How to Optimize Product Descriptions for Ecommerce Sites
Product descriptions are essential to ecommerce success. They help customers understand the value of your client’s products and can significantly improve a site’s search engine visibility. Well-crafted product descriptions can even be the deciding factor between a customer choosing your client or opting for a competitor.
Your role as a web designer is crucial in this sales process. Your job is to ensure product descriptions are well-organized and seamlessly integrated into the overall site design. This guide will show you how to accomplish this effectively.
Strategy: Understanding the audience and brand
Most customers shop around before making a purchase. With so many options and sources of information available online, consumers can effortlessly compare products. As a result, product descriptions must engage both search engines and customers. Effective product copy should be clear, distinct, and speak directly to the target audience, leaving no questions unanswered. Customers need to feel confident that the product is right for them before making a purchase.
Understanding your audience and their needs is crucial for writing engaging product descriptions. These strategies can help you get started.
Create customer personas
Successful brands speak to specific customers. They know exactly who they’re trying to reach, which helps them craft copy that resonates with their audience.
One way to keep messaging on track is by creating customer personas. A persona is a detailed profile of a fictional character representing a specific segment of your target audience, used to create more engaging and tailored product descriptions for your ecommerce clients. Personas put faces to the quantitative data about the audience and serve as a reminder of who the product is meant for. While your client’s persona doesn’t have to be the most robust biography, it should help you understand what a day in their life is like. Having a clear persona can help define the brand and the product.
A comprehensive customer persona includes:
Demographic information (age, gender, income, education)
Psychographic details (interests, values, lifestyle)
Pain points and challenges
Goals and motivations
Buying behavior and preferences
Differentiate the brand
Brand differentiation comes from building an identity around what makes a company unique and valuable. Knowing what target customers need and who else is competing for their business helps to set the brand apart. At its core, brand differentiation is about giving customers something—and oftentimes, a feeling—they can’t get anywhere else.
Once a brand is fully formed, it becomes simpler to differentiate products. Having a brand identity means having a distinct point of view. Even in a saturated market, a unique perspective highlights the benefits and attributes that appeal to the brand’s audience.
For example, a roofing company makes reflective roofing tiles. Most of their customers are first-time homeowners in their 30s, so they’ll have a very different brand than a company catering to more tenured homeowners in their 40s and 50s. The former might emphasize savings and homeowner education, while the latter may highlight environmental sustainability or the product’s longevity.
Differentiate the products
Even though these example products are similar, they mean something different to the respective customers. Once these high-level concerns have been addressed, it’s time to bring them into the product copy.
Back to the roofing company. One product attribute may be that their roof tiles are reflective. This is great, but not inherently interesting. It requires the customer to figure out why the reflective properties of roofing tiles matter. By then, they may have already moved on to a competitor’s website.
Product benefits make product attributes meaningful. In this case, a product benefit shows customers that these roof tiles keep houses cooler in the summer and lower their energy bills. Once that’s established, the fact that they’re reflective has much more significance.
Most customers aren’t moved by a product’s specs or features. They want to know how those specs and features benefit them. Give someone a reason to care and they’re much more likely to become curious about the details of a product.
Mechanics: Key elements of effective product descriptions
Good product copy is a combination of strategy and mechanics. After revealing how the product is relevant to customers, present the product clearly. The following outlines specific characteristics to consider.
Simple, yet clear
When customers read about a product, they need to know that it’s made just for them. For this reason, every detail should be accessible. Be clear and to the point, avoiding jargon and overly technical language that might confuse visitors. If customers are expecting “roof tiles,” don't give them “terra cotta dominoes.” When in doubt, simplify.
Distinguishing plain language from generic description is essential. While every detail of product copy should be straightforward, it should also be distinct from similar descriptions of competitor products. If it’s positioned within the broader brand narrative, this shouldn’t be an issue.
Realistic
Some brand owners feel the need to oversell a product or dramatize its benefits. More often than not, this loses customers’ trust. Exaggeration can make people question a brand’s sincerity. It's important to bring the product to life in a relatable way—but don't overdo it and risk losing credibility.
Scannable
Customers rarely read every word on a page. The way the information is organized can help them get everything they need swiftly. Ensure the page has a clear hierarchy. There should be an overarching message, even if it's just the names of the products, supported by subsidiary messages and product benefits. Key takeaways should be bold to draw the eye. Whenever possible, product copy should be broken out into bullet points, not buried in paragraphs.
Using headlines in product descriptions can also help visitors quickly scan and find the information they’re looking for. Common product detail headings include:
Materials: What was used to make the product?
Specifications: What are the dimensions and weight of the product?
Warranty: Does your client make any guarantees about performance or lifetime of the product?
Care: Are there suggested ways to maintain the product?
Shipping and returns: What should the customer expect in terms of receiving or returning the item?
Persuasive
When writing persuasive product descriptions, including powerful words that trigger emotion and drive action can significantly impact a customer's decision-making process. Creating a sense of urgency or exclusivity can also motivate customers to act quickly. For example, using words like "exclusive," "limited," "save," and "best-selling" can enhance the appeal.
Visibility: Incorporating SEO best practices
Keyword-rich descriptions ensure that every product is discoverable by search engines and potential customers alike. By strategically incorporating relevant keywords, you can help drive organic traffic to your client’s site and ultimately increase sales. Here’s how.
Conduct thorough research
Avoid guessing which keywords to use. Instead, conduct thorough keyword research to identify the terms and phrases that potential customers use to search for products similar to yours. There are several tools, like Google Search Console, that can help you find relevant keywords and balance search volume and competition effectively.
Pro tip: After verifying your client’s site with Google Search Console, you can view popular keywords to determine which search terms drive traffic. Learn more about leveraging search keywords analytics.
Use keywords intentionally
Once you know which keywords to use, write descriptions that are authentic to the target customer and client’s brand voice. Avoid keyword stuffing, as it can make the copy sound forced and unnatural. Overloading descriptions with keywords can also make the product sound generic and similar to the competition. Instead, write informative and engaging copy that balances optimization and the brand’s unique personality. Learn more about effectively adding keywords for SEO.
Optimize key elements
When optimizing product descriptions, consider all accompanying elements that will enhance SEO and user experience. This includes:
Titles: Make titles descriptive, clear, and concise and include primary keywords toward the beginning when possible.
Tags: Use relevant keywords to categorize products and a combination of broad and specific tags to capture a wide range of searches.
Images: Use high-quality photos and include descriptive keywords in the file names.
Alt text: Add alt text to product images to provide metadata that benefits SEO and makes the site more accessible.
Execution: Using Squarespace’s built-in ecommerce features
Squarespace offers a variety of tools designed to help businesses create, manage, and optimize their online stores with built-in features for inventory management, secure payment processing, and customizable product pages. Plus, the platform’s user-friendly interface and integrated SEO tools help ensure your client’s products can be found by potential customers.
Squarespace’s store pages are designed to showcase products for maximum impact. Each store page can feature detailed descriptions, high-quality images, pricing information, and variations like size or color. As a result, store pages are both functional and on brand.
Optimizing product descriptions for long-term success
Well-optimized product descriptions are crucial for attracting and converting customers. By thoroughly understanding your client’s audience, differentiating their brand, writing clear and persuasive copy, and incorporating SEO best practices, you can help create compelling product pages that convert visitors into loyal customers and drive long-term success.
Additional ecommerce resources for pros:
*This article was originally published March 28, 2019. It has since been updated.
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