Chapter 3: Creating Compelling Product Listings
November 8, 2024
10 min read time
Once you have identified a good product title, the next mission is product descriptions.
A product description explains what a product is and why should a shopper purchase from you. Apart from product details, it needs to tell a story about how the product can solve the target audience's pain points; so that the customer is pushed to purchase it.
Here are the best practices to write a product description and examples for you to learn from:
If you don’t understand your target customers’ needs, wants, and desires, then it would be very hard to sell them your product. Here are a few things that you must know:
Once you are able to understand this, you’ll be able to help your customers visualize using your product and remove any potential concerns that they might be facing.
Example: The Pitta volumising shampoo speaks to its ideal customer by directly addressing the pain points of those with fine or thinning hair, emphasizing benefits like "instant and long-lasting fullness and body," and using relevant terminology that resonates with their target audience's desires and concerns.
While it's tempting to list all the unique features of your product, customers are more interested in how these features will benefit them. Focus on how your product solves problems or improves the customer's life, in the form of a story.
P.S: The best way to write this would be to focus on what inspired you to create your product, how it was tested, and why would you use it.
For example: The Welly bandages are targeted to parents of younger children, who hate bandages; and often lose them during playtime/bed time. With this product description, they highlight the fun and practical aspects of their glow-in-the-dark feature, turning a mundane product into an exciting experience.
Incorporate words that appeal to the senses, helping customers imagine what it's like to use your product. This creates a more vivid and appealing description that can trigger emotional responses and increase desire for the product.
Example: The Thinx period underwear focuses on words like ‘Leakproof’ and ‘Moisture-wicking fabric helps keep you feeling dry, ‘thin and discreet’’; which helps your shoppers imagine how comfortable they’d feel during their period.
Use language that helps customers imagine owning and using the product. This technique can increase desire and make the product feel more tangible, even in an online setting.
Example: The Mad Tasty CBD-infused drinks (Image 4) invite customers to imagine enjoying the product with phrases like "Feeling non-committal? No problem! We have a mixed case that includes the whole family." This approach helps potential buyers visualize the product in their lives, making the purchase feel more natural.
When you write a product description, you should be as specific as possible. This means that there is no space for vague or ‘water is wet’ statements.
You could apply a simple trick here: after writing a sentence, ask yourself whether this sentence helps you educate your shopper about either the product or brand. If yes, then it stays. If not, then backspace it :)
Example: The Rocco fridge gives a lot of detail including size, material and product for the consumer. This level of detail not only informs the customer but also reinforces the buyer’s decision to complete the payment.
Nobody likes reading large blocks of information, especially if they’re in a hurry to complete their purchase. In such a case, you need to write information that is easy to read and digest. Product descriptions can easily be divided into different tabs for easy scanning so that more shoppers can actually read them.
With the Vitals Product Description Tab App, your customers can understand product details easily through the brief labels.
For example: Kettle & Fire uses simple dropdown tabs and bullet points to make the content easy to scan for your shopper.
To not use SEO for product descriptions would be an extremely expensive mistake, when shoppers don’t end up on your website, despite all the work put in. Choose keywords that you want your page to rank for.
You could use tools like Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer, to identify the best target keyword based on search volume and relevance. Try to naturally incorporate your main keyword into your product description, which improves your page's relevance and chances of ranking well on Google.
P.S. If you’d like to reduce the manual effort of creating product descriptions, then you could easily use the PageGen AI widget from Vitals to create product descriptions for your e-commerce store.
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