One of the most important aspects of really mastering marketplaces such as Amazon and eBay is getting the product descriptions right. So many times, sellers focus on the “nuts and bolts” behind their products and their online stores. They worry about their SEO and appeasing the search engines more than they worry about what the customer actually needs. This could prove to be a mistake.
Great descriptions really are quite important when it comes to selling in the online retail space. They are the equivalent of talking with a salesperson, and thus, they have quite a big job to do. Here are some tips that will help you start creating great descriptions for your products on eBay, Amazon, and elsewhere on the web.
Know the Buyer Before You Write
You know your customers better than anyone else does, or at least you should. You should know what they want from the products you sell, and that should make it easier to write descriptions that illustrate how your items can meet their needs and wants. Of course, you can’t simply tell the customers that your product is great. You have to go a bit further with the descriptions.
Appeal to the Imagination of the Reader
You need to make the reader want to know more about the item and want to order it. Being creative, telling mini stories, and even adding a bit of humor when appropriate can help to make your descriptions stand apart from all of the others on the market. Show them the benefits that using your item can offer and do your best to illustrate those benefits in the description with sensory images.
Instead of merely telling someone that you have some great jogging shoes for sale, put the mind’s eye of the reader out on that beautiful country lane as they jog through the fields and forests. This helps them to picture themselves using the product. This technique is simple and effective, and it really can help to increase sales when used properly. When you tell stories and use good descriptive elements, it can sometimes help to transcend the person’s rational thoughts and hit them on more of an emotional level.
Get them excited about something, anything, and chances are they will be more willing to buy it. Look at the way Apple does business. They have such hype around the new phones that come out each year that people line up, feeling that they need to upgrade to a new phone, and that they need it in their life. It is all clever marketing, and you can learn from that.
Make the Descriptions Clear
One of the other things that you will need to do with your descriptions is make them as clear as possible. Avoid using phrases that clutter them, and avoid using jargon and technical speak if you can. Keep them on the human level since the humans are the ones that will be buying the products, not the search engines.
Also, always adhere to the rules of the site. For example, some marketplaces will have different limits on word count or character count for the descriptions. Make sure you can tell the entire product story within that space, and edit it down until it works perfectly.
Finally, you may sometimes have to admit that your description just isn’t working for that particular product, and you might have to rewrite it. This sometimes happens. A blurb that might sound great and read well just doesn’t connect with the customers. Toss it aside and create another one.
It takes time to get the hang of writing descriptions that work for Amazon and other marketplaces. As you refine your style though, it will start to get much easier for you, so keep practicing.
Resource: http://blog.replymanager.com/2013/11/writing-product-descriptions-that-sell.html