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Good product descriptions are a key part of your online store. Product descriptions serve three important goals when selling online.
Persuade customers to buy your product by showing why it stands out from competitors and what solutions it provides.
Help customers understand if your product has the specifications they need.
Act as a surface for search engine optimization so potential buyers can find your product.
You can write great product descriptions that accomplish all of those goals and help you make your first sale by:
Knowing your target audience
Speaking to product benefits
Making the specs clear
Making descriptions scannable
1. Write for your target audience
Your product description should focus on why your product is the solution for a potential customer’s needs above all else. But before you can write customer-focused product descriptions, you have to know your buyer personas.
Imagine your ideal customers and the characteristics that might affect how they feel about your product. Include details like:
What their interests are
Their sense of humor
Lifestyle
Identity
Values
Your product pages will be most successful if you understand not only who your audience is, but who they want to become. Anticipating your target customer’s aspirations helps you to tap into how your product can help them address their pain points and accomplish their goals. Persuading more customers on these points will boost your conversion rate.
Writing for your audience also means writing in your own brand voice. Compelling product descriptions aren’t just a bulleted list of product features—your voice in product copy should sound like the voice you use in the rest of your website copy and marketing channels. Use language that resonates with your audience. For example, when you’re talking to people who get it, relevant slang or jargon can be effective.
Learn how to identify your target audience
2. Highlight product benefits
Now that you know more about your target audience, you’re better equipped to answer the question: What problem does your product solve? Because the best way to impact someone’s purchase decision is by focusing on how your product benefits them, not just on what features your product has.
Think about the features that make your product stand out, then make it clear what those features do for a potential buyer. The benefits of your product could be concrete, like a knife that makes it easier to slice vegetables, or abstract, like a bullet journal that helps cultivate gratitude. You can appeal to practical needs, emotional needs, or both.
For example, if you’re selling an air fryer, don’t just write about the compact design and simple settings. Write about how those features help your audience stay organized and save more time than when cooking with any other appliance.
If you find yourself stuck, look up how other businesses in your field write about their products. That research will help you figure out how to differentiate your descriptions from competitors. Keep an eye out for common concerns around products like yours, including product details like fit, durability, or origin. How does your product address those concerns?
Product description example: Speaking to product benefits
Imagine you sell hand lotion. A common concern of your target audience is feeling embarrassed about dry hands and cuticles, and many are looking for hand lotion that will actually moisturize without feeling greasy.
Here’s one way to describe your product that doesn’t address all of those concerns: “Nourish your hands with our 100% organic hand lotion.”
And here’s one way to describe that same product in a way that does address all of those common concerns: “Our hand lotion is the refreshing antidote to a long year of reapplying hand sanitizer: Feel confident in your soft, smooth hands with our lightweight, long-lasting 100% organic formula.”
The second product description example is more effective because it appeals to the more emotional benefits of purchasing a hand lotion that works.
3. Describe products with storytelling
Much like focusing on benefits over features, your product descriptions will be more compelling if you show why your product is the best, instead of simply saying that it’s the best.
Storytelling is an effective tactic for describing a product. Stories help to show your audience the product in a way that helps them understand how it feels to use it, any tastes or smells associated with it, or the origin story of how and why you made the product.
Use customer reviews
Drive the point home by including product reviews on your ecommerce site. Customer reviews help potential buyers feel more confident about buying something they can’t physically see or try first. Testimonials are especially effective if they mention a specific benefit or problem that the product solved for them.
For example, if you include a product testimonial for your hair product that says, “My hair is so soft after using [this product]—and no more dandruff!” that customer’s words will hold more weight than your own marketing copy.
Product description example: Storytelling
Think about a description for someone selling handcrafted scarves. You shouldn’t describe the product with empty descriptors like beautiful, amazing, or great. Instead of saying your scarf is “the best scarf,” you could be specific and honest about why it stands out and evoke the senses. For a scarf, this could be something like:
“Bundle up in this cozy, buttery-soft scarf, hand-knit with high-quality sheep’s wool. With many ways to style it, it’s perfect for wrapping around yourself for a night of self-care or throwing over your shoulder for a casual night out.”
4. Include product details
Your list of product details should be a lot more straightforward than your persuasive product description. Product specifications don’t need to be exhaustive, but it’s important to highlight the product information that isn’t apparent from looking at the product images alone.
Think of the times you’ve looked at product listings and clicked away with questions that the seller left unanswered. What sort of details were those? Can you call out similar details for your own product descriptions? Depending on your audience, you’ll want to include more or less product information.
For example, technical audiences for computer hardware or photography equipment need an exhaustive list of specifications while online shopping. Comprehensive technical details help those audiences feel confident in a purchase and how it functions with the rest of their equipment. But other products, like plain t-shirts, might only need a short overview that includes the fabric type, country of origin, and other relevant information.
This section of product information is less about being persuasive and more about presenting the facts. It also helps to protect your business and your customers. Sometimes descriptions include information about product safety, allergens, or other details that your audience needs to know to securely make a purchase.
Need help getting started? Learn how to draft descriptions with AI.
5. Optimize product descriptions for search engines
No product description is complete without optimizing for search engines. Do your keyword research and optimize your metadata for product descriptions that have a better chance of reaching your target audience.
Research keywords for your products
Here’s the easiest way to do keyword research for your products: Go to major ecommerce websites, and search for the core aspects of your product. For example, you could search for “women’s running shoes.” From there, the search bar’s drop-down should suggest commonly searched details, such as “women’s running shoes blue size 9 wide.”
That longer keyword phrase is what’s known as a long-tail keyword. These tend to be less competitive keywords. You’ll have a stronger chance of ranking for them in search results and making a sale when the right customers find your product. There are also free SEO tools online that can help you find the best long-tail keywords for your products.
Update your product descriptions and metadata
Once you know what keywords are best for your product, incorporate them into your product descriptions or product titles in a way that reads naturally. For example, you could update your title for a shoe to say “Women’s Running Shoes — Blue”.
But your product description optimization doesn’t end there. You should also write and include keywords in the following areas for each product in your online store:
Product page URL
Alt text for product photos
Product meta title
Product meta description
Learn more about these terms in our guide to improving SEO on your Squarespace website.
6. Make product descriptions skimmable
Once you’ve drafted all of the moving parts and optimized your product description, it’s time to make it as easy to read as possible.
This should be the general structure of your product descriptions.
Lead with the product’s photo, name, and price.
The next most important part is the description, including any storytelling and customer reviews.
Round out the product description with your product details overview.
Once you’ve built that structure, make sure the copy is skimmable with these tactics.
Get to the point. Even if your description is long, make it skimmable by organizing your points with headlines. Leading with main points, then expanding on those within each sentence, puts the most important information at the beginning of each line.
Use bullet points for readability whenever lists are involved, especially for the specifications in your product details section.
Avoid text overwhelm by balancing your text with white space and letting your paragraphs breathe.
Always proofread your work and have a trusted friend or colleague read it before publishing. That will help you test whether or not it’s persuasive, readable, and inclusive of all the most important information.
Product description template
Putting together the tips above, a rough template for writing a product description might be:
“[Product title]
[Product image]
[Product pricing and quantities]
[Short paragraph: Brief sentences about how the product is used and its effect. Reference a scenario where it could be used, if relevant. Make sure each sentence speaks to the problems it solves for customers.]
[Bulleted list of product specs:
Spec 1
Spec 2
Spec 3]”
If you still need help getting started, lean on Squarespace AI for help breaking your writer’s block. While editing a product in Squarespace, you can use the AI tool to help you write a paragraph, blurb, or sales pitch for your product. Then, refine it by highlighting the text and asking the AI tool to simplify, shorten, or lengthen before diving in to edit it yourself.
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This post was updated on September 14, 2023.