Quick question: what is the secret ingredient for selling products online? Great products? High-quality product image? Or, a uniquely coached product description content?
Alright, let’s back it up a little. Is there any single secret ingredient for selling like crazy? Easy! No! There isn’t.
No doubt, all of these factors work hand in hand to ensure that you enjoy your best experience as a print on demand seller.
While having amazing products remains an integral part of what would keep your business alive, maintaining a seamless balance between great visuals and impeccable copywriting content is of top priority.
If you scout most eCommerce platforms, you are more likely to see product listings with bad product descriptions and good product images, than those with the high-quality copywriting pieces and low-quality images.
This can be both a good thing and a bad thing.
On the positive side, most eCommerce sellers are aware of the power of great visuals. But on the negative side, it also means that many of these sellers do not know the significance of a good product description and how it impacts sales.
How much does having a great product description helps in making buyers add your products to the cart?
According to an e-commerce study, it was discovered that about 20% of purchase failures are potentially a result of missing or unclear product information.
Now, I know what you might want to say. Some products seem to sell just fine with a good title and a simple picture.
So, does a production description really matter?
Well, it does, and I’d tell you why.
Renowned Psychologist, Robert Cialdini, observed that people are more likely to take a proposed action when it is the request is back for a reason.
This means that potential buyers would be more likely to purchase your product if you give them a good reason to. And, how best can you do that but with words via a great product description?
I mean, you have to say something about your products, right?
Study shows that there are certain words that people tend to gravitate toward when shopping online.
According to David Ogilvy, here are some of the 20 most influential words that you can use in your product description:
Suddenly, Now, Announcing, Introducing, Improvement, Amazing, Sensational, Remarkable, Revolutionary, Startling, Miracle, Magic, Offer, Quick, Easy, Wanted, Challenge, Compare, Bargain, and Hurry.
So, you see that you can have a bad product description that can put off potential buyers. However, if you have a poor product description or don’t think you have one, it’s not too late to make profitable amendments.
With just a couple of tweaks here and there, you should be able to transform a bad product description into one that brings in a lot of money for you.
When building your product description for a print on demand product, you must think like a customer. Try to think like a buyer.
So, you are scouting the internet for a travel mug. Finally, you stumble on one that catches your eyes. You then click on it and found out that there is literally nothing substantial in the product description to provide you any more information on the product.
Would you be more obliged to buy it?
You might have the perfect product and the right images. But the very last step of making sales is convincing the customer to click the “add to cart” button.
And you can only do this with an effective product description.
Unarguably, a great product description is one of the most integral aspects of your online shop. It is important for your sales conversion and sales metrics.
With a well-written product description, you have the power to move your customers through your sales funnel.
By injecting pure creativity, your brand personality, and your product benefits into your product description, you can convert your store into the one-stop-shop for most causal browsers of print on demand products.
Sure, there are a lot of customers who make their purchase decision on the product photo. However, the product description goes a long way in filling in the gaps to determine whether the product is the right one.
So, treat your product description as an opportunity to educate your customers on the key benefits and the unique value proposition that your product is there to offer.
If your product is a perfect gift for any occasion or a special someone on their special day, present it as such. As much as possible, ensure that your product is the one that offers a solution to a problem or satisfies your customer’s needs.
An amazing product description can help you get more sales, lower refund rates, and build customer trust.
Alright, enough said. It’s time for you to learn how to write product descriptions for your print on demand products.
You can either choose to hire yourself or hire a specialized product description writer.
Even though it holds incredible power, good product copy can be hard to write. It can be especially cumbersome when you have a long list of items on your product page to work through.
This is why you must understand all that I would be sharing in today’s article and also put it to action.
Guide for writing a better Product Description
1. Define your target audience
A good product description should properly address the kind of buyer that you want to attract. A good product description should start with you building a strong buyer persona.
This is an integral part of creating a product description because if you have no idea about who will purchase your products, you might not address them properly. More so, you would be clueless about what to add or subtract from the product description.
So, it all begins with defining your target audience.
Gender, age range, and locality also influence the general tone of your product description. Knowing your target audience beforehand would give you the extra push you need to analyze their needs and meet them satisfactorily.
When writing your product description, get into your buyer’s head.
What exactly are they looking for?
What features would be of most interest to your potential buyers?
Quality material?
Funny quotes?
Does low shipping cost?
Ensure that all of these are properly spelled out.
However, it all begins with an understanding of your buyer persona. To create an effective and sales-driving product description, you must grasp the breakdown of your potential customers’ characteristics.
Your buyer persona will help you understand which features will be most valuable to your customers.
For instance, if you sell fun products like ugly Christmas sweaters or food shaped jewelry on Etsy, you could inject humor into it.
Your copy should be playful and written in a light tone.
Why? Because the customers who would be interested in buying those types of products would likely appreciate an entertaining product description.
However, humor doesn’t work in all drop shipping niches. For example, you wouldn’t want to inject humor into a product description about life jackets, coffins, or other sensitive issues.
Would you?
Check out this Product.
It’s a no brainer, you cannot write a strict copy for a product like this.
Check out the description. Pretty neat, if you ask me. Fun, catchy, and detailed enough for any average girlfriend to read in 2 minutes before placing an order.
So, when you are writing your product description, keep these questions in mind:
How did this person arrive to your page?
What are his or her interests, generally?
Why would this person be interested in your Shopify store, specifically?
How would this person describe the product to a friend?
What features or benefits would interest this person the most?
By keeping these questions in mind, you would be able to write your product copy properly. More importantly, you will be better able to write a product description that converts page visits to sales.
2. Focus on the Strength of your Product
I get it. As a business owner, you are understandably excited to share all of the qualities of your products. I know this because I’ve been there.
However, this is not always the best way to go about it. You see, except it’s a life and death issue or a divorce document, nobody reads any long bulky text with rapt attention.
We all skim the first two sentences, and boom, we’re off. This is why you need to make it count by putting your best foot forward.
There are probably hundreds of other sellers who sell exactly what you are selling. You want to show that your product has the best and unique features.
And the best way to do this is to stock your product description full of your products’ amazing features. Start with the good stuff.
No buyer is necessarily interested in the mundane features of the product. Like, they know it’s a shot glass!
The real question is, why should they buy it in the first place? More importantly, why should they buy it from YOU? In essence, all that they want to know is how it can benefit them.
Do not let them scroll too long before they find it!
Here’s a great example from French Face Mask manufacturer,
The product description is dedicated to telling a thousand reasons why you should buy this product and not scroll further down.
You already know that it’s a face mask, so there is no need to start talking about how it filters air and all. So, ask yourself, why should they buy my product and not the others?
Fill up the answers in your product description column.
3. Tell the Full Story
A good product description should sound like you! It should carry your brand tone and your brand identity.
If your brand is conversational or professional, you should stick to it when writing your product description.
If you like to use tongue-in-cheek humor, or you’re the type that keeps things more straight forward, it should reflect in your product description.
An excellent product description would provide potential buyers with all of the relevant details; it would be able to convince the buyer of its benefits and pack an emotional punch.
Do you know that emotions influence the buyer’s behavior? Once you can make people feel emotionally attached to your product, boy, oh, boy! You’re in for a treat!
So you see, your product description is the perfect place to elicit emotions. Embrace your product description space as more than just for filling up some overt details. Use your product description to tell a story.
Be creative with it!
It could be the story of why your customer needs this product. Or a story of the product benefits. Or a story of how this product has been used as a perfect gift. Or just any entertaining story about the product.
As long as it draws your customer in, then its mission accomplished!
For example, if you are selling an engineer coffee mug, you should know that people might want to get your product for a friend or colleague who is an engineer.
An employer might also want to get it for all of its employees in the engineering team. There are thousands of engineer mug products out there. You must present your product so that it is seen as the best gift they can give in terms of quality and inscription.
While doing this, also ensure that you are able to fill in the gaps of the relevant details and product information.
4. Using Powerful Words That Sell
Over the years, studies have shown that there are certain words and phrases that naturally elicit an emotional response in humans. Luckily for you, this can also increase sales.
A good mastery and usage of these words and phrases can help you become more convincing. The more you can convince your customers, the more likely they will take the leap and make the purchase.
Jon Morrow at Smart Blogger describes these as “power words.” He has an entire list of words that can help make your product copy more enticing.
Check them out:
Spice up your product description with these words and see sales orders reeling in no time.
So, as you write your product descriptions, look for any descriptive words or adjectives that could help you dress up your product in the fanciest of garments.
Rather than using words like “nice” or “high-quality”, why not opt for power words like “stunning” or “sensational”.
By adding sprinkles of these visually sensitizing adjectives into your product descriptions, you are subtly convincing the buyers that your products are exciting, impressive, and worth every penny!
It goes without saying that, just like every spice, too much can be bad too. So, distribute them carefully and naturally across your sentences.
5. Make it Easy to Scan
I said it before, and I’d repeat it, a few people read long texts.
Most people have a really short attention span and can barely half of all you have written on your page. So, how do you make it easy and more readable? By providing a scan-guide!
Scan-guide is key points about your products, legibly and properly written to catch an average reader’s eyes with the shortest of attention span.
You can do this by making your descriptions super scannable. If possible, include bullet points.
A lot of people love to skim! They just go “Blah blah, coffee mug, blah blah, hmm…nice quote, blah blah, 2 days shipping, blah blah, $50??? WHAT THE HECK!?”, closes the page, and moves on to the next product.
Lol.
So, in this age of information overload, only a few people really have the time to read everything they find online.
We all want the most important details first. You can provide a clear and concise way to display the most important product information with bullet points.
The most effective way is to place it right at the start, boldly!
In such a way, the buyer can find the exact information that he or she needs without having to waste time sifting through other pieces of information.
To get a better result, you should also consider dividing your text into short paragraphs made up of just a few sentences.
It would help if you also used lots of white space and different size fonts as it helps the eyes to read well and more conveniently.
6. Optimize for Search Engines (SEO)
This is easily the most significant reason you need to write a fantastic product description for your products.
It is easy to get tired or lazy at some point. Trust me, I know the feeling.
But it would help if you understood that virtually everything you do on your online store should be aimed at optimizing your page content for search engines.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the easiest and fail-safe way to attract new customers to your page.
And getting people over to your page is the very first step in convincing them to buy your products. You can’t sell to someone who isn’t in your shop. It’s as simple as that.
SEO begins with keywords. And let me add, “The right keywords!”
These include the best search term that buyers are actively using to find the product they are shopping for.
After carrying out your keyword research, you can discover which keywords are best for your product and integrate them into your product listing.
Now, let me talk about using NICHE keywords.
If you want to get the best result, you should add NICHE keywords and keyword variations to your product description.
I would recommend that you place your NICHE keywords in your page title and product descriptions for good measure.
Apart from generic keywords like the example above, using keywords that appeal to a select target audience can boost your visibility and boost your sales.
If you click on one of the listings on the first page, you would see how they use this keyword on their site to appear in the search results.
For instance, check out this keyword search result that I conducted on this shop.
Among other things that were done right, the NICHE keyword was “Civil Engineer” and “Civil Engineer Mug” was properly used and widely distributed across the product description and product title.
If you have thousands of product listings and are worried about slotting in the relevant keywords in your description, you should know that PODTurbo can add {NICHE} token to the product description.
This means that you can have a preset product description content modified to a particular keyword. This would save you a lot of time and energy.
7. Use Good Images
I need to add this. I started this article by telling you that most sellers use good visuals and bad content.
However, I cannot deny the fact that there are some product listings with bad images and bad product descriptions. So even if you master product description writing, you must still have quality images to go with it.
Many buyers believe a good product image is more important than the description or even the reviews. Yeah, people differ. That is why it’s good to be on the safe side.
Understandably, you may not have professional photography skills or a great camera. But an iPhone or a standard camera can still help you get spectacular images.
You can also try to find the print on demand suppliers who provide good mockup images.
There is no need to find beautiful mockups or images with busy backgrounds. I’m talking about images like the coffee mug with the background of the café shop.
According to my stats, the coffee mug on the plain white background converts best. Amazon also requires that sellers put their products on a white background. They know it converts BEST.
Afterthoughts…
Now, you have all the details that you need to write a fantastic product description. Go and update your product listings, please.
But there are chances that you may still want to use a product description template. PODTurbo comes with preset product description templates.
Unfortunately, there are no one-size-fits-all product description templates.
We all sell different kinds of products, so the idea of having one single template that would work for everyone is just impossible.
So, even with the PODTurbo template, you still have to tweak it to suit your product type.
Also, I highly suggest you create your own product description and make it unique. This would boost your SEO effectiveness.
If you feel you are done with your product description, go over it again with these questions in mind:
Did you include any power word?
Did you include the full story?
Did you state the entire key feature legibly?
Do you have a great and clear image to go with it?
Is your product description featuring the necessary keywords?
If you have all YESes, then you might just have unlocked the secret to making crazy sales with an amazing product description!
—Bank K.
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