How to Write a Perfect Product Description that Sells: Top 10 Ways

When it comes to online sales or e-commerce, a great product description is essential to get people to visit one’s website or webpage. An online marketplace, just like any physical marketplace, offers customers a variety of choices. One may not be able to touch and feel the products online. But one can certainly determine their use, worth, and value through the product descriptions. So it is necessary to know how to write a perfect product description that sells.

What is a Product Description?

A product description is a description of what the product is. Such a description includes attributes like its dimensions, size, weight, physical and technical specifications, etc. The product description must also tell the potential customer what are the benefits of purchasing the product.

The main objective of a product description is to encourage the potential customer to buy the product.

Here is an example of a product description.

 

How to Write Perfect Product Descriptions that Sell – Top 10 Ways

To write a good product description requires an understanding of concepts in Content Writing, Technical Writing, and Digital marketing. A perfect product description is SEO friendly and at the same time focuses on the target customer group.

1.       Think of the Customer’s profile

A digital marketing campaign would focus on the customer and her profile. This would include-

•            Age
•           Gender
•           Education level
•           Occupation
•           Earnings capacity
•           Buying habits
•           Likes and desires
•           Possible affiliations; and Other such relevant parameters.

Potential customers are segmented on these or a combination of these relevant factors. So the product description must focus on these parameters. Say the product is a new brand of coffee. A target customer’s profile would probably be a young business person or a housewife. The price of the packet of coffee would require further segmentation of the customer’s into an upper-income bracket and middle-income bracket. A customer’s profile thus helps in writing a description that connects with the customer.

 2.  Match the Customer’s Needs to the Product’s Features and Benefits

A product description is essentially part of an attempt to sell a product. In the physical world, there would probably be a salesperson who would help the customer in understanding the products; how it is used and what the benefits are. The salesperson would focus on the needs of the customer to make the sale.

In the digital marketplace, the product description seeks to replace the salesperson. Therefore to write a good description, a focus on the customer and her needs is an important requirement.

A business traveler uses different luggage compared to someone on an adventure trip. Both users may have common requirements such as durability, firmness, and light-weight. But the usage of these products is very different. For luggage used on a business trip, one may wish to emphasize the ability to retain the crease on well-ironed clothes, or separate compartments for laptops and files, etc. For luggage on adventure trips, one may emphasize the versatility of the equipment, its capacity, its ability to hold accessories, and ease and comfort in carrying.

 

In the new coffee example, emphasis on the aroma, taste, health benefits, and origins would be useful to the target customer group.

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3.      Being SEO friendly

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the crux of digital marketing. It’s what gets you noticed without having to spend money. In other words, it means improving the webpage to increase its visibility when online users search for relevant and similar products on various Search Engines. Greater visibility increases the chance that users will be attracted to your webpage and to the product that they desire to purchase.

Worldwide people conduct numerous searches daily. The Search Engines record the information in these searches and put them in an index. They then categorize and rate the pages in these categories based on numerous factors. And it is this ranking that determines how the page should appear in the list of results for a relevant search.

Using Keywords

The use of keywords is essential to attract good quality traffic in a digital marketing campaign. Keywords are those words or phrases that are most frequently used in a digital search. In a sense, these are online buzz words or focus words.

Digital marketing focuses on content quality and keywords to be able to take advantage of the search and ranking algorithms used by the Search Engines. Good digital marketing seeks to attract a large volume of traffic to the webpage. The aim is to attract good quality traffic to the webpage rather than a good quantity of traffic. In other words, digital marketing seeks to attract relevant users rather than just any user.

SEO Best Practices

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARVZKZi6yTM&list=PL28eq_nhJTOf-wQWuxwmOW1anbFZ9_8Iv&index=79

Using SEO best practices is essential to any successful digital marketing campaign. A focus on the quality of the content and the use of keywords in the product description page is essential. It ensures that your product description page ranks high on the results of any digital search.

 4.  Describe the Product

The product description seeks to sell the product. So it is important to describe the product in as much relevant detail as possible. A description includes-

•         Dimensions
•         Weight
•         Colour
•         Technical specifications
•         Use and benefits
•         Essential ingredients
•         How it is manufactured e.g. handmade, knitted, etc.
•         Accessories

The description must cater to the requirements of all types of readers. Some readers love a lot of parameters while others don’t. This is a difficult situation to be in but providing more information does not hurt.

Price of the product and any discounts and special schemes are important information to attract the attention of the customers and must be provided. The means of delivering the product to the customer is also information that is relevant to the customer’s decision.

Writing the description, therefore, requires an understanding of the product and its usage. Often the product has a technical use in a profession or the technical field. A good description must explain the technical features and their technology use. And this may require some elements of technical writing to describe the processes that the product could perform.

 5.       Using Cases or Stories

Focus on the product other than just its specifications is essential. Often a single brand entity that manufactures a technical product (such as Lenovo) would provide the technical product descriptions in a very different manner to a multi-brand retailer (such as Amazon) selling the same product.

A manufacturer of a technical product would try to establish the benefits to the users of its products and try and distinguish its products from those of its competitors. This would include-

• ·          A description of technical details
• ·          How the product benefits the customer
• ·          Details of efficiency factors and savings to the customer

Authentic case studies and stories where there has been an appreciation of the product are highlighted to capture the customer’s attention.

The coffee brand in our above example would include sensory details in a story about the product. An imaginative description that appeals to the sensory details of the target customer helps them decide to buy.

Product descriptions of this kind may be quite detailed and may exceed 300 words.

6.   Keep it Short and Simple

A majority of the products are daily-use products. These products may not require elaborate descriptions or technical writing. For such products, it is sufficient to list some important parameters for comparison between brands to enable the customer to make a decision.

Often multi-brand online retailers do not seek to promote one brand over the other. They describe the products of different brands based on a few important parameters and specifications. The customer compares and chooses the brand as per her requirements. Such websites often also provide an online tool for comparison that the customer may use to make her decision.

Product descriptions of this nature should not exceed a maximum of 200 words depending on the nature of the product. These need to use short and simple sentences too.

 7.  Images

Over time, online surveys and analytics indicate that customers are more likely to read a product description that carries an image of the product. That is because an image helps the customer identify the product she would like to buy. This is a big step in the overall purchase decision.

Images used in the online product descriptions should be optimized. Large images tend to slow the webpage because of the longer load time. Since online users are impatient they tend to leave a page that does not load quickly. On the other hand, an image that is highly compressed to reduce file size will compromise the quality of the image. Customers will not appreciate this.

Optimizing the image has the following benefits –

To optimize the image calls for a trade-off between file size and image quality.

·          Retaining customer attention through a faster upload

·          Improvement in SEO rating

·          Reducing storage space and easy to back up

·          Network and browser friendly

Choosing the correct file format for the images is also very important. PNG, JPEG, and GIF are the commonly used image file formats since they are generally supported by all browsers. Each of these formats has its pros and cons concerning image quality and file size.

8.     Use the right words to avoid Buyer’s Guilt

Buyer’s guilt is the term used for the remorse or disappointment one feels after something has been bought. These feelings arise when the buyer thinks she-

·          Could have waited and purchased a little later

·          Paid too much to the purchase

·          May have used the money more wisely

Marketing professionals use various techniques to help overcome Buyer’s Guilt. These include freebies, buy-one-get-one-free, money-back guarantees, or discount coupons.

Buyer’s Guilt can also be eliminated to some extent by encouragement. This involves using subtle words of encouragement in the product description to make the buyer feel that the –

·          Product is exclusive

·          Deal is at a bargain price and for a limited period

·          Product is a necessity (as against a luxury item)

·          Product has more than one use; or

·          Buyer stands to save money

Success in overcoming buyer’s guilt leads to a purchase.

9.     Use the right tone

The tone of the description should easily reflect the brand the product represents. Children’s toys must be described in a manner that reflects funs and happiness. Office materials should be described in a tone that reflects convenience and durability. Some office materials are deliberately colorful and used in creative activities. Such materials can be described in a confident tone or one that reflects some fun if that is what the brand represents.

Technical aspects of a product must be described using the relevant technical language. The tone here needs to be confident. The sentences must be clear, crisp, and precise to accurately provide the important technical details.

10.  What to avoid

Here are a few things to avoid when writing a product description:

Passive voice

In digital marketing, the attempt is to make a sale to a customer. Using the active voice helps in making a connection with the customers. It also enables the use of crisp and clear sentences.

Ready-made templates

In the age of the Internet, almost everything is available online. There are thousands of solutions, apps, and templates that are available for free. It is tempting to download and use these ready-made templates for product descriptions. Ready-same templates are not designed for all products and situations. The best template is the one that you can create for the product you are describing.

Don’t be carried away

Often one must describe a product in a language that is fun and catchy. It is possible to be carried away with this sort of language. But remember the objective is to convey the details and benefits of the product professionally. Not everyone understands the same humor.

Keyword Cramming

Avoid overusing and repeating the keywords too often. This is counter-productive because the search engines understand when the keywords have been overused. Besides repeating the same words or phrases is unappealing to the reader.

Don’t underestimate the Customer

The customer has far more knowledge of the product that she wants to buy. She also has access to information provided by the competition about their products. Using this information she can make a rational decision about the product that is most suitable

Errors

Proofreading the description is very important. The users do not appreciate any written material that has spelling errors, grammatical errors, and incorrect punctuation. Besides an error in the technical specification can have disastrous consequences to the brand and the product. Avoiding errors by proofreading repeatedly is essential.

Lengthy descriptions

A lengthy description with too many words is unattractive to the reader. The use of images and diagrams would help in summarizing and explaining various technical details about the product. The maximum length of a description that includes images and diagrams should be kept below 350 words.

Learning the Techniques of Product Description

To learn the techniques of writing great product descriptions requires an understanding of digital marketing, content writing, and technical writing.

Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing is a part of the larger field of Marketing. It seeks to use digital technology and devices to promote and sell various products using the internet as the main platform. It is popular since it enables the seller to reach out to a much larger audience at far lower costs.

Training in digital marketing is provided across India through numerous centers and institutions. An accredited institution is always better than one that seeks to merely provide the knowledge and few techniques.

Henry Harvin Education provides a Digital Marketing Course of repute. The Certified Agile Digital Marketer program is a 32-hour live virtual training conducted online. The program provides you 7 certifications – 1 from Henry Harvin, 1 From Facebook, and 5 from Google. The course is conducted in two formats – a self-paced course and a live online Classroom which is the preferred mode among students. The curriculum covers the basics of digital marketing, Web page designing, Google Ads, SEO, LinkedIn marketing, and YouTube marketing. Dozens of social media marketing tips are provided as are tried and tested marketing strategies.

Henry Harvin Education also conducts a Post Graduate Program in Digital marketing.

Content Writing

Content writing is the process of writing blog spots, articles, video scripts, or other such content for use in the web pages created as part of the digital marketing campaign. Product descriptions are also content written for specific web pages and are a sub-set of content writing.

Henry Harvin Education’s Content Writing Course is the oldest in South Asia. It is recognized by Indian and international bodies such as the Content Writing Association of India, MSME, UK Cert, UKAF, and the American Association for EFL.

The course provides 36 hours of extensive online training in a self-paced mode or on-line classroom mode. The course teaches writing in more than 30 different content types. These include technical and research writing, academic writing, copywriting, content writing, email writing, and writing for business and marketing. The course also includes live projects.

Learning content writing is very useful in building skills for good product descriptions.

Technical Writing

Writing about technical processes and manuals related to professions is known as technical writing. It requires knowledge of the domain in which the material is being written to get good results. Writing a software manual or writing instructions on how to operate a gadget are examples of technical writing. The skills used in technical writing are also useful in writing product descriptions.

Henry Harvin Education’s Technical Writing Course is ranked among the Top 5 in India in 2021 by India today. The course has the recognition of the Government of India. It is a 24-hour online training course imparted through the self-paced mode or the live online classroom mode. The trainers have over 15 years of work experience in the industry and are competent in their fields. The training covers various kinds of tools such as –

·          Technical Writing Software tools

·          Spell Check tools

·          Screen capture tools

·          Image editing tools

·          Authoring tools

In addition, the course teaches about the components of a technical document, technical writing skills, and how to create a technical document template. Students are made to work on projects while undergoing the training to get hands-on experience.

Check Other Henry Harvin Courses:

• Research Writing Training Course
• Creative writing training course
• Instructional Design Training Certification

 

Henry Harvin Provides Digital Marketing Course in these Cities:

Mumbai, Bhopal, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Online, Cochin, Agra, Delhi, and Noida

 

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Summing Up

Writing perfect product descriptions that sell is an art. It requires imagination in addition to a statement of facts. Capturing the attention of the audience is most important to get closer to a sale deal and this requires skills of its own. A good command of the language and SEO skills enhance the “feel-good” factor of the webpage and ensures that the users repeatedly return to the relevant website or webpage.

Recommended Reads

• Top Digital Marketing Books
• Major Digital Marketing Modules
• Top Digital Marketers In India
• Top Digital Marketing Challenges in 2022
• Top Highest Paying Digital Marketing Skills