More and more people are doing their shopping online these days. Statistics say that an estimated $4.5 trillion will be spent on e-commerce products worldwide by 2021. So, if you want a share of this amount, it might be a good idea to hop on the e-commerce bandwagon today.
Of course, building an e-commerce store is not a walk in the park. It involves quite a bit of work, which includes not only setting up the store but also choosing the products and creating unique product descriptions. So, if you want your online store to succeed, you first need to know a few things that you should and should not do. These include the dos and don’ts of writing product descriptions for e-commerce. So, with that said, here are some dos and don’ts that you should keep in mind:
- Do – write descriptions for humans and not just for search engine optimization. – When you write your product descriptions, you need to keep in mind that you are aiming to convince people to buy what you are selling. While you naturally want Google’s crawlers to consider your content relevant for certain keywords, you shouldn’t sacrifice the quality of your content for it. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use relevant keywords, you still should, but not to a point where that is all you are considering.
- Don’t copy and paste descriptions from the manufacturer’s site – Some e-commerce entrepreneurs don’t try hard enough to create unique descriptions for the products they are selling on their e-commerce store. For some reason, they believe that simply copying what can be found on the manufacturer’s site is enough. No, it’s not. In general, copying the content found on one site word-for-word can penalize your site for duplicate content. This can mean the de-indexing of your product pages, which is not what you want. While you do want to increase brand recognition by using the brand’s name in your content, you definitely shouldn’t use their descriptions to do this.
- Do think about your target market when you write your product descriptions – When you write for your target market, make sure that you know precisely what it is and what they are looking for. Provide added value to your audience by writing product descriptions that describe exactly why a certain product is right for them. For example, if you’re selling sports items, think about what makes each item better than others similar to it.
- Don’t make claims that your product cannot substantiate – Some online sellers make outrageous claims regarding certain products that they sell. To appear trustworthy to potential customers, be as honest as you can about what your products can do. That way, you can not only gain their trust but naturally also reduce the number of conflicts or disputes with clients (another way to handle those conflicts and disputes is using neutral mediation platforms such as Purchase Guard). You don’t have to point out the flaws of what you’re selling. Just don’t claim that it can do something that it actually cannot.
These are just a few of the dos and don’ts you have to keep in mind when it comes to writing e-commerce product descriptions. Other things to remember include the readability and accuracy of what you write.
