Getting traffic to your website is easy. But when people have landed on the page that you want them to be, your product description writing will often be the difference between winning them as a client for life or losing them…forever.
Therefore, knowing how to describe your products in a non-boring, engaging manner will help you convert all those leads into paying customers, eager to spend their money with your reseller hosting or another type of business.
But what is the right way to describe your products?
Is there a “magic formula”?
Let’s try to find the answers to those questions by exploring the importance of product description writing, the common mistakes that occur in the descriptions around the web, and last but not least, we’ll examine how to write a product description that converts.
Product Description Writing
Let’s say you are browsing the web, looking for a product or service that you know you need. How does the process go?
I’m willing to bet, once you figured out the necessity of the product, you started a research on the best options available to you.
After you’ve read a few content marketing pieces that were persuasive enough and you dived in the product search, you landed on some pages that were trying to convince you to buy that exact product from, of course, that website. But are they really capable of doing so?
Most often than not the answer is no.
Given you are not familiar with the website in front of you, you won’t be in a rush to buy.
On the other hand, if every single user is able to understand that time and effort were invested in the content written to illustrate the product, and the content itself is engaging, and valuable, be sure that the conversion rate will be way higher. People would buy, based on a good product description.
NB! Even the best-written description is unable to sell a bad product. Make sure that people can find the product c specifications and features. Still, don’t count on the good specifications to make the sell. Especially, if you are not the only one that sells the product, and on every other website, the user will see the exact same list of specifications.
Which leads us to the common mistakes in product description writing.
Common Mistakes
The list of common mistakes won’t be exhaustive, as it deserves an article of its own. Still, we’ll go over the most prevalent through them, in the hope you won’t make the same mistakes as everyone else.
- Using manufacturer-provided product descriptions
- Stress on product specifications instead on emotions and results
- Writing in a boring, non-inspired manner
- Targeting the wrong customer
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How to Write a Product Description that Converts
Now that we covered what not to do when writing a description for your products, let’s cover what you should do.
1. Write to your Target Group
When we speak of marketing and market positioning, there will be no results of your efforts, if you are not speaking to the right audience.
The right audience is the group of people that consist of individuals, whose psychological, demographical and financial profile is closest to what you would consider ‘ideal customer’.
It is important to define the ideal customer in order to be able to speak directly to those people. There is no product, that appeals to everyone, everywhere, and every time.
In other words, you can sell every product, just not to everyone.
Once you find out what individuals constitute your target group, you should ‘learn their language’. You are writing for them. Make sure they understand you.
2. Benefits and Results, not Specifications and Features
That one advice we’ve mentioned in the list of the mistakes, which you may do when writing a product description.
If you are looking for a new phone, what exactly do you understand by reading the following:
- Display: 5.00-inch.
- Processor: 1.2GHz quad-core.
- Resolution: 720×1280 pixels.
- RAM: 2GB.
- Storage: 32GB.
- Battery Capacity: 2300mAh.
Can you imagine what type of display you would see, if you decide to buy this phone? Can you imagine how snappy or how slow will the task management be?
Probably no.
How about another product description that will make you if nothing else, understand what the phone is all about? How about something in following the manner:
Our XYZ phone will show you the world. See every detail on the 5.00-inch display with the 720×1280 Full HD resolution. Utilize the quad-core 1.2 GHz processor and the 2GB RAM by installing all the applications that you want.
Enjoy any app, song or movie with the 32GB internal storage. Be ready for that late at night call with the 2300mAh fully optimized battery.
I hope you can see the difference, although it has the same information. The way it is presented makes all the difference.
3. Justify Using Superlatives
Superlatives are triggering the “yeah, sure” responses in the mind of your customers. You don’t need that. So, if you use any type of superlative, try to cover it up with some justification.
In the example above, I’ve said that “you’ll be able to see every detail”, but I justified that claim by explaining how exactly that will happen. The phone has big enough screen and a Full HD resolution for every customer to be able to dive deep into whatever content he or she is consuming.
4. Use Reviews as Social Proof
Customer Reviews are a perfect way to persuade the confused and indecisive potential-client into paying customer. The opinion of the others, who already bought your product, is non-biased, and do a better job in persuading the newcomers, than whatever you are able to write in the description.
Let people share their opinion on your website, directly.
Seeing that others have already bought the product is the easiest way to persuade someone to do the same.
As they say, there is nothing more repelling than an empty restaurant.
And when you walk beside a restaurant, you can see whether there are people inside or no. And not only that, you can see whether they seem to enjoy the food, or they eat in order not to die from hunger.
Yet, most of the websites are not presenting the newcomers with such an option. The webmasters most often than not are not allowing the users who have bought their product to share an opinion for everyone to see.
And if nothing else, allowing your customers to write a review on your website is a great feedback on whether they are happy with your products or not. Thus, taking and considering that feedback could be the difference between staying in business and going into the oblivion.
Interested in business reviews? Read our article on Online Business Reviews.
5. Make your description scannable
If you are reading this part of the article, chances are you scanned to down here, to consider whether the written is worth reading. This is how we engage with the content on the web.
We scan.
I scan the content. You are doing it. And your customers are doing it, as well.
Thus, when engaging in product description writing, try not to overdo it.
Do your best for the content to be scannable.
Meaning, the users will be able to just glide over your content, and will still get the information needed.
Doing so is achievable through images, bullet points, and h1, h2, etc tags, which are also contributing to your SEO
Interested in learning more about SEO? Check out our article on DIY SEO for Small Business.
Final Thoughts
To write a description of your products can be a hard task if you are not familiar enough with the products you are offering. Therefore, this is the first task that you might want to engage with. Get to know your product. Thus, you’ll be able to present it in the best possible way.
Following is the target group. Present your product in the best possible manner for the exact group of people that will be the most eager to buy. While presenting the product to them, use their language, push their pain points, answer their question, and overcome their objections.
If you are capable of doing these things in a manner that is engaging and entertaining, more power to you. You can sell anything.
