8 Tips for Creating Engaging Product Descriptions For Your Website

Being an online marketer myself, I am often asked what makes the customer tick? Is it just the HD photography that captivates the customer into purchasing the product, or the product features offered by the manufacturer? Well, both matter to a particular extent, but the x-factor that makes the difference of being sold on sight and remaining on the rack till the end of the day, is the appeal you create in your product description.

What are Product Descriptions?

A product description simply describes what the product has to offer you and why you should buy it. In the ecommerce industry where everything from concert tickets to super cars is sold online, the comprehension that you write about the product holds the key to enter the customer’s mind. In order to create the ideal product description for your product, you need to follow these 8 essential tips for increasing customer engagement on your product pages.

1. “The 5 W’s Rule”

First off, the aspects that define an engaging product description are its ability to deliver when answered. Your product description is garbage if it fails to answer the first query the customer is most likely to bring. In order to tackle this without compromising the text length and quality of the content, you need to answer “The Five W’s”.

• Among the 5 Ws, the first one is WHO. You have to select your target audience by taking demographics, statistics and trends into the equation. Once you know the customers you are selling your products to, you can create the content that befits their needs perfectly.
• WHAT. This is the x-factor that draws a line between you and your competitors. You need to bring the best of your product features into the limelight in such a way that lays waste to the competitor’s features.
• Now, before the customer can reach out and actually purchase the product, they must know WHERE it is used best. Describe your product’s purpose in intimate ways so it remains unparalleled in functionality with others.
• WHEN is your product used best? Everything that you buy for your needs is purposeful at its particular time. Describe intricately how greatly your product can benefit the customer through comfort, efficiency and ultimately, convenience.
• The products you sell often reflect the company’s intention in the market.  Always mention WHY purchasing the product is necessary for the customer.

2. Bring Features and Benefits Under one Roof

The quality of a smart product description writer rests in his ability to differentiate between ‘How’ and ‘Why’. ‘How’ simply shows the significant features that you offer are in superiority compared to the rest of your peers. Whereas ‘Why’ explains benefits that particular product will give you. For example, if you come across a vacuum cleaner listed on an ecommerce website, you might as well would be interested in searching for its features such as

• Low power consumption
• Extended cord
• Dry and wet suction
• Color and weight  e.t.c

Whereas the benefits would be

• Save cost on power consumption
• Easily movable due to extension cord
• Vacuums water based fluids easily
• And attractive colors with lightweight elegant exterior

Keep your tabs on these two by not merging them as one.

3. Set a Tone of Voice in your Website

Defining your tone is imperative when writing any product description. Your tone must be agreeing with the type of product and target audience. For instance; FMEextensions uses scholarly tone for its product descriptions as it understands that most customers are developers and businessmen that are looking for competitive features with definitive results. 

Another website’ Urbandaddy’, is famous for its witty writing style to describe luxury lifestyle of men with the help of sarcasm and humor.  The company’s marketers have developed a strategy to bring their readers closer by targeting deluxe and lavish living in different hotels and resorts.

4. Take Buyer’s Guilt out from the Equation

Buyer’s Guilt is a phenomenon responsible for a large percentage of daily cart abandonments. When consumers buy a product online, it is only natural to consider the value of money vs. what is being offered to them. In many cases, the product appears as a treat to the customer that refrains them from purchasing it. You can harness the power to eliminate this guilt through your product descriptions, but in order to do so you must check all the boxes below:

• Make the Offer sound like a steal deal
• Show them what they are bargaining for
• Appreciate their efforts in finding the product
• Elaborate the extent of benefits from it

5. Tell the Readers a Story

Who doesn’t like a story? Stories are an excellent way of engaging the reader while pitching in about the product as well. Stories build the interest of the customer by inviting them to know more about the company and what it has to offer. A story can be based on the founders of the company highlighting their dedication and passion towards their work and the success of their accomplishments. Readers are not only able to grasp the content faster but also with more vigor and enthusiasm. For instance, the story on the Top Candy manufacturer ‘Hershey’s’ kicked off something like this as mentioned on their website

Incredible and inspiring, the Hershey story starts off focused on one determined pioneer; Milton S. Hershey-but quickly becomes about so much more. Raised in rural central Pennsylvania, and with little formal education, Milton became known for the famous HERSHEY’S Milk Chocolate Bar that bears his family name. He also became known for his philanthropy and open-hearted generosity which still touches the lives of thousands. Milton Hershey was genuinely passionate about people and their happiness. Happiness for Milton Hershey started with simple and delicious ingredients, simple processes, and sharing smiles by sharing HERSHEY’S products. Milton took that philosophy very seriously, and our company still does

6. The Power or Verbs

The content you write in your blogs and articles could be giving the wrong message if you don’t look it through. The use of verbs is known to activate the mind of the reader into action. However, many websites don’t utilize verbs properly in their content and fail to signal the reader towards the checkout page. But verbs are not just for blogs and article pages of your website. For an ecommerce platform, you must learn to harness the power of imagination through words so the reader can visualize the product as though he is in a brick and mortar store feeling it. Verbs help produce details in your ideas without compromising the allocated space of your product description.

7. Add Formatting to Your Product Description

It’s no surprise that visitors never read each and every word of your product descriptions. Most users just skim through the content absorbing that appears most important in the description. To make your product descriptions scannable for hasty readers,

• Introduce subheadings to segment the content and highlight authoritative parts. The reader will then scan the content according to his preferences.
• Use bullet points. Bullet points allow you to untangle the densely accumulated text in paragraphs so readers can pick benefits and features of your products more easily.
• Use large font to increase readability of your product description. Small fonts are one of the prime causes of product page abandonments.
• You can also add visual content to captivate the visitors. Too much text can make the description undesirable. Make sure that you modestly inject images and graphics within the description.

8. Engaging through Social Media Presence

Social media is a trending giant of the online industry. Facebook alone gets 1.4 billion online users every month. Each day, social media contributes millions of conversions through posts, shares and comments etc. According to the latest ecommerce trends, more than 80% of the consumers look for product reviews on social media pages to make their purchase decisions. (source)

It is also true that more than 67% of consumers are relying on social media pages for their queries, tickets and other issues regarding customer support.

Hence creating social media presence is a must for allowing your customers to share their reviews and testimonials regarding your products and rate them. You can link your social media pages to your website’s product pages through third party extensions so customers can easily view them.