If you want a product page on your e-commerce site to rank, your copywriting should give web crawlers all the information they need to index your page.
But at the end of the day, if the product description doesn’t help customers make purchasing decisions, it’s not doing its job.
These seven steps can help you tick both boxes whenever it’s time to write a product description. Soon enough, you’ll be whipping up high-impact, SEO-friendly product descriptions that perform well in search and entice the potential customers who land on your site.
A product description page provides all the information about a particular product a customer would want to know — from the item’s size and color to its price and place of manufacture. One of the biggest e-commerce websites in the world, Amazon, has great examples of product descriptions, such as this one:
1. Write with your buyer personas in mind
You can use buyer personas to inform all aspects of your e-commerce marketing, including how you write a product description.
A buyer persona is essentially a profile of your dream customer, built out from information about the people who purchase from you. It should include:
- Demographic information about your ideal customer,
- Motivating factors that drive your buyer to search for products and ultimately make a purchase,
- The emotional transformation they experience before and after buying your product,
- Objections or misconceptions they have about your product or brand overall,
- Marketing messages and sales tactics that do and don’t resonate with your ideal customer,
When you know what makes your ideal customer tick, you can strategically write a product description that will resonate with them.
Say you sell planners to small business owners. You know these customers feel frazzled, disorganized and frustrated when they can’t keep track of their weekly tasks at a glance.
Tapping into their motivations and desired emotional transformation, you can describe how your planners will help them achieve the calm, confident and organized state they need to be successful.
2. Speak in your customer’s own language
Armed with buyer personas, you’ll know what marketing messages do and don’t win over your potential customers. But let’s drill down into this idea and talk about the language you use to craft those messages.
When you write a product description, make sure it features the same words and phrases your customers use to talk about your products. If you don’t, you face a few risks:
- Your brand appears irrelevant and uncool to shoppers searching for specific trends.
- Relevant products fail to show up when site visitors use their go-to search terms.
- You miss out on countless sales opportunities just because you’re using the wrong vocab.
In other words, if your target audience is shopping for “to-may-toes” and you’re selling them as “to-mah-toes,” you’ll never have the chance to win their business.
For instance, what one shopper would describe as a “sundress,” another might call a “casual summer dress.” Distinct generational and regional lingo may also impact how you describe your offerings.
Take a look at these examples:
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As you can see, even though it is the exact same dress, the way each e-commerce names it is different. Keep this example in mind before writing your product descriptions: are your potential customers looking for a “floral print maxi shirt dress” or “one-piece frock for ladies”?
3. Focus on your target audience’s needs
A product description should describe an item in the most technical terms possible, right? Wrong!
Until your potential buyers get to the point where they’re seriously comparing product specs, they won’t be excited by a laundry list of the item’s physical properties and factual details.
Instead of focusing your description on product features, write about the benefits your product offers. You can do this by mapping distinguishing features to your customer’s needs. And even if your product isn’t super functional or need-fulfilling, it undoubtedly can fulfill a shopper’s desires.
For example, if you’re selling a purely decorative autumnal wreath, your shopper won’t be inspired by the dimensions of the plastic leaves and pumpkins. But they’ll be eager to buy after reading about how the decor can welcome guests and invite the warmth and bounty of the season into their home, which is what they want to accomplish in the first place.
4. Optimize for search engines
If you want your products to rank well in search, you need to weave the right keywords into your product descriptions.
A keyword research tool can help you uncover target keywords at the appropriate search volume and keyword difficulty for your e-commerce site.
With a little extra research, you can gather related terms and long-tail keywords. These show you what details to include in your description to make it as specific and comprehensive as possible. Plus, they ensure your SEO-friendly description shows up for customers who are looking for your exact offering.
For instance, a broad keyword like “bug repellent” is going to be a lot more competitive. Leading brands will dominate page 1. But something more specific, like “natural bug repellent for kids,” will reach the right consumers and help you achieve a higher ranking.
5. Understand user intent when choosing keywords
Speaking of keywords, make sure you’re targeting ones that reveal the right user intent. There are several different types of user intent, but these are the main types to pay attention to when choosing keywords for online product descriptions:
- Informational intent: Keywords like “how to make zucchini noodles” and “what are zoodles” reveal that a user is looking for information.
- Commercial intent: Keywords like “best zoodle maker” or “spiralizer for zucchini” suggest a user is looking for products they can buy.
- Transactional intent: Keywords like “spiralizer coupon” or “best price for zoodle maker” show that a user wants to make a purchase.
- Navigational intent: Keywords like “Padermo zucchini noodle maker” mean that the users already know what they want.
Keywords signifying informational intent have a low conversion rate. After all, consumers who search these phrases are looking for information, not products.
Instead, commercial, transactional and navigational intent keywords have a much higher conversion probability, so these should remain your focus.
Informational intent keywords might have a higher search volume, but this doesn’t mean you should use them when you write a product description. These users aren’t ready to buy just yet. If you want to attract them, consider a different type of content creation and write a blog post instead to help answer their query and build brand awareness.
6. Embrace your brand voice
The product descriptions you write should be distinctive and unique to your brand. Even if you carry the same exact product as another e-commerce retailer, the way you describe the benefits of that item and the story you tell about it are what really make an impression on prospective buyers.
Whether your brand voice is personable, formal, conversational, professional or something else, be sure to keep the tone you use consistent across all customer touchpoints — from social media captions and email marketing to your blog. This helps establish an instantly recognizable brand personality. That familiarity makes people want to buy, whether they encounter your products on Instagram or your e-commerce site.
A perfect example of this is Sephora. The way they speak to their audience on Instagram is as casual and upbeat as the way they describe their products on their e-commerce.
7. Don’t forget about readability
Last but not least, keep your product descriptions straightforward and skimmable. According to Portent, around 13% of the conversion rate of B2C clients depends on a site’s readability score.
You might have a lot to say about your offering, but these writing tips will make that information easier for potential customers to consume:
- Create skimmable sections of copy, broken up with headers and white space.
- Use short bullet points when listing out product details.
- Avoid long convoluted sentences and flowery language.
- Try concise storytelling to highlight your product’s benefits.
- Ensure your product descriptions are mobile-friendly.
For those shoppers who need more convincing or more details, consider adding expanding sections or tabs they can click on to learn more, as IKEA does.
Still puzzling over product descriptions?
When done right, product descriptions can get noticed by search crawlers, rank well and ultimately win over shoppers.
Are you currently struggling to start writing SEO-friendly, high-converting product descriptions? Leave us a comment below telling us the biggest challenge you face when creating effective product descriptions.
