How to Write E-Commerce Product Descriptions that Drive Sales

By Sarah McInerney
| February 19th 2019

Sarah McInerney

Head of Content

Sarah has almost three decades of experience in crafting compelling, engaging content specifically designed to boost sales and enhance brand loyalty. She’s also an expert in developing unique tone of voice that helps brands connect with their audiences. Her marketing and client service background has given Sarah a natural understanding of how to write content that makes readers take action. Whether it’s signing up to a mailing list, making an enquiry or donation or clicking the buy button, Sarah knows precisely how to convert with words. Pen down, Sarah is a proud member of the Essex Wildlife Trust and spends most of her free time enjoying inspiring walks through her local woodland and nature reserves, admiring everything that flaps, flutters and flowers.

You’ve invested in a cutting edge e-commerce website. It looks amazing, the product photography is second to none and you’ve poured blood, sweat and tears into making certain your visitors have the ultimate user experience. But is there something missing? Something that’s holding back your conversions?

You could have the best e-commerce website in the world, but without compelling product copy, all you’ve invested in design could be worthless. Product copy is THE seller when it comes to online shopping, so let’s take a look at four of the most effective ways to entice shoppers to make a purchase using the power of persuasive copywriting.

1. Know your audience

Unless you truly know your audience, you’ll never engage with them. Once you know your audience and understand its needs, aspirations and challenges, you’ll be able to tone your copy so that it resonates. Copy that hits home is copy that sells.

Target audience insights come through research, interviews and surveys amongst customers and prospects. Through social interactions and feedback. You’ll glean business intelligence through sales data cross referenced with profit margins. Don’t second guess your prime audience and its needs: there is enough data out there and ways of capturing it to do this properly.

Once you know your ideal buyer you can set your tone. Think about how you would chat with this ideal buyer face to face, then bring this style of conversation into your written copy.

Ecommerce copy writing — Unless you truly know your audience, you’ll never engage with them.

2. Communicate benefits

Good product copy is always oriented benefits-first. What’s in it for the buyer? How will your product change things? Solve a problem? You’ll know the problems that need solving through your audience research, so you’ll be in a good position to explain how you’re going to resolve them with your product.

Say you are selling bridal shoes for example. Your research has revealed that one of the biggest concerns for brides is that they will spend their wedding day looking amazing in their gorgeous footwear, but that their feet will suffer and they’ll be limping off the dance floor rather than owning it. Your brand of bridal shoes are designed for comfort and style, so you’ll talk this up, and this will resonate.

A great tip is to try to sell an experience rather than a product. So with the bridal shoes for example, you’ll talk about the perfect wedding day, where everyone compliments the bride on her beautiful choice of footwear, and she grooves the night away as if she were dancing on air. Sold!

3. Be credible

Avoid ‘loose’ copy. Loose copy doesn’t really say anything. It lacks substance. You can describe your products as ‘quality’ or ‘great’ as much as you like, but unless you back up your claims, they will never wash.

So be specific. Take our bridal shoes for example…“Breathable fabric for all-day freshness.” “Cushioned insole for day-to-night comfort.” List, bullet point style, the technical details of your products, followed by their benefits. This way you will add salient credibility.

4. Stimulate the senses

A guaranteed way to engage a reader is to use sensory words. Sensory words are designed to stimulate the senses and can be incredibly powerful when it comes to compelling a would-be buyer to make a purchase.

Going back to what we said about creating an experience, sensory words play an important role here. They whisk the reader away to a place where their needs and desires are met, and all their worries dissolve.

Be as vivid as you can with your choice of words. “The downy-soft in-step makes you feel like you’re dancing on a sea of cotton wool’. Now how comfortable are those bridal shoes sounding?!

Light and bright; crisp and invigorating; silky and smooth; lively and sparkling. Think about words that provoke emotion and feeling, and place them carefully into your product descriptions.

Great copy sells products

It’s a fact: without brilliantly written product descriptions your e-commerce site is never going to compete. It’s there to sell, so make it salient. Get the copy working for you following our tips, and you should start to see a marked difference in your conversions.

If you could use some professional help writing for your e-commerce website, or even designing a new online store for your products, talk to Figment!

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