Simple Ways to Write Product Descriptions that Sell

A product description is the marketing copy that explains what a product is and why it’s worth purchasing. The purpose of a product description is to supply customers with important information about the features and benefits of the product so they’re compelled to buy.

However, entrepreneurs and marketers alike are susceptible to a very common mistake that comes up when writing product descriptions. Even professional copywriters make it sometimes: writing product descriptions that simply describe your products.

Why is it wrong? Because great product descriptions need to augment your product pages by selling your products to real people, not just acting as back-of-the-box dispensers of information for search engines (though search engine optimization can’t be an afterthought, of course).

Let’s have a look at nine simple ways to persuade visitors to your online store with product descriptions that sell.

1. Focus on your ideal buyer

When you write a product description with a huge crowd of buyers in mind, your descriptions become wishy-washy and you end up addressing no one at all.

The best product descriptions address your target audience directly and personally. You ask and answer questions as if you’re having a conversation with them. You choose the words your ideal buyer uses. You use the word you.

2. Entice with benefits

When we sell our own products, we get excited about individual product features and specifications. We live and breathe our company, our website, and our products.

The problem is our potential buyers are not as interested in mundane features and specs. They want to know what’s in it for them—how it will address their biggest pain points. That’s why you need to highlight the benefits of each feature.

3. Avoid yeah, yeah phrases

When we’re stuck for words and don’t know what else to add to our product description, we often add something bland like “excellent product quality”.

That’s a yeah, yeah phrase. As soon as a potential buyer reads excellent product quality he thinks, yeah, yeah, of course; that’s what everyone says. Ever heard someone describe their product quality as average, not-so-good, or even bad?

You become less persuasive when your potential buyer reads your product description and starts saying yeah, yeah to themselves. To avoid this reaction be as specific as possible. Zappos, for instance, doesn’t describe the quality of a pair of shoes as excellent. Instead they describe each technical detail plus its benefit.