The product images are important.
Product videos have become more important over the years.
Reviews are important for selling ecommerce products.
Potential buyers will look for just about any information they can before they make an online purchase. Another one is the question and answer section on many ecommerce sites.
All of these things and more should be going into your product descriptions. This is the critical portion of your product pages.
Here are a few tips for improving your ecommerce product descriptions…
#1. Easy To Scan
Just about every piece of online content is easy to scan. Long text is broken up into sections with headings and subheadings. There are bulleted and numbered lists.
There are a few images to break up the text.
For whatever reason, people like to scan and skip through online text. Maybe it’s like looking at the table of contents of a book. We like to know what to expect before we dive in and commit to reading the full thing.
And it probably makes it easy to go back and find information that we want to reaffirm.
Long text is okay for product descriptions. But make sure to break up the text so that readers can scan it. Use lists. Use headings. Break it up.
#2. Boring Details
It can feel like you’re doing good by using fancy words that “tell a story” about your products. To a point, that can be true. But almost always it’s better to stick to the boring details.
Think about your sales process in person. The questions customers ask. The details they are curious about.
Usually it’s the boring stuff that comes out first.
What color does it come in? What does it cost? How smooth is the zipper?
Stick to the boring details and make sure you include any and all of them. If one person is asking, you can bet many are thinking it in their head.
#3. Little Details
When you’re including the boring details, also make sure to include the little details.
When you’re so close to the products you’re selling, it’s easy to take the little stuff for granted. To you, it seems obvious that a shirt has two buttons. But to a potential customer, who is seeing it for the first time, it’s almost always not obvious.
You’re almost always not selling your products to people with the same understanding as yourself. Just as you don’t have the same intimate relationship with the details of their job.
No detail is too small or “unimportant” when it comes to ecommerce products.
#4. What About SEO?
SEO is important. It’s best when it comes to getting into the minds of your customers. That’s what search engines like Google are trying to do. That’s what you should be trying to do.
You want to do keyword research to figure out what language and words your customers are using when it comes to your products. But not to the point where your descriptions stop making sense.
#5. A Living Product Description
A final tip is to remember that your product descriptions should never be “done”. It’s best to treat them as something that is alive. Something that needs to be updated and changed on a regular schedule.
Set reminders to check your products every six months or at least every year. Go back and use your new knowledge to make changes. Add descriptions. Remove descriptions.
Make it better.
Conclusion
Product descriptions are as important as ever. Images are important. Videos are important. But as more people shop online, reading descriptions continues to be one of the main ways people make buying decisions.
Use these tips to improve yours today and on a regular schedule.
