Product descriptions fill a major void for retail websites. But do you follow the product description best practice? We’re going to dive into a high-level guide for some product description tips to make your retail website better in search results and converting customers.
Want to skip straight to the advanced guide? Read the blog about your product descriptions sell more furniture.
Romance the Product Content
At the most basic, product descriptions include branded content from the vendor. Dimensions, brand name, product type, maybe customizations available for some products. But this is just the first step.
But product description best practice includes romancing the content. That means creating lifestyle copy for your products. Long, descriptive content encourages the shopper to look deeper into the product page than a quick glance. These paragraphs should tell a story for each product. And while we know this takes a lot of time, you won’t regret the effort when you see the results over time.
For an easier update to your existing product descriptions, go for bullets. Break your content into bullet points for easy scanning. If you have eco-friendly products, American-made products, customizable furniture pieces, and other highlights, bring them into the product description. These make great additions to your product page and is a critical component to product description best practice.
Some home furnishings vendors provide excellent product descriptions with the romanced copy. Others require some tweaking to improve the story.
Use Better Imagery
Again, if you’re getting your product data feed from a third party or from the vendor itself, you may get some imagery with the feed. But if you have the opportunity to add more, do it.
Products that you consider “best sellers” or “hot buys” in the store should have more developed product pages than others. That means adding more images. Especially images from the product styled in the showroom. Include photos that aren’t just silhouettes. Showcase each product in different room scenes, fabric options, vignettes, and more.
The better your images can sell the story, the more likely your shopper will visit the store to make the purchase.
Want to take your product description best practice to a new level? Make the products interactive on the page. Companies like MicroD can enable different interactive tools like 360-degree viewing or custom fabric and finish selectors to show the product in new ways. It is more advanced but adds more value to your site and your brand.
Include Social Proof on Product Pages
The buyer’s journey includes a lot of time in the research stage. And if your products attract shoppers to the page, how will you sell them on the product in the store?
We’ve heard the statistics before. Shoppers are more likely to purchase a product that’s recommended by someone they know.
Including product reviews on your product pages adds what we call “social proof” to the page. And is one of the easiest product description best practice you can start. Social proof is your way to show potential shoppers how valuable this product is for other shoppers.
You can incorporate social proof through website technology. We’ve seen success with many different options so you can’t go wrong with the one your website partner offers.
The tool will start collecting reviews on your products right through the website. Just like leaving a Google review or Facebook review, you can collect star-rating and even a few sentences from the purchaser about the product.
Optimize Product Descriptions for Important Keywords
This is a more advanced technique but isn’t any less critical to your product discovery strategy. It’s important to do research before optimizing for product description best practice. Find a digital marketing expert who knows your business. They’ll look for the keywords trending for your business, your geographic area, and your target audience.
Use local content to optimize certain products or collections. And lead those shoppers to the store location where the product is in stock.
With time, the changes they make to your product pages will start to improve your search results.
Fun fact, the MicroD website platform offers SEO management areas inside the website for you to make this process easier for your digital marketing expert.
Find a Product Content Partner
If you’re reading this and find that you’re behind, we can help. It’s important to find a website partner that understands the value of product content on retail websites. For many retailers, finding access to vendors is hard enough.
MicroD works with the vendors for you—collecting the important product catalogs you need to populate your retail website. If you want to learn more about our product catalog data solutions, contact us today.
