15 Tips to create high-converting product descriptions

You've carefully curated a collection of remarkable items that resonate with your customers' desires and needs. Your stunning product photos capture the essence of your offerings, allowing website visitors to envision them in their lives, be it adorning their walls, held in their hands, or worn with pride.

Now, it's time to give your products the written representation they deserve: compelling product descriptions. While it's often overlooked and hastily crafted, we understand the importance of this crucial element in your ecommerce store. We're here to simplify your life by offering valuable tips on composing descriptions that truly showcase the value of your inventory and motivate customers to make a purchase.

• Learn how to craft persuasive product descriptions that resonate with your target audience and showcase your product's unique selling points.

• Discover the importance of storytelling, social proof, and SEO optimization in enhancing the effectiveness of your product descriptions.

• Gain insights on creating a product description template that can streamline your content creation process.

• Understand the role of product descriptions in driving sales for print on demand products and services.

A product description is a crucial piece of content that provides potential customers with vital information about a product, including its features, benefits, and unique selling points. It serves to inform, persuade, and engage customers, ultimately leading to increased interest and sales.

Images draw the eye, and price points impress the bargain hunter, but a product description--even if only words on product pages--can help your customer imagine how a product can work in their day-to-day lives.

An effective product description can drive sales and help you kickstart your business by:

• Captivating the target audience and holding their attention.

• Highlighting the product's features in a way that differentiates it from other similar products.

• Communicating the product's benefits, making it easy for customers to envision themselves using and benefiting from the product.

• Providing social proof and credibility through customer testimonials and endorsements.

• Ensuring search engine optimization to increase online visibility and help potential customers easily find the product through search.

The primary purpose of a product description is to help customers understand the product's value and how it can fulfill their needs or solve their problems. By crafting a compelling and informative product description, businesses can showcase why their product is the ideal choice for customers, setting them apart from competitors.

The following tips and strategies, distilled from industry best practices and successful case studies, will guide you through the process of crafting product descriptions that truly speak to your target audience. Use them to write product descriptions that sell, product features that boost your ecommerce business, and product details that delight your ideal customer.

Knowing your target customer for a product can help you formulate a description that answers their questions in advance and also lays out the USPs which might inspire.

Knowing your brand voice and tone is essential when crafting product descriptions. Consistency in voice and tone helps establish your brand identity and allows customers to connect with your brand on a deeper level. Consider the following when determining your voice and tone:

• Is your brand professional and formal, or casual and friendly?

• Do you want to evoke humor or seriousness in your descriptions?

• Should your tone be informative, conversational, or persuasive?

By maintaining a consistent voice and tone throughout your product descriptions, you can build trust, credibility, and recognition among your audience.

A common mistake creators make is to explain why they think their products are superb. Honestly, customers don’t care about this; they just want to know what they’ll like about your product on a personal level. Keep this in mind when writing your product descriptions: explain the problem that it solves or the gap it fills rather than just listing the full set of its features, many of which might not be as relevant as others.

When we run out of ideas to add to our product description, we tend to include generic phrases like “excellent product quality.”

Avoid generic phrases like this in your descriptions. Potential buyers see them and switch off their brains, thinking, "Yeah, yeah," and not being convinced of anything. Be specific and give concrete examples to reach readers and actually convince them about the “excellent quality” of your product.

If there is an interesting story behind a product, spell it out.

Imagine a stranger you wanted to impress at a meeting or dinner was asking you about the product. You wouldn’t tell them that no thought was put into it and that it was just like everything else. What do you think they would find interesting? What story would you tell?

In the spirit of telling a good story and underscoring the product’s uniqueness and quality, if there were challenges in its creation, then outline them.

Humans are highly social creatures who place a high value on what their peers think about products, services, and the world in general. To leverage this in your product descriptions, consider referring to how other customers have successfully used it. Hint at its popularity. You might think about referring to external consumer review sites or even adding quotes from your own satisfied customers.

Remember that your product description is designed to inform but also present SEO benefits, so include the wording most commonly-associated (and searched for), as well as some other relevant phrasing.

Seeing what other options pop up in the Google search bar when you input a description of the product might help with this, how competitors choose to list it, or a Google News search of media reviews of similar items.

If you have a strong image to illustrate the product, consider how your product description can reference and complement it. One look at the right image (when paired with a good description) can help online shoppers make a purchase decision in an instant.

Suggest how friends, family, or colleagues might view its new owner. This again leverages the social side of human nature, making us consider our purchase decision as a way to delight those around us. Plus, customers are less guarded of their purse strings when it comes to buying gifts.

Consider referencing a season for which the product is best suited or emphasizing its all-year-round appeal. Seasonal items are often an insta-buy for many shoppers, as there’s a built-in sense of urgency knowing the holiday or season will soon come to an end.

Consider bullet points to:

• Really highlight what makes the product special and relevant and make the description easier to scan.-

• Break up long paragraphs to make the content more digestible.

• Emphasize key points and guide the reader's eyes through the description.

Superlatives sound insincere in a product description unless you demonstrate why your product is the best, the easiest, or the most advanced. Instead, use descriptive language and focus on the unique qualities your product offers. Provide vivid details and engage the senses to create an immersive experience for the reader. By crafting a captivating description, you can make your product memorable and help customers to visualize how it fits into their lives.

As the saying goes, you can’t please all of the people all of the time. Instead, focus your descriptions and write as if you’re communicating with just one person. Use persuasive and energetic words. Address your target customer directly by using the second person, “you.” Sell and explain the product to this person alone, and you’ll find it has a much stronger impact.

Help your customer envision themselves using and benefiting from your product. Use phrases like "imagine yourself," "picture this," or "envision the possibilities" to create a mental image of the experience your product provides.Encourage the potential buyer to think about how the product will fit seamlessly into their routine, making their life more convenient, efficient, or enjoyable. This is remarkably effective even if you just sell t-shirts in your online store.

Set measurable goals and track the performance of your product descriptions. This can be done by monitoring conversion rates, click-through rates, bounce rates, average time spent on the product page, and other relevant metrics. Analyzing this data will help you determine which strategies and writing styles work best, allowing you to optimize your descriptions and improve overall performance. Keep testing and tweaking your descriptions to ensure they are continually driving engagement and sales. Remember that what works for one product may not work for another, so be prepared to adapt and refine your approach as needed.

To streamline the process of writing product descriptions and maintain consistency across your online store, consider creating a product description template. This template will serve as a guide for writing future descriptions, ensuring that all necessary elements are included and presented in a cohesive manner. Here's how to create a template:

1. Start with a strong headline - Craft a compelling and attention-grabbing headline that clearly conveys the product's main selling point or unique feature.

2. Introduce the product - Briefly describe the product and its purpose. Keep this introduction concise and focus on capturing the reader's interest.

3. List the features - Outline the top benefits and features that set your product apart from the competition. Use bullet points or short paragraphs.

4. Provide social proof - Include customer testimonials, reviews, or endorsements to demonstrate the product's success and popularity among other users.

5. Highlight gifting potential - Suggest who the product would make a great gift for and during what occasions, such as birthdays, holidays, or anniversaries.

Creating persuasive product descriptions and pages is vital for converting potential customers into buyers. Understand your target audience, maintain a consistent voice, emphasize unique features and benefits, and craft a compelling story. Use social proof, optimize for search engines, and showcase high-quality product images. Highlight suitability as a gift or for specific seasons, ensure scannability, and address customers directly. Help them imagine owning the product and establish metrics for success. Create captivating descriptions to drive sales.

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A good product description includes vital information about the product, highlighting its features, benefits, and unique selling points. It captivates the target audience, communicates the product's value, provides social proof, and is optimized for search.

A creative product description goes beyond simply listing features and benefits. It tells a compelling story about the product, evokes emotions, engages the reader's imagination, and uses descriptive language to create a memorable and immersive experience. It captures the essence of the product and sets it apart from competitors.

Product Description Example: "Introducing our iconic XYZ T-Shirt. Crafted from premium, soft cotton fabric, this classic yet stylish t-shirt is designed for both comfort and fashion-forward individuals. Its versatile design makes it perfect for various occasions, whether you're dressing up or going for a casual look. The XYZ T-Shirt features a timeless cut, impeccable stitching, and attention to detail, ensuring long-lasting quality. Join countless satisfied customers who have elevated their wardrobe with this must-have t-shirt, combining comfort, style, and effortless sophistication."