7 Hacks to Write a Product Description that Multiplies Sales

Author: Team WH

Published On: 26-04-22

Last Updated on: 13-09-23

Estimated reading time: 11 minutes

You’d be surprised to know that 98% of shoppers do not complete their purchase because of inadequate or incorrect product descriptions. That statistic should tell you enough about the importance of e-commerce copywriting and writing product descriptions that sell.

But are you not sure about how to write product descriptions? WrittenlyHub is here to spill the beans!

Curating the perfect product copy can be quite the task—but we’ll help you write enticing descriptions for your store. This article will offer a deep dive into the 7 best tips and tricks to ace the product description writing game and look at some examples of persuasive product descriptions.

Let’s dive right in and look at some of the top elements to take your product descriptions to the next level.

Find your ideal buyer-speak to them

Knowing your audience is the first rule of thumb to create a convincing product description. Put yourself in the shoes of your target audience and think about their pain points. An ideal product copy will address the target buyer directly and personally.

Let’s look at this product description from The Oodie to understand the importance of knowing your target audience.

This copy perfectly exemplifies the magic product descriptions can create. It addresses the target shopper in a conversational tone and wonderfully presents the benefits of using the hooded blanket. This urges customers to buy the product and improves conversion rates.

So, create a buyer persona before you start writing.

Creating such a buyer profile will allow you to zero in on what’s really important to your ideal customer. It is especially important to focus on your audience and speak their language when addressing niche markets.

Think about what questions a potential customer may have and answer them through your description.

Write in their language and visualize how you would sell your product in a physical environment. Here are a few questions you should ask yourself to create an ideal product copy:

• How did the potential customer arrive on your webpage?
• What are their interests, broadly?
• Why would they be interested in your ecommerce store?
• How would the visitor describe the product to another person?
• What are the most useful features of the product that will appeal to the customer?
• Why should the visitor pick this product over its competition?

Convert pain points into selling points

Every product has its unique features—but converting these features into selling points can be tricky. While talking about your products, people often get very technical and elaborate upon monotonous features that the customer may not be interested in.

If you want your product features to appeal to the customers, you need to understand the potential user’s pain points.

While you can’t play around a lot with the specifications, you can present the benefits creatively. Use positive adjectives and descriptive language to highlight them. If you are wondering how to write product descriptions for Amazon while incorporating this technique, have a look at this description on Method Home.

Although the features should cover real facts, you can always present them in a way that demonstrates how they can improve the customer’s life. This detergent description, for instance, talks about how the product makes your life easier by focussing on its cleaning properties. It also emphasizes the added benefits you derive from the product, such as the ocean-like smell.

Before you pen down your description, create an outline of your product’s features and think about how they can either help users overcome a pain point or increase pleasure.

Focusing your description around the features will help you create a more persuasive product description.

Let’s look at a few quick tips that can help you entice potential customers:

• Applaud their aspirations
• Use sensory language to tap into the five senses
• Highlight the problems they can overcome with the product
• Help them imagine that they already have the product and focus on what they can achieve with it

Experiment With Clever And Conversational Copy to Improve Conversion Rates

Now that we’ve covered defining a target audience, the big question to answer is—how should you talk to them?

Unlike pitching in a physical store, the tone of an online pitch is the same each time the customer visits the webpage.

The sales associate can tweak the product description every time in the retail environment based on the visitor. However, you need to carefully create write-ups for your Shopify product descriptions or Amazon product descriptions to appeal to every potential buyer.

Customers will not be impressed when you use direct phrases like “excellent product quality” or “highly durable”. After all, nobody is going to write “poor quality” for their products.

Instead, you should use a conversational tone when you write a product description. Use clever storytelling to hook the consumers and sell your product.

This Cards Against Humanity product copy aces the conversational tone. Each point here looks like an excerpt from an actual conversation, which is exactly what you should aim for.

You can employ the services of a content marketing agency to help you write great product descriptions. WrittenlyHub offers product description writing services across all genres and can ramp up your e-commerce website with engaging and conversational write-ups.

Using a natural tone helps buyers connect with the brand. If your product description looks like a bundle of computer-generated phrases, it will not engage readers.

Before you create a persuasive product description, ask yourself these questions:

• What is the customer’s state of mind when they find this product?
• What kind of language do they use when talking about such products?
• What tone would your top salespeople use to pitch the product?
• Is your description reflecting the company persona?
• Does the copy sound persuasive and energetic?
• Are you creating an emotional connection with the audience?

Once your description is ready, read it. Does it sound like something you would say to a friend? If not, you need to tweak the tone. Humour is a great way to create a positive and long-lasting impression, as long as it fits your brand.

How To Write Product Descriptions: Avoid Superlatives; Sound Realistic

Superlatives are not the most sincere choice unless you can justify them. Terms like “best” or “highest quality” will fail to persuade the reader because it lacks originality. Besides, superlatives are so overused that they feel like filler words without much meaning to the content.

If you’re worried about what adjectives you should use, refer to a list of power words that portray your product or service as special without exaggerating it.

Saying that the product is “patented” or “spectacular” is better than calling it “most advanced”. Read and re-read your product descriptions to ensure that you don’t sound over the top. Using meaningless drivel not only distracts the reader but also hampers your brand image.

Use facts and figures to write product descriptions that sell.  This builds confidence in the readers and increases your credibility. On the contrary, too many adjectives can slow the readers down and confuse them.

This product description from Studio Neat is a very neat example (see what we did there?) of highlighting a product’s features without using superlatives.

An overdose of superlatives can make the content difficult to follow and does not effectively convince readers.

Here’s a quick guide to peppering your description with just the right amount of adjectives so that it appears realistic:

• Do not use more than one adjective before a noun. For instance,
• “A large and filling meal”
• “A filling meal”
• Use emotional or sensory words to make the reader feel something.
• Avoid using adjectives to state something obvious.

In case you can prove why your product is “highly advanced” or the “most desired”, you should definitely use superlatives and back your claim with facts or figures.

Write descriptively—paint a picture

Research shows that just touching an object can increase perceived ownership, which pushes people to make the purchase. Unfortunately for ecommerce stores, this selling technique is redundant.

While clear pictures and videos can help in replicating the physical touch to a certain degree, your product copy offers a more sure shot solution to appeal to the readers.

The secret behind great product descriptions is that they are so descriptive that they immerse the readers into imagining exactly what you’re selling. This increases the readers’ interest in the product and improves conversion rates. By that logic, the product description should not merely list the product’s features; it should contain an entire story about why you need the product and how it will help you.

Let’s look at this product description from Sivana, an excellent example of painting a picture with words.

Besides highlighting the product’s key features, it also places focus on how the buyer will benefit from the purchase. It talks a fair deal about the spiritual and healing properties of the product, which makes it more appealing.

When you tell a descriptive story about the product, you connect with the reader on an emotional level instead of a transactional one. It helps you convert your potential customers into actual buyers.

Let’s look at some questions you need to answer to go about product description writing.

• Who created the product?
• How was the product tested?
• What inspired the creator to make the product?
• How does the product fit into the reader’s daily life?
• What did the manufacturing journey of the product look like?

The aim of answering these questions is to help buyers envision the product in the most realistic manner. Remember, you’re not selling a product—you’re selling an experience.

Write a Product Description by Optimising with Keywords for Visibility

Copywriting is the art of writing for search engines without writing for search engines. Confused? Let’s break this down.

Ecommerce copywriting aims to attract humans, of course. However, including keywords in your write-up will also make it easier for search engine crawlers to rank your website better. Not only product descriptions but all your web content should be optimized for search engines.

SEO, or search engine optimization, is perhaps the most efficient way to attract new visitors to your page. It is the first step in convincing people to purchase your products.

First, determine the query that your target is most likely to look for and include it within your product description, along with some variations.

Entering a query for “black sweater” yielded the following results on Google.

See that the results are not just black sweaters, but also “black sweaters for women”. It shows that using variations of keywords can also help you rank higher. You should include these keywords or variations at the top of your page, in the product title, and within the product description.

If you’re wondering how to write product descriptions for e-commerce, Shopify recommends you add keywords in these main places:

• Page titles
• ALT tags
• Meta descriptions
• Page body content

Use tools such as LSI Graph to identify high-performing keywords for your niche. The tool generates a list of keywords related to your topic. It crawls the internet to find web pages that rank well for your keywords and then lists the most often used keywords on that page.

While keywords are not the only factor to bolster your SEO rankings, they definitely play a key role.

Make the copy scannable and crisp

You’d be surprised to know that 79% of readers only scanned a webpage they came across, as opposed to reading word by word. Given the continually declining attention spans, your product descriptions must be easy to read.

One of the best ways to make content more readable is by using bullet points. They are a clear and concise way to display important information. Break big blocks of texts into list items or steps to write a scannable copy. Bulleted lists or numbered lists make the text more skimmable.

Since dense paragraphs make readers uninterested, keep your paragraphs. Try to keep each paragraph about three to four sentences long so that you do not lose the reader’s attention.

Shorter paragraphs are more manageable and do not overwhelm the readers. Moreover, your sentences should also be short and crisp.

Take, for instance, this product copy from Naked Wines. It is a wonderful example demonstrating how plenty of information has been broken into smaller bits using bullets. Moreover, the paragraphs are pretty short.

Another interesting thing to note here is the use of statistics. Using facts and figures is a great alternative for presenting information as visuals, such as figures, tables, and graphs, are easier to process.

You can also sprinkle your content with images or videos to turn information into digestible bits. This is a common suggestion that comes up when you ask people how to write product descriptions for Amazon.

Using subheads is also a common way of breaking content into smaller chunks. These headings enable visitors to navigate the webpage and get the gist of it.

Lastly, scannability depends heavily on simple language. Since product copies are supposed to appeal to a wide audience, using casual and simple language can go a long way.

A quick rule of thumb to remember here—try to keep your words under four syllables long.

Summing Up

Writing persuasive product descriptions is not a cakewalk. It takes proper time and resources to create the perfect copy.

Writing a draft is not enough. You need to edit and re-edit till it fulfills each and every criterion mentioned here. Right from determining your target audience to ensuring scannability, each of these points is crucial for nailing your product copy.

If writing a product description is not your thing, you needn’t worry. WrittenlyHub offers e-commerce copywriting services to help you get the perfect description for your products.

Drop us a line, and we’ll lend a hand with all your content marketing needs!