How to Write Shopify Product Descriptions that Drive Sales

Online shoppers take product content very seriously. 

According to PR Newswire, 50% of shoppers have returned a product because it didn’t match its description on the website. And, 87% of them reiterate that accurate, rich, and complete product descriptions are very important when making the purchase decision. 

As you can see, you cannot underestimate the role and impact of product descriptions on the sales funnel. 

Besides, as Shopify’s e-commerce platform keeps growing, it becomes more competitive, which means there will be a business that will outcompete you with something as random as a product description. 

What can you do not to let that happen?

Here are some suggestions on how to write Shopify product descriptions that drive sales and make your product stand out. 

1. Start with the Analysis of Your Niche Audience

A product description is a marketing tool, and your target audience is its foundation. 

However, many e-commerce businesses, in the hunt for more revenue, focus on the mass market right away, which usually doesn’t work out well for them. 

If you want to generate more revenue, you need to focus on niche marketing. There are plenty of benefits you can get from it:

  • Reduced competition. The more people your target audience has, the higher the competition will be. It is better to start with a smaller audience and build your way up as your Shopify business grows. 
  • Lower costs. Again, if your audience is very diverse, you need to spend more on creating diverse marketing materials, but there is almost no promise you will get a good ROI from it. Focus on a niche audience instead to make your marketing efforts more targeted and effective. 
  • A stronger community. On the contrary, the fewer people you have in your target audience, the easier it is to build a strong relationship with them and create a community of loyal customers. Once you have that, it will be easier to grow your target audience. 

How to build a niche audience persona? 

Your task is not only to focus on the demographics, educational background, income, and goals, but also to touch upon the challenges your product will help resolve, and common objections and fears they might have concerning your product. 

Here’s an example for your reference:

The more details you include, the more ideas you will have when writing product descriptions for your niche audience. 

How to create a Shopify product description with the focus on the niche audience?

So, to succeed on Shopify and stand out from the competition, you first need to start by targeting and writing product descriptions for a niche audience. 

Here are a few steps you can follow to create product descriptions centered on the needs of your niche audience:

  • Review their needs. When writing a product description, start with addressing the needs that this product satisfies before listing its features. 
  • Look up the keywords for your niche. Some online shoppers may be looking for a product similar to yours by entering certain keywords in the search engine. So, make sure you research the keywords for your niche to make your product appears on the first page of search results.

  • Research industry trends. One of the mistakes online businesses make is not adding enough personalization to product descriptions. Following the trends that your niche audience is interested in gives you more ideas for personalized product descriptions. 

Keep in mind that on Shopify, your product description can be broken down into product details and specifications. Make sure you use your niche persona description to address these details and specifications in the product description, using niche keywords for more visibility on search engines. 

2. Use Product Descriptions to Tell a Story

Now, let’s talk about how you can create a theme for your Shopify product description. 

Take a look at the examples below. Which one sounds more appealing?

Example #1: 

Example #2:

While the first one is informative and straightforward, there nothing that differentiates it from other similar product descriptions on Shopify. 

On the other hand, the second one instantly puts a customer in a situation where they are already using this product. It addresses their hobby (Star Wars) and makes them a part of this story. 

Storytelling is one of the biggest trends in marketing nowadays. Estelle Liotard, a senior essay writer at EssaySupply, shares that storytelling also helped hew company increase sales by 35% and outcompete other companies on the market. 

Online shoppers also want brands to invest more in storytelling, as it brings them closer to the brand and makes you more relatable. 

How to Use Storytelling to Write Shopify Product Descriptions?

Here are a few suggestions that can help you write product descriptions that tell a story:

  • Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. Use the niche audience persona description to analyze the interests, needs, challenges, and fears of your target audience and tell a story, how your product can benefit them in certain situations. 
  • Create a setting. Where are your customers at the moment when there is a need for your product? What do they feel? What do they expect? Touch upon their possible feelings and emotions at this moment and how your product fits into this situation. Pipcorn, a popular snack brand on Shopify, nailed it in their product description:

  • Answer questions right away. Naturally, when shopping online, customers want as many details as possible. But it doesn’t mean that you have to include all of them in a boring bullet list. Use storytelling to illustrate these details and give answers to possible questions. Here’s how Taylor Stitch, a clothing brand on Shopify, managed to anticipate questions and give answers about their summer short sleeve shirts, using storytelling:

This is also a great opportunity to intertwine your brand’s story and the story behind your product with the product description. Customers are always interested to know what inspired brands to come up with their products, and there is often an exciting story behind the scenes. 

3. Make Use of Customer Reviews 

Successful businesses know and appreciate the power of social listening. 

But customers themselves admit that reading reviews helps them make final purchase decisions. 

According to Hosting Tribunal, 72% of customers won’t purchase a product until they read the reviews about it, and 15% of customers don’t trust businesses that don’t have any reviews. Thus, customer reviews have a significant impact on the customer experience and the success of your sales. 

Since there is a strong impact of customer reviews on purchase decisions, it would be silly to miss this opportunity and not incorporate customer reviews into your product descriptions. 

How to use customer reviews to write Shopify product descriptions?

There are several ways you can address customer reviews in your product descriptions:

  • Highlight the benefits of your product mentioned by other customers. You can even use a success story from one of your customers, who were very satisfied with your product. 
  • Add the statistics. Phrases like ‘8 out of 10 customers are satisfied with our product’ do very well in terms of driving sales. But make sure you have actual proof for these numbers. 
  • Address the pain points. Don’t be afraid to tell about the previous negative experience with your products, but highlight the changes that have been made to improve your product. 

So, make sure that your business uses a solution to help you collect customer feedback and analyze it. Customer reviews can be a powerful tool to help you write great product descriptions that drives as you address the points that customers are most interested in. 

4. Try Out Shopify Product Description Generators

Shopify is known for the abundance of apps that you can use for the benefit of your e-commerce businesses. There are apps that help you do SEO optimization, manage your sales, and, of course, automatically generate product descriptions. 

For instance, Shopify apps like Descrii and ginnie offer you to:

  • create product descriptions fast, which is especially beneficial for the businesses that have a lot of products to offer
  • optimize product descriptions for SEO using niche keywords
  • analyze the performance of your product descriptions and work out a better solution if a product description is not effective enough

However, the danger behind such services is that you are risking to create product descriptions that lack personalization. Moreover, if you blindly upload such descriptions, they may contain embarrassing grammatical mistakes that you forgot to proofread. 

Apart from that, generators are a great solution to quickly create product descriptions. They can give you plenty of ideas to help you sound unique and make your products stand out. You can also generate several descriptions for one product and unite them to create a complete and detailed Shopify product description. 

 

Over to You

What do your product descriptions look like now?

Are you satisfied with how they are performing?

Product descriptions play an important part in pushing your customers down the sales funnel, helping them make the purchase decision in your favor. 

So, to make sure that your product descriptions don’t blend into the crowd by using storytelling and customer reviews. If you lack ideas for original product descriptions, you can benefit from Shopify’s product description generators. 

Most importantly, start with targeting a niche audience and their needs in your product descriptions. This will allow you to build a stronger relationship with your customers and grow your audience more effectively in the future.