For many, when it comes to writing
product descriptions for their e-commerce website, it is a one-way
ticket to Boresville! You can tell they'd rather have their teeth
pulled, Orin Scrivello style, than sit down and write some copy that
sells (heck, even more easier than just to go and control-c some
competitors copy, right?)
The thing is, even if some half-hearted effort is put into producing web copy, it can be a highly effective unique selling point of a site. Add that it also helps with page ranking factors in the search engines (and no, I'm not talking about spamming, sorry, peppering the product name on the page more than a well seasoned, black bean sauce but rather using words to help engage with your audience and drive down shopping cart abandonment rates).
Words do sell!
Adding 'buying or selling' words into your copy is always a good start. These buzz words can engage with a potential buyer and motivate them into making a sale. Be careful, however, adding words such as 'must-buy' without actually providing a solid example why a product should be deemed a 'must-buy' could prove more harm than good.
I've always found being simplistic is always the best way forward, in fact I would never use 'must-buy' in any product description (I'm not a hard marketer and it is such an overpowering statement) but instead convince the potential buyer with a more emotional description or even humour for example, 'Do you really want to be the only person in your street without one?' instead of 'must buy” works for me'
I guess it's all about the style of the writer, I tend to want my product descriptions to have some engagement. Rather than going for the jugular I prefer teasing and temptation.
Semantic copy offers another dimension
Product descriptions should always have some sort of word association related with the main keyword search. One reason is that people use various words to search for the same thing. Search engines love relational words which might bring you extra traffic rather being just concentrated 100% on a particular key-phrase.
Let's run a little semantic search with Google for an example. Say you sell 'Posters' on your e-commerce site. By typing the following search function into Google, we can find the most related word that Google considers associated with 'Posters'...
By running the above search function we are greeted by the word (or words) that Google finds the most semantically related to 'Posters', these are emphasised in the search listings by the bolded text. In this case, it highlights the word, 'Art'.
Now, we dig a little deeper ...
This time it returns 'Poster', remember that search engines manage singular and plural uses of a word completely differently. Because of this search function, we now have 3 main keywords to target for within our copy “Posters, Poster and Art” instead of just concentrating on Posters. Using this technique will drive much more long-tail searches to your product page and enable you to reach that low hanging fruit quicker.
Product copy and 'red stop signals'
When I speak of red stop signals within product copy I am referring to those techniques which we insert to help try and stop people scanning our product page and physically start reading it. Most common identifiers to halt a person scanning a page are headers, bolded text, lists (bullet points), images and to a lesser degree itallic text.
Once you have stopped your potential buyer from scanning the page and now have their attention, hopefully, your well crafted and thought out sales copy should take over and turn that promising lead into a sale. Let's face it, if sales have slowed or worse, dried up, you need to be more pro-active in getting your site back-on-the-tracks and overhauling your product copy is one of the best places to start.
Paul Steven is Director at North South Media.
12:30PM on 8th July 2009
You're absolutely right Paul, it's not just a case of getting people to the site if you're an online store owner... it's about converting those visitors into sales.
The bigger percentage of conversions you can get, the more money you make and it's all down to keeping visitors on your pages as long as possible to give them the opportunity to buy.
Things like objection handling come into the mix strongly as well (like putting returns policy, information on secure shopping etc on the product page), but well written descriptions with relevant, readable information and well taken photos of the products that aren't fuzzy (with perhaps a zoom function so that people can see detail) are the cornerstone of selling online... if people don't trust the website then they won't buy, pure and simple!
Some of our customers are now coming round to the idea that they really do have to write good descriptions for each and every produce, others are not as yet listening. Guess which ones are flying in the sales?!
Digital Director at Blueleaf
3:02PM on 8th July 2009
Generally I think copy is one of the things that gets the least attention in many website projects when really everything is centered around the content - not the functionality.
We're encouraged our clients as much as possible to revisit copy and keep revisiting it in the effort to create much more engaging experiences.
Finally one other thing I'm not sure you mentioned is testing that copy - A/B testing of your copy can really help find out what your market wants!
Owner at North South Media
4:48PM on 8th July 2009
@ David, I agree, it is the small things that matter - people overlook product copy - they all add up to making that all-important conversion.
@Rob, no I never touched on A/B Split Testing but most certainly would be advising site owners / webmasters to be continuinously tweaking and measuring all aspects of their site.
I've never seen a perfect ecommerce site but I have seen plenty of bad ones.
8:56AM on 9th July 2009
This is a great post, Paul. I particularly like your explanation of semantic copy, and I think it has a broader application to other websites outside of the Ecommerce arena.
12:49PM on 28th July 2009
yeah that's right, i see lots of weird copies these days :)