Writing a Website’s Product Descriptions

This is an excerpt from my book Write to the Top: A How To for Website Content Writing and Increasing Website Traffic.

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Sell, sell, sell.  That’s what product descriptions should do, sell your product.  If your product descriptions aren’t selling your product, you need to get new ones, and fast.

So what does it take to write a good website product description?  And can writing a product description even really do anything to get a product sold?  Let’s take a look at what exactly goes into a great product description, and how they sell your product.

• Target:  Who are you selling to?  It doesn’t matter what you’re selling, if you don’t know who’s buying, you’ve got problems.  Of course your product by itself should give you a pretty good idea.  If you’re selling reading glasses, your target audience is people who have trouble seeing what their reading.  If you’re selling porn, your target audience is probably young men with too much time on their hands, and perhaps something else as well.  Knowing who you’re selling to, who you want to sell to, and who you can just forget about, is your first step in writing a website product description.
  

• Extol:  Extol the virtues of your product.  Shout them to the heavens.  Let everyone and their dog know.  If you don’t list what’s great about your product right from the get-go, why would anyone want to buy it?  If your product is oatmeal, don’t list the ingredients and where it was made first, tell me it will make my ass smaller!  If toenail clippers are your specialty, don’t tell me about the stainless steel metal right in the first line, tell me that yours don’t make that annoying ‘clipping’ sound.  Be up front with people about what you have, what it does, and how it can help them.
  

• SEO:  You’ve got to Search Engine Optimize (SEO) your product descriptions, no question about it.  More than anything else on your site, people will be drawn to what you are selling; that’s after all what you’ve got your website for, right?  So you want to draw them into your products, and the best way to do that is by putting some SEO magic into each website product description.  It’s pretty easy to get all of your keywords into your product description, but just remember to not overdo it.  You want a keyword density of about 1% to 2%, no more.  Now, if you’ve got a 150 word product description, which many of them are, that means you can only put your keyword in there about 2 to 3 times.  Anything else might be overkill, angering Google.  If Google is angry, you’ll lose traffic.
  

• Show:  Show people what your product can do for them, don’t just tell them.  Let them see your product description in their minds.  If they’re reading your text, they should be able to close their eyes and see what it is you’re saying to them.  “Her pants wouldn’t fit, and all of her belts were suddenly too big.  What once took 30 minutes to squeeze into was now taking just seconds.  And for the first time in years, she could see her toes.  Now she starts every morning with Kiss Your Ass Goodbye Oatmeal, the brand that more overweight women everywhere are coming to call their own.  So Kiss Your Ass Goodbye today, and have a lighter tomorrow!”