Awesome website! Terrific ads and great product! without a product description. Is that all it takes to convince your audience?
It has gone way pass that; you need to do something differently to achieve sales.
Marketing has gone beyond telling your audience some old folklore about the product, its way beyond writing long products autobiography; it’s about winning with the right words in a precise and convincing method.
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The audience has gone beyond just reading anything and purchasing. They want to know how beneficial that product will be to them with no rooms for regrets.
The audiences want something to motivate them to buy the product. If you don’t give them a reason, then I bet you know you will lose their patronage.
When marketing a product, there are essential elements to consider before showing your audience what you have in stock for them.
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This cuts across not just too online shop owners but other businesses that go online to market their products. Every product description is suppose to point out your product, target your ideal customers and trigger strong buying response, with this in top gear, you can be rest assured that your business is floating in the sky’s.
Features alone can’t do justice to product description; it only shows the physical attributes of the product without any information on how effective it will be to the customer.
For example, if you have a product for sale, the next step is to place it on your site or any social media network advertising that product.
The thought is to have people patronize you by purchasing the product. So, how will they purchase the product without a clear cut description on the effectiveness, durability, and benefit of that particular product to your customers?
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Target audience are itching to know more with concrete reasons why they should patronize you and not Mr XYZ who is also a merchant of similar product.
Okay, another quick illustration; there are variety of milk from different manufacturing companies, from Loya, Peak milk, Cowbell etc. people patronize one product more than the other based on preference.
That is because they get a clear description on what they will benefit from using their preferred brand. Probably they have been promised to have strong bones, white eyes after taking the milk.
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Therefore, based on the motivation, they go for the one that clearly meets their needs. Your product is just a shadow without descriptions because nobody knows what that product is capable of doing.
Likewise to all products that you see has a booming marketing, they all have solid descriptions that will help their customers make purchase decisions to their favour.
Before we talk about the qualities of any product description, I will love to start by explaining how you can achieve a product description.
How to write a product description
For every product you are selling, the key element for a successful sale is product description. Basically, product descriptions are brief explanations which are meant to attract or entice the buyer towards purchasing the product.
Most times, people just write descriptions without any thorough research on their audience and the product itself. So, I’ll be showing you steps on how to achieve a proper product description.
Establish your target audience
Writing an effective product description, it’s like writing a song lyrics. You start from the first stanza then move to the chorus then next stanza, same thing as starting a race; all participants go on their marks and the gun goes up, and everyone is on the move.
All this analogy is basically to make you understand that the same thing is applicable to writing product descriptions. It’s one thought at a time. To start, you have to know your target audience, by specifying.
Something you have to consider about your audience is the fact that their choices are sometimes informed by their lifestyles, religion, culture and other things.
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For example, you can’t sell pork to a Muslim and expect him to buy, on the basis of religion, he won’t purchase pork. These are the things you have to put into perspective while selecting your target audience.
Probably, you can’t pick a ten (10) year old child as your target audience for an alcoholic drink, because it’s not part of his lifestyle at that age. He will be seen as abusing substance for that singular act.
Therefore, before writing a product description, you have to verify and be sure of your target audience.
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Usually, when you “create” a new product, there is this particular persona you have in mind while creating. They are a figment of your ideal customers which haven’t surfaced yet.
Hence, all your design and effort into the product is for that imaginary customer: to appreciate, love and keep buying.
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The central thing is to understand your customer persona will help you settle every other aspect of product description.
Once you get this in place, then you can go ahead to create the most effective, persuasive product description.
Detailed product description list
It’s your product, so describing and including benefits won’t be hard. This part should be like your hobby. Okay, let’s get back to business.
Every product description should be comprehensive enough; please note that when I say comprehensive, I don’t mean you take five pages trying to explain every functional part of the product.
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All am saying is, you bring out those features that you product possesses that can easily persuade the audience to purchase from you. For example, you want to get a phone, each phone and manufacturer have distinctive features one to another.
Same company with different phones that have different settings and features, but for the sake of this post, I’ll use iPhone for my illustration. There are different categories of iPhones but what makes a customer want to purchase iPhone 7 over an iPhone 5s?
The answer is specification of phone features. The manufacturers give you a reason to drop your iPhone based on the comprehensive specification driven product description. They tell you iPhone 7 has 12mp camera, longest battery life ever in iPhone and 3 times faster LTE than iPhone 6.
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I got this from Apples product description of iPhone 7. This tells you how strong a comprehensive product description can sell your product in minutes. Highlight the benefits the customer will derive from using your product.
This is what prompts the prospect into purchasing the product. Just merely using pictures doesn’t say anything valid about your product but emphasizing on the usefulness of the product to the buyer, makes it more captivating and enticing.
Define your tone, format and style
Do you know you can say something in three different way and they all will carry different meanings to them? Yes you can. For example, you can say the word “go” and depending on the tone being used, it will mean something different.
What am trying to say is tone determines whether you’re being boring, funky, sad, or happy; all depends on your tone. Something about your tone is it attracts the customers mind to your product.
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Therefore, identifying your tone and making sure you use the right tone is as important as knowing your audience. The right tone sets the right buying mood but once you go off, you’re most likely going to miss an opportunity with your client.
Your tone also refers to the type on language used to drive sales; like using words that prick emotions. Also, your writing style should be simple and persuasive. Simple in respect to your target audience; this solely depends on your target customers.
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If your product is more of an elite product, then your description should contain words they can relate with and vice versa. Your target audience should be your focus when deciding on the content style of your description.
Your format should be attractive and readable. Including some designs won’t be bad but be careful when implementing stylish writing format in other to avoid distracting your audience from the key message.
Also, pictures are also necessary, to enable your customer have a visible idea of what the product looks like.
Write a first draft and edit
With all you have writing down, all you need to do is put it all together as a sentence(s) to be read and understood.
Usually, once you write your first draft, there are always some mistakes and you may probably edit it yourself or preferably, give it to someone else who you trust like a professional to read through and make valued corrections.
Most times, if you try editing yourself, you might be a bit biased to implement the sort of corrections you ought to probably because of some attachment towards a word or phrase.
So, it’s advisable you involve a neutral person who is trustworthy to check through and make corrections. To effectively write a comprehensible and salable description, you must understand your audience persona, use persuasive words and make sure you use pictures.
Now you know the rudiments of writing a worthy product description, I’ll love to talk about qualities of a product description. This will just enable you understand what is needed to make a description stand out.
Let be start with this quick example, I was somewhere in a traffic jam and I noticed a billboard. Guess what stroke me about it, I saw a bottle of Malt drink and a glass of same, then just above it, was a tin a milk being poured into the glass of Malt.
And by the side, the campaign read, there is more you can do with peak; just paraphrased it. But the idea is, you can not only use peak milk for your tea and cereal but also add it to your drink.
I was that advert beyond selling the milk but persuading people with that pictorial description to try peak with a drink. So, it takes me back to what I was saying about qualities of an effective product description.
According to Neil Patel, Product descriptions are a major reason a user may (or may not) convert. What a user reads about the product influences whether or not she will buy. Product descriptions are the final point in the conversion funnel.
I’ll highlight five (5) important product description qualities you should look out for when creating yours.
Paint a mental picture of your product with words
The quality of a product description is a bit intertwined with how to write descriptions. So I will elaborate on previous points when necessary.
So, in creating a visual mental picture, you have to first use pictures and description. This is how it works.
When you have a picture painted in your mind, you get this Adrenalin rush to purchase the product especially if you like what you see.
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Product description gives you an idea of what you will benefit from the use of the product. The vivid description of the product is what makes the buyer interested in the purchase.
Once you don’t have the wawing factor, then your product will not pass the four corners of your shop. Find words that your audience can relate emotionally with your product.
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Don’t just talk about the functionality of your product but elaborate on how those features are beneficial to your customers. One essential quality of an effective product description is language usage.
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This means your language has to go with your tone, invariably going in line with your product. This can move you to purchase this product over and over again.
Use pictures to tell the story
Pictures speak volume, as one is able to see all the physical features of the product. Using an image of the product will also help you sell faster than usual because according to statistics, photos are high engaging with about 93% on Facebook.
And we all know Facebook is one of the most popular social networks in the world. With the adage that goes “pictures speak louder than words” we can say picture gives a definitive description because you can ‘see’ the product.
For images of your product, be sure to snap high quality pictures that are clear and visible. Avoid using blurring images and you can as well take pictures of all the dimensions of the product.
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Images are strong for description because without that, it will be almost a blind buy for your customer. Place some emphasis on having the pictures of the possible shades of that product available.
For example, Konga does this a lot which is good. They put up a dress, and if it is in different shades, they put up a view of each shade, usually not more than three (3).
It is just a way of telling your customers ‘hey, if you’re not OK with this colour, I have this’. All product descriptions have pictures attached because what are you really selling? If it’s a product that is not tangible, then you can do with just a description but in most cases, you always have an image to represent show the product.
Make it fun
No one wants to read anything boring, it’s quite brain draining and highly disengaging. Create something really interesting that your audience can relate with, get informed and still buy afterwards. I will show you a bit of a fun product description.
Make sense out of it
It is imperative you help your clients connect the dots. You already have a list of all your product can do and benefits your clients will gain from the use of your product. Once your whole idea is placed together, your audience will easily understand where you’re coming from and where you’re heading.
Conclusion
The essential thing about product description is you have to know the right words to use for the right audience. Once you have this all set, then all you need to worry about is how heavy your account will turn out.
It takes more than pictures to make effective sale, it takes a persuasive write-up that can push your audience to purchase from you. If you probably have a company that produces shoes, am sure you know there are other companies doing same as you.
So what makes your’s stand out among the many others? Its now left to you to make a choice and put the following elements listed above to ensure that you make the right move to your target audience.
You can share with me what you have been doing wrong when it comes to product description.
The post 3 mouth- watering qualities of an effective product description appeared first on NATIVEDGE.