Perhaps one of the most under-acknowledged problems for the online retail seller is – how to make boring products interesting. Millions of listings exist on online marketplaces, and there are many retailers selling the same product in the market. How do you establish a point of difference between buying the same product from you as opposed to your competitor?
A first impression becomes extremely important in such situations. Let’s see what the online shopper can glean from first impressions of your webpage/product listing:
Seller Rating: A seller rating is one of the most vital pieces of stats for the online seller, simply because of the fact that it quantifies your capability to provide excellent service. Therefore, the buyer is always going to judge you first by your seller rating.
Product Reviews: Be sure that the potential buyer is going to look at the product reviews before clicking add-to-cart. This is because product reviews tend to be unbiased opinions shared by customers who have used your products and services.
Product Images: Images have the power to immediately attract the attention of the viewer. By putting up interesting and good looking images of your product on the listing, you can ramp up the customers’ interest in a much more effective manner.
Product Description/Content: The product description can be thought of as a sales pitch for the online world. Its importance therefore cannot be understated. It is going to be the primary material that the customer is going to refer to while imagining the product.
In a previous article, we wrote extensively about how to improve your product images for online retail. We also wrote about a few free and interesting image editing tools that you can incorporate in reinventing your product images. This article will focus on certain tips and tricks for crafting compelling product descriptions for your listings on online marketplaces.
How to Write Compelling Product Descriptions for Boring Products?
Do the Research
The process of writing product copy is not just about flashy words and tall claims. The first rule of writing copy is get acquainted with the product. Try to make a note of all the properties of the product that you are supposed to write about – what does it do? What does it look like? What does it feel like? Make notes of the technical details and specifications of the product, its competitors and the kind of market that it exists in. The kind of language that we use for product descriptions differs from market to market. For example, a description for a B2C product will be very different as opposed to a B2B product. Therefore, try acquiring information about the product and the market from many perspectives.
Get Some Copywriting Inspiration
Copywriting is a subtle art of manipulating language in an efficient manner to communicate not just information, but emotions associated with the product. You might have a lot of technical information and other specifications about the product, but they are going to be quite useless when confronted with a layman. To make this technical description interesting is where a copywriter comes in. A good way to get into it is to observe the way established copywriters do things. Here are some great examples of how the copy is used to humanise the product.
What is Your Competition Doing?
Since online retail means that your competitors might be selling the same product that you are, it is important to acknowledge that it all comes down to the manner in which the product is sold. Looking over your shoulder to check what your competition is doing can be a great way to keep your eyes on the ball. But there is a risk involved in this – overthinking about the competition will result in your falling in line with them and playing safe. What you need to do is critically look at your practice and that of your competitors in the context of the larger market trends, and see if you can find the cracks that you can capitalise on.
Narrate a Story
One way of making your product descriptions more interesting is by crafting a story around them. This means turning your dry, technical product descriptions and reimagining them in a narrative. Doing this requires you to look beyond the technical specs and into what the product can signify to the customer. A normal watch can be special for someone because it might be their first watch. An entry level phone will mean a lot to someone if they are buying it with their own salary.
A good question to ask would, therefore, be – what can this particular product or feature mean something to someone? Acquiring things is, therefore, an emotional process, and it is the job of the storyteller to tap into these emotions and associate them with the product. Good storytelling is also about the information that you withhold from your audience. It is not necessary to make every feature of your product important. Rather, you need to prioritise and focus on a select few. It’s good to come up with a few options and then brainstorm with your peers about the final copy.
Think of Using Newer Media
Since we are talking about copywriting for the internet, why restrict ourselves to words? Some very interesting product descriptions can be crafted using the image or infographic format. This form is especially useful when there is a lot of technical information to be disseminated, but it does so in an extremely engaging manner. Another option is product description videos, which are all the rage on Instagram these days. A video allows you to use sound, narration, animation and editing in fun and unconventional ways to demonstrate and communicate the key features of your product. Here are some great examples of video product descriptions and marketing for your inspiration.
To know more about how to write great product copy, get in touch with Browntape. We are India’s leading experts on everything to do with e-commerce, and we are always happy to help!
