Effective product descriptions play an important role in the success of any online business. As an ecommerce business, if you’re looking to stand out among thousands of other e-businesses, you need to have crisp, clear, and, most importantly, search engine-optimised product descriptions.
SEO product descriptions help boost the rankings of ecommerce websites, improving their visibility on top search engines. But the question is - how to write a product description - one that is easy to read and will deliver the results you’re looking for?
Let’s have a look:
Essential Elements of Effective Ecommerce Product Descriptions
Keep the Target Audience in Mind
Of all the wh-questions, ‘who’ is the most important when creating compelling product descriptions. Knowing the target audience the product caters to helps you write convincingly, which will resonate with the people your product is designed for. Target audiences can be defined by age, gender, lifestyle, or other determining attributes. Writing from the target audience's perspective can help you better understand their pain points.
Highlight the Benefits and Features of the Product
In this section, you can address the ‘why’ - the precise reasons your product would be a value addition to customers' lives. List out clearly what the unique selling points of your product are, which pain points it would address, and why it’s worth every penny, customers would invest in it. Here, you also have the liberty to establish the personality and tone of your brand.
Keep the Product Description Crisp
The ideal product description can span between 300 to 400 words. But it completely depends on the type of product you’re selling. Feel free to write a lengthy description if you need to be descriptive about the product’s features, benefits, and important attributes. The whole point is to get the information across to the target audience effectively - and if a longer copy will help you do it, so be it!
However, you must also remember that not all readers have the attention span to scroll through lengthy paragraphs. So, make sure it includes just as much information required to get your point across.
Stick to the AIDA and PAS Formulas
PAS and AIDA are two copywriting formulas marketers follow to generate effective product description copies. PAS stands for Problem, Agitation, and Solution, and AIDA elaborates for Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action.
PAS first identifies the problem (P), intensifies it further (A), and then provides a solution(S). PAS creates awareness among customers as to how your product can help address their problems.
AIDA, on the other hand, focuses on grabbing the attention of the target audience by highlighting unique aspects of your product (A). Once you have your audience's attention, you can pique their curiosity by delving further into the advantages of your product(I). Further, you need to explain the desirable aspects of the product that would make customers want to purchase it (D). All these steps result in the customer considering buying your product or purchasing it right away (A).
Focus on Search Engine Optimisation
Even the most impressive product descriptions will be useless if it is not SEO-compliant. Your product descriptions should include the right keywords, which will help people scrolling online to discover what you’re selling easily.
You can use a reliable keyword tool to find keywords, long tail keywords, search volume, semantically related keywords, and keyword difficulty. Using keywords shouldn’t appear forced in your copy - make sure you pepper the product description copy effortlessly and strategically with different keywords.
Include Questions Related to the Product
Every customer browsing through your product catalog will have a certain set of questions in their mind before they make the final decision to buy the product. You need to get into the psyche of your target audience to have a fair idea of the probable questions that would pop into their minds once they come across your product. Note these questions, include them in your product description, and ensure you address each of them adequately.
Additionally, include a product schema to improve results on the search engine results page (SERP). Schema allows you to add specific product attributes such as price, ratings, reviews, product descriptions, and much more to the listings. A comprehensive schema can help increase the organic click-through rate, too.
Incorporate Internal Links
Internal linking can help people find more relevant information they’re looking for on your page. It makes hopping from one page to another on your website easier and also increases the time customers spend on your website. From the SEO perspective, internal linking assists crawlability, making it easier for search engines to understand the website's structure. This, in turn, improves the ranking and visibility of your website on search engines.
Structure Your Headings
Using accurate headings is an important element of a winning product description. Structuring headings appropriately isn’t just for styling the copy - you need to use the correct headings to ensure SEO compliance. Every copy should ideally have only one H1 heading, and the rest can be allocated from H2 to H5, depending on where they appear in the product description copy.
Set Clear Goals and KPIs to Measure Impact
Once you include all these important elements in your product description, you must also test the resultant impact. Are these comprehensive SEO product descriptions working for your ecommerce business the way you want them to? The only way to find out is to establish goals and KPIs, which will indicate the extent of success of these product descriptions.
Do note that you won’t be able to witness results immediately - it will take a long time before you can actually measure the impact of the product description copies.
Summing Up
You may require quite some time to create a wholesome, accurate product description, but it's totally worth the effort. The buyer has to be at the utmost forefront when you’re coming up with product descriptions for your website. Then, ensure you include all the other essential elements in the copy, and voila - you have your winning product description right there! A product description template can help maintain uniformity in descriptions of different products across your website.
Follow these simple rules, and you’re all set to create impressive and effective product descriptions for your ecommerce business.