11 Ways To Write Product Descriptions That Inform and Persuade Your Customers

The success of an eCommerce store depends on the sales and eCommerce product descriptions that directly influence these sales.

A product description is a marketing tool that defines the product and explains why the customers should purchase it. It must act as a sales executive present in physical stores.

That is why it is crucial to write eCommerce product descriptions that can persuade the customers and sell the products.

We did our research and we’ve bought 11 brilliant tips for you, so you can craft your eCommerce product description in the right way and entice the visitors.

Define your Buyer Persona

Before you start writing your eCommerce product descriptions you must know your buyer personas. Only then you’ll be able to resonate your descriptions with your audience.

A buyer persona is a fictional representation of your ideal or target customer. You can define them by researching your audience.

What’s the point in defining Buyer personas?

The reason is to identify the demographics of your audience, their pain and pleasure points and what interests them. If you don’t determine all of these then your product descriptions will not impact your audience.

Nike knows very well about their potential customers because a random budget shopper will not prefer Nike due to its price. So, their potential customers are the ones that have technical knowledge about shoes.

So, look what they’ve done, every detail and technical aspects of the product is listed here, even the place of manufacture.

This can be done only if you know who will purchase your product and what information you must furnish to entice them.

That’s why creating Buyer personas beforehand is crucial.

Look at this, the shoe is a cheap one from a local brand, the descriptions are all over the place, ‘Competitive road racing’, who in their right mind will race on roads.

This is a clear example of not knowing who your ideal buyer is. They just want to sell their product so they’ve listed out some benefits, that’s it.

The only good thing about this description is that they’ve listed it in bullet points to make it look neat, but that doesn’t mean the product is good.

Hope you understood the importance of creating Buyer personas before writing your eCommerce product descriptions. Make sure you determine the

• Location
• Education level
• Income level
• Interests
• Age
• Gender
• Language

Of your potential customers and only then you’ll know what to write to entice them and increase your sales.

Target your Existing audience

When you write your eCommerce product descriptions, you must target your ideal buyer or your existing audience.

If you go on to write it for the general audience or without knowing who your target audience is then you’ll mess up everything like the previous example we saw.

So, what is the best product description?

The best product description is the one that talks to your customers directly. Touch their pain points and tell how your product can change their life as if you are talking to them in person.

Sony always does it better, it looks like they are talking directly to us or the customers. See, how the description always points out one common thing, ‘Making your life better.

They know what their ideal buyer’s pain points are and they are directly addressing them which increases the credibility of the brand.

No wonder Sony has so many loyal customer base. It is the simplest details like these that make the difference.

When you are writing your eCommerce product descriptions, start from the audience perspective.

What kind of quality do they like? What kind of words do they use? What gets their attention? And so on.

You see, Sony knows what their ideal buyer likes, so they talk about ‘Textures’, ‘Resolution’ and all things related to video quality.

Using words like these will entice your customers and it will push them to make the purchase. Think if you were selling your product in-store face-to-face, how you would talk to your ideal customer.

Now try to write that same conversation in your eCommerce site and you can achieve your sales easily.

Write your own product descriptions

This might not seem like a technical tip but it is one of the most important hacks you must always remember.

If you own eCommerce stores then there will be a lot of manufacturers trying to sell through your store. So, they’ll be providing you with descriptions for their product.

Never use those descriptions, never. Manufacturer’s descriptions will be boring with no proper information.

A classic example of a manufacturer’s description, the funny thing is almost 5 to 6 stores have the same description for this product.

Sometimes a customer will be looking to get some information about a product for study purposes. If you have plagiarized contents like these it will impact your credibility ad sales.

If your store has unique content that you spent your time to write then your store will be the go-to site for every buyer out there.

It will also look good for SEO because Google prefers original contents for their ranking. The ranking is needed for your store’s promotion so if you want to get ranked in Google then write the content on your own.

Talk about the benefits to tempts readers

Like we said before, your product description must act as a sales executive and persuade the new customers or visitors into purchasing. If they are not enticed with your content then there is no chance of them returning to your store again.

The best way to do it is by leveraging the benefits of the product and tempt the customers.

But don’t make the same mistake as most eCommerce do by mentioning the features as benefits, that’s a big No-No from the customer’s perspective.

Create a proper distinction between features and benefits then start writing them. Customers care about the benefits of the product and how it can change their life.

Benefits are the things that a customer can experience by using that particular product.

This is a face mask from UnderArmour and the second image is the features of the mask. They’ve disclosed the type of material, fabric, protection and more.

Product features show what the product is capable of doing.

And here are the benefits of the same UnderArmour mask, the benefits show what the mask can do for you.

Notice how they’ve talked about the secure fit, reduced strain and more.

We’ve shown a mask because it is the most relevant thing as of now.

This is how you can tempt your customers into purchasing at your store. They would have a lot of questions before purchasing a product so instead of making them figure out on their own you do it for them.

So, listing out the benefits is an easy way to increase your conversions and it will also help you minimize cart abandonment.

Resonate with customer’s pain points

If you want your product descriptions to convince your customers into making a purchase then you must talk to their points.

Remember the first step, defining the buyer personas, well that’s where you can know about your customer’s pain points. What troubles them? How can your product change their life? And so on.

Once when you get to know this, you can start writing your descriptions to resonate with their pain points.

Let’s put it this way, since we are in a pandemic, masks have become a necessity for us.

So, the pain points while purchasing a mask will be, what kind of material is this? What is the size of pores? What type of fit is it? Can I wash it?

These are some questions one will have while purchasing a mask and we’ll be looking for a store that explains well about masks. And the above image is a Ralph Lauren mask.

Let’s see if they address all our pain points,

Yes, they have addressed all the customer pain points and even they have assured us that the masks are certified antimicrobial.

This is how you must write your product descriptions and give your customers the credibility to purchase from your store.

Make it easily scannable using bullets

Customers who visit any eCommerce stores will not be reading every word and line of the content. What they do is called skimming.

They’ll just scan through the descriptions and that is why you must write your product description in a way that it is easily scannable.

And the most effective way to make your descriptions easily scannable is by splitting your contents into bullet points. So that your customers can get to the important details effortlessly.

Bullet points are a clear and straightforward way to present the critical information.

You can clearly see what Calvin Klein has concentrated on, they know what a customer will look for while purchasing a jean, so they’ve listed and bulleted the crucial points for easy scanning.

Your product description must be informative and bullet points are the best way to portray this information.

Here are a few purposes of bullet points,

• Grabs attention by highlighting vital information.
• It makes it easier for the reader to scan information.
• Effective communication of information.

Some products might not need much of a description, for those kinds of products bullets are the best way to persuade the customer to purchase.

Optimize your descriptions with Keywords

Ecommerce stores have been rising in every corner, the competition to make the maximum sales keep getting bigger and bigger.

A brilliant way to stay ahead of your competitors is by SEO. Use the necessary keywords in your product descriptions to get ranked better in the search engines.

This is why it is essential to write your own product descriptions, google prefers original content.

According to some experts it is proven that using keywords in your bullet points increases your rank on search engines.

You can see how Amazon has effectively used the keywords and what happens when a customer search for Tangle Free Turbine,

Amazon shows up in the first place, because they used the keywords in the buller points. Now that’s how you get ranked and increase your sales.

But does it work every time? No, and that’s why you must be prepared for all the situations.

Reports say that using the keywords in the product title is a bit more effective than in the bullet points. Now notice the last image, where do you see the keyword ‘Tangle free turbine’?

It is located on the product title right? So make sure you use the keyword in both the title and in your descriptions.

Tools like On page SEO checker by SEMRush can help you optimize your product descriptions in your eCommerce store.

Make use of Social proof

It is true that customers don’t believe what the merchants say about a product. They believe that you are doing that only to sell the product.

So, who does the customer trust?

Friends, yes they listen to their friends, peers and other customer words on your product. And that’s why you must use your Social proof as a leverage to build your credibility and increase your sales.

When a customer is not sure about his decision to purchase a product, they look for others who have already purchased it.

They look for the reviews to make their decision.

Then they purchase the product that has the highest reviews and ratings. Showcasing them as part of your descriptions is a great way to entice the customers into making a purchase.

Whatever the review or the rating is, be transparent and show it to your customers it increases your credibility. It also makes the purchase decision easier for the customers.

Remember, these reviews are part of the product descriptions so don’t omit it or you’ll be losing your sales.

Convey a story through your content

Tell a story through your product description, instead of just listing the features and benefits take your customers through a mini-story.

Because people get bored nowadays while reading research style product descriptions.

You can talk about how the product can help your customers. Or an entertaining story about the manufacturing, anything that makes the customer glued in.

If the story of your product is interesting enough, then the customers will share it to their friends through social media.

It can increase your brand awareness. In our opinion, Nike has the best product descriptions,

Instead of just listing out and talking about numbers like an annual report, Nike went on to do something different.

Since it is a running shoe, they’ve said how the shoe can increase their speed and their stride and have also talked about its origin story, like the superhero movies.

These might look like smaller details but these are the things that make the difference and Nike’s success is a proof of it.

Use images to persuade the readers

A picture speaks a thousand words, a phrase that every one of us knows. It makes much more sense in eCommerce.

You might ask, what does images have to do with product description?

Well, in physical stores the customers get to see, touch and feel the product so it is easy to make the decision.

That’s what we must do in eCommerce stores, use images to accompany your descriptions, you can even use videos if you wish. Your product descriptions will serve a great purpose along with an image.

Combine your product descriptions along with the images of the product and make it easy for your customers to make the decision.

You can see how the features of the product are listed on the images, it makes user-experience smooth and effortless.

So, remember to include the images of the product to make your descriptions more compelling and sellable.

Proofread your product description

The last thing you want in your product descriptions is customers finding out grammar or other spelling errors.

Proofreading is a must if you want to avoid these mistakes and it will also give you some last minute ideas for improvement and optimization.

Once you’ve finished writing, read your copy loudly, if you find it difficult in the sentence or pronunciation then there is no way your audience will be able to read it.

You can use tools like Grammarly to check if you are using the right spelling or punctuations and so on.

Check if you have used repetitive words or left out any crucial details and once when you feel everything is right then proceed with publishing in the store.

Conclusion

Customers will not be able to touch and feel the products in eCommerce stores and there will be no sales executives to sell the products too. All of these have to be done by product descriptions, it must explain the products to the customer and persuade them to purchase them.

That’s why we have stressed on the crucial tactics you must follow if you want to write persuasive content that sells.