Best Product Descriptions

Do product descriptions sell, or is it all images?
If you want your customers to take you up on your offer, you need to know how to write product descriptions that sell. You need to write product descriptions that tell the customer why they should buy from you.
What is the definition of a product description?
Marketing copywriting that creates a case around why a customer should purchase a product or service would be considered a product description. The purpose is to supply customers with important information about the features and benefits of the product, so that they’re compelled to buy.
What do good product descriptions include?
Engaging writing that converts visitors
Proper use of white space and correct grammar
Real customer testimonials enhanced by visuals
All the tech spec details to answer any questions
An evolving FAQ that saves your sales reps time 
A CTA that clearly indicates how to buy
Professional-level photography
Accurate and compelling product description
Titles that capture readers and move them down-page
Although descriptions of products can be varied lengths, they always have to contain enough information to make a purchasing decision.
Pro tip: Product description length is relative to the price of the product. 
If the product is expensive, you’d have to include more content in order to drive conversion. If it’s cheap, like a tube of toothpaste, there’s much less to explain because the risk is low. 
What if the product is just complex, not necessarily expensive? Creators of products often become partially blind to the way new customers see their products, leaving gaps in their informational presentations via product descriptions. 

All the same things that make any good copywriter, but what’s special about this niche? Not all copywriters write product descriptions. The profession is most famously portrayed in Seinfeld by Elaine, who writes product descriptions for the J. Peterman catalog. 
What are the job qualifications for product copywriters?
Maintain live product pages, correcting, tweaking, and adjusting as needed quickly, so sales are minimally affected.
Be an avid shopper for your industry:

• if you can land a copywriter who buys your product or shops within your industry, they will have a closer connection to your customers (being one) and get deeper into the value of the offer. 
• Self-management ability: Writing is a solitary job, and copywriters also need to be able to edit their own work in cases where there isn’t a professional editor available.
• Write compelling product copy that always remains in lockstep with brand voice.

The way you appeal to any reader is the same. Ethics, emotion, and logic need to be addressed. Often products look shiny to customers, and their hearts say buy, while their minds say don’t buy (which is why so many carts get filled but so few of those items actually get purchased).

• Logic: Persuasion via reason means you should arm your product description with facts. Facts about performance, customer satisfaction, and other aspects. Does your product help fight climate change? This would be an example of applying logic to a product. 
• Emotion: This means you should tell a story with your product description that appeals to the feelings of readers. 
• Ethics: When a seller has credibility, they’re considered to be ethical. You trust them. You know they’ll take care of any issues that arise, and that they wouldn’t make untrue claims because they care about customer well-being. 

Brief product descriptions give customers an overview and ensure offer relevancy before they spend more time reading about your product. 
Two or three lines are fine, usually located beneath the title of the product. Not only do they give customers a brief explanation, but they can also be picked up as metadata.
As always, include your keywords in your brief product descriptions. 
Technical Product Description
The technical details of your product might be the one thing that converts some customers. But many will come later, after the marketing copywriting that clarifies benefits and features. 
Your technical copy should be complete and accurate, as the people seeking it out tend to be very detail-oriented, and your reputation depends on accurate information backing up product purchases. 
This doesn’t mean you need to crowd your page with tons of data. Simplify the data and provide the complete results as a download for those who are interested.
Long Product Description
Long product descriptions are for complex or expensive products. Or they can be used for ambitious businesses looking to dive into the psychology and sensory aspects of the product to drive conversion. You’re trying to bring your product to life, to lift it off the computer screen.
Before embarking on long-form product description copywriting efforts, make sure it’s the right move for your audience regarding conversion. If it puts them off and they stop buying, it won’t matter how impressive the page is from a marketing perspective. 

Traditional formulas for product description copywriting might not work when it comes to ecommerce copywriting. 
Products are unique because they are tailored for specific customer segments.
When you write a product description as a copywriter, you must first have a complete understanding of the product and customer. 

Product copywriting checklist
1. What information must customers know to make a purchase?
2. How is promoted product notably different from the competition?
3. What problem does your product solve?
4. How should the product make the buyer feel?
5. What reactions does the product inspire?
6. What are the core values of the company selling the product?
7. What makes the buyer happy?
8. Who is the ideal buyer persona of the product?

Every reader has an active imagination, if you can tap into it. The reason why it’s essential that you activate their imagination is that it’s way an effective alternate way to to mimic the power of real-life product interaction.

There are levels of interest in the purchasing process. Awareness turns into desire before a purchase is made. Nothing fuels desire better than the imagination, meaning you have to make your readers think about what it would be like to own your product.

If that vision is compelling enough, why wouldn’t they make the purchase? But it’s up to you to spark their imagination.

Let’s take the recent hard sell of the new Apple Airpod Max over-ear Headphones. At around $500, they doubled the Airpod cost and easily became one of the highest options in the market. Yet they sold. Why?

Take a look at their landing page for the Airpod Max—every detail, moving animations, moving page elements, lengthy, detailed, a true experience, and at the bottom: all the airpod models compared, so if they don’t get you at the high price point, they’ll get you at one of the lower ones.

1. Use short stories to stand out from the competition
Social media is a great place for using short stories, but you can also do the same thing within your product descriptions. To kickoff story ideas, all you have to do is ask simple formative questions:
How was the product tested?
What challenges arose?
What caused the product’s inception?
Who is creating the product?

2. Use social proof to become top of mind. 
Promote your products on social media, ideally your best-rated ones, because that will draw in customers for two reasons: expand your reach and turn the lightbulb on for one segment, while clarifying what to buy from an already interested but product-agnostic segment.
Most product pages have some sort of social proof these days. A 5-start perfect review seems suspicious on a company’s website that controls the review system. Real reviews, and extended testimonials, ideally via video, but at least with images of the speakers, are encouraged. 
There are a lot of ways to enhance social proof, but the best way is to get creative. What presentation of social proof makes your offer most compelling?
4. Can readers scan your product listings?
Your web design will make it easier or harder for customers to purchase. If the design is off, visitors won’t be able to find the information they need. They’ll get frustrated and move to a competitor’s website, or decide against the purchase altogether. 
High-quality product images
Use font size to show prioritization of content and ease of reading
Utilize white space to break up information
Add bullet points for easier scanning
Make your headlines and sub-headlines engaging and SEO-centric, particularly near the top and bottom of the pages. 
5. Use KPIs and goals to determine product description effectiveness. 
Like any landing page, any product page actually has to convert, which means it has to be measured and improved until it works. But you can’t do that until you determine the metrics that matter when it comes to tracking your product pages. 
Make product description templates
Achieve organic search rankings
Provide support for customer inquiries 
Calculate how many people are returning
How many people are abandoning their carts (and are you retargeting via email drip campaigns?)
CTR rate of each product page.