Product descriptions play a vital role in the furniture sector and the wider commerce landscape, contributing to the shopper experience while adding authority to a business’ website. As such, how to write product descriptions that sell is a key component of any company’s online strategy.
An effective product description must do more than just provide basic details. Research shows that they carry an outsize influence on purchasing decisions, with 87% of consumers rating product content as ‘extremely important’ when making buying decisions. The product description is a key opportunity to bring items to life, offering customers the chance to see and understand the potential purchase as if it was right in from of them. In the modern commerce landscape, that means going beyond just words and delivering a multimedia experience using innovative and interactive visuals, immersive technologies, and complemented by SEO-rich text.
How to write product descriptions that sell? The answer takes in a number of factors – and innovative technology is rewriting the playbook for how brands present their products.
Immersive technology is reshaping how brands approach product content | Furniture: Vive Muebles
The impact of product descriptions on ecommerce sales
Crafting compelling product descriptions serves as a powerful tool for both educating and enticing potential customers, empowering them to make informed choices and feel confident in purchasing decisions. It goes beyond the mere provision of product features and benefits, fostering an emotional connection that increases the likelihood of a purchase.
What’s more, effective product descriptions play a number of additional roles, helping online stores rank higher in search results, enhancing the merchant’s credibility, and boosting site conversion rates. The central role they play in all these areas underscores the importance of determining how to write product descriptions that sell.
Understanding target audience
Gaining a deep understanding of the intended target audience is a foundational element of any marketing strategy. Recognizing that not everyone can be an ideal customer allows firms to hone their marketing efforts to attract and convert their chosen demographic. Consumers who see genuine need and value in a company’s offering are more likely to buy, making identifying, reaching, and connecting with those people a priority worth investing in. Product descriptions are a key vehicle to establish that connection.
In order to craft messaging that resonates, firms have to developing an understanding of the specific needs of their target audience. Prior to creating descriptions, images, and other product content, companies should conduct thorough research the audience’s demographics, preferences, challenges, and motivations, and utilize this knowledge to refine content accordingly. Key elements such as language and tone should be suitable for the intended recipients, and product content should emphasize the benefits and features that are most relevant and important to them.
Choosing the right language
Once the target audience has been pinpointed, the next step is to craft language strategically around them. Research by Statista shows that ‘better product descriptions’ were a top suggestion amongst buyers for how their shopping experience could be improved (behind only ‘free deliveries’ and ‘free returns’) with 36% citing that option in the survey.
To sell products effectively, well-written descriptions will convince buyers of how features will be of specific benefit to them, turning prosaic form and functionality into enticing selling points. Armed with an understanding of the buyer's persona and needs, features can be presented as a solution to their problems, a remedy to everyday pain points, a comfort they can’t live without, or a luxury to which they can aspire.
Key to how to write product descriptions that sell is utilizing powerful and compelling vocabulary that resonates with the target audience and creates a persuasive impact, influencing perception and desire for a product. Additionally, creating a sense of urgency with carefully chosen words can reduce cart abandonment and prompt immediate purchase, which is particularly important for the furniture industry, which has a longer sales cycle and suffers from lower average conversion rates than other sectors.
Interactive product content is shown to boost conversion rates | Furniture: Cocowolf
How to write product descriptions that sell: key elements
An effective product description comprises a number of key elements which should be carefully considered, while at the same time ensuring that search engine optimization (SEO) techniques are applied to all texts.
Headline
Just as with a blog post or a news story, a headline or title summarizes what the product is, taking into account important SEO keywords (more information below) that online buyers might use in a search query.
Product details
When it comes to this element of how to write product descriptions that sell, brands need to put themselves in their customers’ shoes. What do they want to know? Referring back to their demographic research, firms should consider their preferences, preferred tone of voice, and suitable vocabulary. Consideration should be given to whether this audience is likely to be receptive to informal language or prefer a more traditional approach.
Furthermore, by identifying the questions that are commonly asked, product descriptions can address them and ensure they are answered in the most positive light. By adopting a language and approach that aligns with the intended ideal buyer, a stronger connection can be made that enhances the overall customer experience.
Features and benefits
A product’s features and benefits should be the core of any product description, ensuring that key functionalities are highlighted and, as outlined above, ensuring this is related back to the customer’s needs. Examples would include showcasing how the item can save them money, time or effort, how it marks an improvement over a product they might already own, or how it will elevate their home décor. This vital content can then be augmented with additional informational text, such as dimensions, color, weight, materials, and durability, in a practical format such as bullet points, designed with ease of readability in mind.
Visuals
One answer to the question of how to write product descriptions that sell is the age-old storytelling maxim: show, don’t tell. The importance of product visuals is hard to overstate, with 75% of online buyers reliant on them to make purchasing decisions. Product images solidify the item’s authenticity, convey key characteristics such as form and quality, and align it with the description provided. Visual representations build trust with consumers, making it crucial that they are true to life and of the highest quality possible.
Providing images from multiple angles can help provide clarity and transparency about a product, as can video, which also offers a powerful means to showcase key features in action – such as how a table expands or an armchair reclines. For many firms today, however, the most effective way to present their products comes through integrating immersive technologies such as 3D and augmented reality (AR).
Incorporating lifelike 3D models on product pages enables customers to rotate and zoom, viewing items from all aspects, customize for color, material, and more in real time, and even visualize the configured product, life-size, in their own space. Meanwhile, hotspots can highlight key features in context, providing information and benefits in an intuitive visual format. These capabilities not only build trust but provide convenience and confidence for purchasers, with 80% saying they are more confident in buying decisions made with the help of immersive technology.
Customer reviews and ratings
Customer reviews and feedback hold an increasingly greater significance as part of the online buying process, with 95% of shoppers seeking out reviews from previous buyers when researching products.
Consumer reviews carry more weight than sales materials in the eyes of many shoppers, valued for their objectivity and real-world feedback on a product. As such, displaying these reviews is another way brands can build trust with potential customers, building on the credentials of transparency and authenticity that should be conveyed throughout the product page.
Best practice tips for how to write product descriptions that sell
The primary objective of product descriptions is clear: to drive sales. Creating compelling and persuasive copy is key to that goal, and a number of techniques and strategies can help accomplish this:
Be concise
Not only is brevity important for SEO purposes, it also allows time-poor consumers to scan text quickly. Key characteristics such as materials and dimensions should be prominent and clear, along with the aforementioned centrality of highlighting features and benefits. This should not, however, negate the importance of honing copy to be as descriptive and accurate as possible and tailoring it to the target customer’s preferred language and tone.
Use persuasive language
By employing impactful and persuasive language, brands can enhance the perception of a product's features, enabling them to make compelling arguments that entice customers and increase the likelihood of a purchase.
Descriptive words should resonate with the aspirations and needs of the target audience, igniting desire for a product. Moreover, creating a sense of urgency through carefully chosen words can effectively persuade customers to make an immediate purchase, thereby reducing cart abandonment.
Address pain points and offer solutions
Addressing customer pain points is vital for facilitating easier purchasing decisions and increasing sales. Customer interviews, surveys and focus groups can provide direct feedback to inform this aspect of the product description, alongside research into customer behavior. By understanding the issues that matter to customers, brands can pinpoint challenges that exist and highlight how their product helps to overcome them.
Use sensory words to engage the reader
Sensory words can be utilized to great effect in product descriptions. Research has shown that when used correctly, they increase sales by more effectively engaging the brain's processing power. They can also inject personality into otherwise mundane content.
Using sensory words that evoke sights, smells, sounds or tastes among buyers can help vividly describe colors, shapes, styles and other product attributes. What’s more, by identifying through which senses buyers are most likely to positively perceive a product – for example, “It looks good to me” vs. “It feels good to me” – copy can be tailored to make the most impactful connection with the reader.
Highlight unique selling points
A unique selling point (USP) is a marketing term that identifies what sets a product or brand apart from competitors. It highlights a specific trait or benefit that a competitive offering lacks, such as cost, quality, experience, or innovation.
A successful USP attracts new customers by addressing their needs while emphasizing a product’s strengths. It should differentiate the product from others that are similar and appeal to customer preferences. Key to communicating this effectively is to avoid jargon and focus on the principles outlined above.
Bring product descriptions to life with AR
According to research on different learning styles, people remember 10% of what they hear, 20% of what they read, and 80% of what they see and do. This statistic reiterates the importance of visuals when it comes to creating effective product experiences and descriptions. This is particularly the case for products such as furniture, which typically involve more research and consideration for buyers, may involve multiple touchpoints and visits to store, and in which the ultimate aesthetic fit of the furniture piece in the home is a key factor in the sale.
In all these areas, immersive technology brings an extra level of convenience and confidence for buyers, enabling them to get a lifelike understanding of the product directly from the product page, providing a seamless customer journey across platforms and channels, and letting them personalize and visualize their chosen product in their own space.
Optimizing product descriptions for SEO
Optimizing product content for search engines is another key component of effective product content. Crafting the perfect descriptions for your customers is one thing, but even the best copy is wasted if it can’t be found through a web search.
SEO keyword techniques
Optimizing SEO for product descriptions requires identifying the right keywords to ensure search engines understand pages and rank them highly in relevant searches. But while it is important to incorporate keywords in product copy, ‘keyword stuffing’ – an overuse of keywords to try and game the system – is detrimental, as Google and similar search engines will penalize pages that do so.
Tools such as SEMrush, KWFinder, or Moz Keyword Explorer are the starting point for keyword research. These tools provide valuable data on search volume, keyword difficulty, and related terms, enabling companies to identify ‘long tail keywords’ – keywords or phrases with lower search competition and, therefore, higher conversion potential. These keywords can help attract motivated buyers and increase the chance of generating sales.
Avoid compromising readability
While SEO is an increasingly important factor in how to write product descriptions that sell, brands should not compromise their unique tone, voice, and style. This can alienate both new and existing customers, and hinder the all-important emotional connection discussed above. As such, natural, engaging writing employing simple and clear language remains the best option.
By engaging shoppers with valuable content, brands encourage them to spend more time on product pages, share them with others, and explore relevant links. These factors collectively contribute to a significant improvement in SEO ranking.
Analysis and maintenance
Once a product description has been completed, it’s important to maintain content to ensure that it is kept up to date and optimized. Product description analysis involves systematically monitoring, collecting, and analyzing data related to product content. This includes examining the description text, images, product features, and other relevant components.
The primary objective of this analysis is to identify and address any errors, inconsistencies, or out of date material that could cause issues within the description. Additionally, it serves as a means to track any unauthorized use of materials by others. This process provides brands an opportunity to refresh or update copy, particularly for new features, refine keywords as necessary, and ensure the latest and most impactful visual formats are being used.
