Writing effective copy is an important component for any successful website and the same attention and care should be afforded to product descriptions.
First Things First: Target Market
Before writing a product descriptions you must have a firm understanding of who the target market is. They are who will be purchasing your product and you need to understand how they will be shopping and what information they will be looking for.
Defining Features
Highlighting the products defining features or specifications is a good place to start when writing the product description. Already understanding the target market will enable you to look at the product and know what information that market is looking for.
The Blackberry smartphone is typically a business phone and the target market would be professionals that can use the phone as a business tool. The Blackberry product description, within the O2 website, has been designed and compiled to highlight the key features that would make the product attractive to the target market.
However, the main disadvantage all online retailers face is the fact that a customer cannot pick up and feel the product nor can they read the back of the box. Therefore although it can be beneficial to highlight the key product features of an item you still need to provide as much information as you feel necessary to inform, educate and persuade the customer of the product. This does not mean copy the entire product manual nor does it mean swap the customer with swathes of text telling them about how the texture of the product feels but it does mean providing enough information so that the customer feels they are getting better value for money.
In the above example you can see that along with providing the key features of the product Habitat throw in ‘Good to Know’ information where they have provided the customer with care instructions and further detail which will aide them in the decision making process.
To exemplify the importance of writing good description look at the following examples, all are product descriptions for YSL Touch Eclat for Men.
Given that the product is a make up item specifically for men; a market who are perhaps not so used to purchasing make up, not familiar with the jargon and who would maybe need even more persuasion than women to purchase the item; the bottom two descriptions are very limited and not effective at all. Going the extra mile to provide additional information on the product and its application greatly enhances the shopping experience for the customer thus increasing the likelihood of converting a visitor into a sale.
Keep it original
Not only does an informative product description inform and persuade customers to buy it is also very search engine friendly. However, don’t copy and paste your descriptions from another website, always keep the content throughout a website unique and original, the search engines work to provide searchers with relevant and distinct web pages. So, to not only improve conversions rates having original product description can also be beneficial for the product listing in the search engines.
Tags: copywriting, product descriptions
