By the time a visitor finds your product, you’ve overcome one of the biggest hurdles for ecommerce store owners. Out of all the millions of products, they’ve landed on yours!
But now they’re at a critical decision-making point, and it’s your job to guide them from casual interest to making a purchase. Ultimately, you have to convince them to add a product to their cart.
Thus, you have to write product descriptions that not only tell what you’re selling, however also connect your customers emotionally.
A good copy (jargon for marketing-related writing) isn’t easy to write, but it’s worth making the effort or hiring a professional because product descriptions have such a profound impact on the conversion process.
According to data shared by OneSpace, as many as 98% of consumers have been dissuaded from purchasing due to a lack of product information.
In this article, we’ll dig into why product descriptions matter, how words impact conversions, product description best practices, and tips to help you write high-converting product copy for your Builderfly store.
Why Better Product Descriptions Are Worth the Effort
A great product description clearly states the value and benefits of the product, tells a story and presents the product as something more –a solution.
In short, a good product description mirrors the thoughts, desires, and needs of your target audience.
When brands fail to accomplish that connection, the consumer goes elsewhere.
There are other significant factors to consider when writing amazing product descriptions:
- Organic Search. The majority of customers start their search for a product using search engines like Google. Well-written, optimized product descriptions are more likely to appear in those organic searches, resulting in a higher volume of targeted and ready-to-convert traffic.
- Internal Search. By writing more robust product descriptions, you increase the chances that the product will show up in internal searches using a variety of different terms. Spend some time testing your search functionality using keywords like “learning toys for kids” rather than a specific product name.
- Paid Campaign Optimization. Paid ads typically use some kind of quality score to calculate the cost per click, action, or engagement. A well-crafted and optimized product description is likely to result in a better quality score to your target audience as well as to the ad it’s linked to.
The Psychology of Better Product Descriptions
The great product doesn’t drive sales on its own. A customer needs to have at least a basic understanding of how the product works. More importantly, they need to understand how that product will help them.
According to Harvard Business professor Gerald Zaltman, 95% of purchase decisions take place subconsciously.
While a customer makes a conscious decision whether or not to purchase a product, that decision is influenced by their subconscious. When you understand some basic principles of psychology, you can start writing good product descriptions that guide more customers for making a purchase.
Speaking their Language
Jargon doesn’t sell products. Customers can tell when a product is being over-hyped with buzz words and marketing speak. For more effective product descriptions, write a copy that uses your customer’s language to describe experiences.
One of the most effective ways to accomplish this is to research what other customers are saying about a product.
Search for product reviews on Google, Amazon, and other sites. Find impactful phrases that reflect the product experience. In many cases, you’ll find customers tend to use the same tone and words or phrases.
Using Sensory Words to Trigger the Subconscious
Sensory words are used strategically in product descriptions to trigger feelings. When you influence the emotional and psychological state of a consumer, they’re more open to purchasing the product.
To achieve this, you need to do more than stuff colorful adjectives into your product copy. Instead, think about the sensory details of your product. Depending on the product, that might include sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch or a combination of some of those.
When customers read these words and phrases, it triggers the sensory areas of the brain.
Making a subconscious connection is critical in an environment where customers can’t hold products because research has shown that when we can hold a product, the desire to own it increases dramatically.
Components of a Great Product Description
Writing product descriptions would be very easy if we could nail down a universal format, length, and structure.
Unfortunately, what works for one product isn’t necessarily ideal for another.
Regardless of the type of product, there are some basic components to consider when writing a great product description.
The Long Description
The long description is the space to leverage everything you know about your target audience, using persuasive copy to pull them in and make a strong emotional and psychological connection.
Despite the name, it doesn’t necessarily have to belong. Your product description only needs to be as long as it takes to sell your audience.
The Features and Benefits
Most customers aren’t interested in the general specifications and the mundane features of a product. Customers want to know how those features are going to benefit them and what they’ll get out of using the product.
Every product has features, and every feature has a benefit that encourages a customer to buy it.
The Short Description
The short description is the short description of your product that typically appears at the top of the product page.
Next to the title, this short description is the first thing a consumer skims over when they land on the page. So, a good practice is to place the most impactful benefits and persuasive copy here.
Better Product Descriptions Start with Understanding Your Audience
Writing better product descriptions is as much a creative process as it is a scientific one. A strong understanding of your target audience will help you identify the best words and phrases to creatively weave around features and benefits. Once written, continued ecommerce A/B testing will help you improve the phrasing and formatting. Using the tips from this article, you’ll be able to tune into the psychology of your target audience to create persuasive product descriptions that will continue to improve conversions in your Builderfly store.
