for product description services can be numerous; some of them are:

1. Cutting down labor costs

Being able to manage with few employees in the marketing domain is a big plus point and an added benefit of working with an agency as it saves companies financially when they have to pay for only the services they make use of, rather than paying a full-on standard salary and benefits to direct permanent employees.

2. Ranking for more keywords

Marketing agencies incorporate professionals well-versed in all domains of marketing and SEO. With professional SEO knowledge, content marketers make sure your product descriptions rank for important keywords that draw in the right customers to your website.

3. Improved SEO

There are quite some benefits of improved SEO; they include being able to target quality consumer traffic, averaging more clicks than a PPC campaign, increasing PR attention, Analytics capabilities, and more. 

4. Establishing product description metrics

Agencies can help brands develop metrics that allow them to report and analyze their product descriptions. Specific product description metrics include being able to track traffic, keywords, products in the cart, and purchases. Analyzing these metrics helps companies set goals and get better with time. 

Establishing product description metrics

Conclusion

Creating a meaningful product description is key to successfully selling your products on any digital platform. Any business selling its products online will need to identify what grabs attention and work on its line, which obviously differs from company to company. As a business, you have to find a way to write the best possible product description with questions and answers that a potential customer would ask and see how you can catch the customer's eye. The better your description, the better are your chances of selling your products. Good luck!