Crafting Compelling Product Descriptions

Easily one of the more powerful sales tools for the ecommerce merchant, product descriptions have the power to surprise and delight your shoppers, while moving them toward conversion. In other words, crafting compelling product descriptions give your online furniture store the best possible chance of being successful.

Here’s how to get it done.

Know Your Customer

Hopefully, you took some time to identify your ideal customer before you set up your site. This makes conducting your marketing efforts much easier and helps them to be more effective. In this case, you’ll want your product descriptions to speak in terms to which your audience can specifically relate. This way, you can address common concerns people in this demographic group have, using colloquialisms they find familiar, and come across in a more genuine manner.

Personalize Your Copy

Speak directly to your customer, in a conversational tone. Avoid jargon, unless it specifically relates to the topic and you know your shoppers expect it.  Employ the pronoun “You” freely. Imagine you’re in a face-to-face conversation with the reader about the product. Write the description exactly as you would explain the product to the buyer, if the two of you were in a social situation discussing the product. Actually, this same tone should be employed throughout your site so your presence has more sincerity. Your goal is to engage the reader on a deeper, more emotional level.

Emphasize the Benefits

Every marketer knows you sell the sizzle rather than the steak. When you sell furniture online, talk about the product as if the customer is already using it. “Filling your home with the fragrant scent of supple fresh leather, this sumptuously upholstered lounge chair makes relaxing with your favorite entertainment something you rush home to do every night.” Again, the idea is to get them to imagine themselves enjoying the product, rather than boring them with a litany of facts that do nothing to rouse the emotions. Use sensory words (“fragrant scent”, “sumptuously upholstered”) to fire the imagination. Car salespeople always insist upon a test drive to get you imagining yourself owning the car. Once that happens, you’re far more likely to buy it. You’re selling with words on a screen, so you have to create images in the reader’s mind to accomplish the same task.

Make Every Word Count

Superfluous phrases, such as “top quality”, “fine craftsmanship” and etc. should be exorcised from your copy. There are ways to convey that information in a more descriptive fashion, using words that stir the imagination. The last thing you want is someone to read your product description and think, “Yeah, right…”. Communicate using specific terms. When you enumerate a technical detail, follow it immediately with the benefit the buyer derives from it. If you say a lamp is the absolute best one on the market, follow that statement with supporting evidence justifying the statement. “Radiating 50,000 lumens, your home is bathed by this LED lamp with warm, radiant light. Illuminating even the darkest corners of your room, it leaves monsters no place to hide!”

Peer Reviews Carry A Lot of Weight

Social proof can tip the balance in your favor if a customer is sitting on the fence. When they read Justin T. of Juniper Springs, Iowa saying that lounge chair changed his life forever—and he gives a reasonable accounting of why he feels it did so, you’re going to sell a chair. A photo of Justin in the chair gives the testimonial even more credibility.

The five tips will make crafting compelling product descriptions second nature for you. They will also make your customer more at home on your site and return for their subsequent needs. They will feel like you “get” them—because you do.