Drive and Convert

Product descriptions may seem straightforward, but if done right they can significantly improve conversion rates. Today Jon explains why product descriptions are one of the most effective changes you can change to your website and how to write great product descriptions that will convert. The article Jon mentioned on how to write production descriptions that sell: https://thegood.com/insights/product-descriptions/ TRANSCRIPT: Announcer: You're listening to Drive and Convert, a podcast about helping online brands to build a better eCommerce growth engine, with Jon MacDonald and Ryan Garrow. Ryan: Jon, you recently wrote an article that kind of put my head in a spin around product description. Jon: Sometimes that's too easy. Ryan: I know. Spinning my brain's not necessarily the most difficult thing to do if you're in the space, but you wrote an article about product descriptions and how they can significantly improve conversion rates. And that surprises me because I personally ignore those all the time and I focus on other aspects of marketing and driving traffic as per usual. But that for me, is kind of like a side, just put it in there. As long as it's in there and then we can manipulate it going into Google shopping, where it's going to have an impact on your traffic. Just get something in there, period. Obviously I was wrong on this in my opinion. And I'm probably not alone in that. I'm excited today, Jon's going to school us on product descriptions and what you should be doing as an eCommerce business to leverage that to improve conversion rates. Jon, kick us off, explain at a high level, of all the things you could be focusing on on your site, why product descriptions in your mind, are one of the top things you can be doing to improve conversion rates? Jon: Yeah well, I think you basically just said it best in your tee up here where a lot of people just don't pay attention to this. And I think it's really, really forgotten. And that's a challenge in that as you're optimizing websites, it's one of the first places we go because most people forget about it. But look, we've learned over a decade of running AB tests on hundreds of product detail pages that optimizing your product descriptions is just one of the highest return, lowest investment improvements that an eCommerce manager can make. And look, they're key part of your potential customer's decision making process. I think the stat that my team here at The Good always says is that 87% of consumers rate product content extremely or very important to deciding to buy. Ryan: Wow. Jon: 87%. Ryan: Way higher than I would've thought. Jon: Right. Well, that's exactly the problem is most people don't think about this. And so if you're not optimizing product descriptions, you're certainly leaving money on the table. That's why you should focus on this. Ryan: If we're going to improve it, if we just assume that for example, my product descriptions are just terrible because I didn't focus on them, what are the areas I need to be looking at as I'm staring at my product description? And where do I start? I guess would be the best question. Jon: Well, I think there's four main areas that everyone should be focusing on and we can chat about today, but we can break these down. But the first is the real job of a product description. Most people think the real job of the product description is something that it's not. And we'll dive into that a little bit. The second is that it's an effective product description template needs to be used, so we can talk about what goes into those and what items you need to check the box to really make it great. And then how to write one that converts. It's not just having the content, you need to also be thinking about how you're writing that content. And then we can really talk about frequently asked questions around the product descriptions that I get, because I get a lot of questions about it. Once we start optimizing, people start thinking about it, a lot more questions come up than you might imagine. Partly, that's why we're doing the show today, it makes your head spin a little bit. That means there's a lot of questions there and you're not alone in that really. Maybe we can just break those four down and discuss each pretty briefly. Ryan: Yeah, I'm excited for it. What's the real job of a description of a product? In my mind, it's to describe the product. It's a blue t-shirt, congratulations. Jon: Yeah, right, exactly. If you just said blue t-shirt, how many sales do you think you're going to get? Let's just poke a hole in the idea that the job of the eCommerce product description is just to describe the product. I think that that's not right. Given the name, it makes sense that most folks think this, but product descriptions aren't there to just describe what's on your eCommerce site. They're also there to qualify. Do they help your visitors quickly assess, is this for someone like me? Do they persuade? Is it a compelling description? Is it customer centered on the reasons they should be considering that product? And then it's also there to surface. And what I mean by that is to help people find the product. This is the third one on purpose because a lot of people will stuff keywords throughout in terms of search engine optimization in optimizing the product description, but look, SEO keywords and search terms, and if you use those in a natural way, you'll get the page to show up and you want it to show up in search engine or even Amazon results if you're talking about optimizing your product descriptions on Amazon, which should also be done. Here's really one way to really think about this, product descriptions are a bit like your 24/7 in store retail associate for your online store. We often talk about if you wouldn't do something in a retail store, don't do it on your website. Let's take that analogy a step further and say, "How would associate talk about the product?" If you walked into a store and said, "Hey, I'm looking for a t-shirt," what questions are they going to ask to help you find the right one in that store? As a virtual retail associate, the product description can have that same kind of impact. And if it does its job well, it's going to draw visitors to your goods and then increase the conversions on those. And if it's done poorly, it's just going to frustrate visitors and push them away and hurt sales. It's very, very similar. Ryan: I like that. I think a lot of people, at least in what I think through is I don't think about qualifying. I'm like, you got to my page, you click on my products from Google shopping, you saw the price, just go buy it. And then if I'm in the jar looking at the label in the wrong way, from that perspective and I step out, I realize, okay, well I know conversion rates on shopping traffic is generally lower than category page traffic and so I'm like, oh well, possibly because my category is doing a better job describing a product or qualifying that person coming in and I'm just leaving that there rather than pulling it through and looking at qualifying them. Jon: Yeah. You're not alone on that. A lot of brands look at a category page as an opportunity to convert. I look at a category page as an opportunity to help somebody to the next step in the funnel, which is get them to that product detail page. And that's where you can really convert and sell and make sure people are getting the right product for them. Ryan: Okay, I concur. Tell us then okay, once I decide that it's more than just describing a product, what's a template look like that's going to help me through creating this product description that is going to be more than just describing my product? Jon: I love when I can change minds. And I'm glad we're helping do that today. All right. Ryan: We are. Jon: Again, here. Ryan: I'm taking notes. Jon: There are a handful of bullet points of things that you want to ensure are included. First of all, you need a descriptive headline. Use a product title that's going to hook your audience. Bonus points if you can connect with them emotionally. We don't want blue t-shirt, we want the t-shirt that makes your dad bod look hot. Ryan: I'm getting those ads on Instagram, by the way. I'm like, no, this is terrible. Jon: Ryan's looking good today in his shirt, by the way. All right. Benefits focused paragraphs. Use a descriptive paragraph to explain why, and I mean exactly why the customer benefits from the product. Too many people talk about features and that's it, they're just bullet point features and then don't talk about the benefits. You know how I led with the t-shirt that's going to make your dad bod look hot? That's what we want to be talking about here. What's the benefit? Not that it's a blue t-shirt. Yeah, that might be in there, but what's the benefit of wearing that t-shirt? The other thing we want to have in here is a key benefits list. Follow that description with a bulleted list of product features and benefits and this is where you can get into those details that if somebody is just skimming, they're going to look at that list. You're really what you're doing here is you're providing the benefits in a paragraph, maybe even telling a little bit of a story could be really helpful there. Don't make it too long. But then if somebody really wants, just give me the details. I already know I want a blue t-shirt, I just am deciding between two or three different ones and they want to know the specs and the features, that's where they're going to go is the bullet list. Don't bury those in the paragraph. The paragraph should be, hey, here's the benefits to you. If you want to know the features and the details, look at the bullet list that comes next. And then the fourth thing is, add some additional motivations. Really what we're trying to do here is just minimize those remaining purchase hurdles. Will it fit? Do others like it? Do things like credibility, social proof, you can bake in product reviews or even urgency. And of course, make sure you have a clear call to action. So many brands, we talk to have four buttons to add to cart and it's like, oh, you can use quad pay, after pay. You could use Amazon checkout. You could use both. And it's like, just give them one button and then push that to the next step. Get them to commit and then ask them how you want to pay. Ryan: Because my brain goes in funny directions when you say urgency, can you explain what that means from you, your perspective? Because it's probably not the little popup thing on Shopify that says, "Hey Bob in New York just bought this and Suzie in Florida just bought. Jon: You know me well. Ryan: Because I guarantee you don't like that one because I don't like that one. Jon: Yeah, nobody likes that. Ryan: And I don't have as many dislikes as you. Jon: I call that one of those wildfire apps and I call it wildfire because they just spread without anyone knowing how it started or why it's spreading. Ryan: Yeah, my competitor's probably doing it so I did it, and that's the worst way. Jon: And you don't see those apps as much anymore, a couple years ago, it was really popular and then everyone installed it and they realized this isn't doing anything. And also half of the companies using it are aligned about who's purchasing what, they all had Bob from Waco, Texas and it was kind of like you see Bob from Waco, Texas. Ryan: That guy shops on every site and I've been on. Jon: Exactly. And you're kind of like, that's the default it gives you. Here's the other thing. I really think what you need to be thinking about here in urgency is stock levels. And I'm not talking about lying. I'm saying, okay, only a few left. And what I mean by few? Well, I have two or three and you'd better buy it right away or it's going to go out of stock. There's some great tools, especially if you're on platforms like Shopify that are great apps that will do dynamic badging around quantity left so it can pull your quantities and do a dynamic image overlay on your product images. It will put a badge up in the corner that says, "Two left, one left," whatever. That's what I'm talking about with urgency. Or something like, hey free shipping. You're doing an offer, not a discount. When I talk about urgency, I'm not talking discounts as you know quite well. There could be some offers. It could be, right now it's a buy one, get a free gift. There's a whole litany of offers you can do that are not discounting and so I think when I'm talking about urgency, I'm talking about those type of items. Ryan: And so generally if you're a brand that has just tons of inventory, you have to focus more on getting creative and incentivizing without discounting to get that purchase from the product page. Jon: Right, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Create urgency if it's necessary. The other thing we see perform really well in terms of urgency is if it's out of stock to sign up to get notified when it's in stock. We have a client we've worked with for years, that is a really well known Japanese outdoor brand, outdoor camping high end. And what we have done for them over the years is help refine their out of stock notifications. They have some products that never are in stock because as soon as they send out that out of stock notification, they burn through their stock again. And I'm not talking that they only get five or 10 in, no, they get thousands. But the thing about it is, is that consumers have all signed up for this list and they want these products. We say, "Hey, you want this product? Sign up to be notified." And then we send out on an email and that email goes out, "Back in stock, click here to buy it," adds it right to the cart and they're able to purchase. And then before it even ever hits the site and it changes the product detail pages show how much stock is left, it's gone within hours. Ryan: Geez. Yeah, I'm going to test pre-sale. I'm going to say, "Hey, this new blend from Joyful Dirt's coming out, we're going to start advertising it and pre-sell it on social so we can start demand, figuring what demand looks like, what our production runs need to look like." Jon: That's a great idea. Ryan: And hopefully there's a lot there, but if not, they were like, "Yeah, we're only going to produce a few hundred. We'll be fine." Okay, so what else do we need to be considering what's average eCom business owner not going to be thinking about that you know that they don't even know to ask? What don't I know that I should know. Jon: Well, I think there's some simple questions that need to be answered. Let's look at this as maybe I don't know, questions that somebody doing a natural deodorant product might have. You need to think about this, who's the customer? That's always the first one, who's the potential customer? When you're starting to write this, you need to be thinking about that first. Let's say here, it would be men and women who are fed up with chemical packed deodorants. Just being a normal deodorant and saying, "Hey, people who don't like to stink," that's not going to be good enough. What's your differentiating point? The second is, what problems does it solve? This is where you can get into it helps keep them stink free. The potential customer is not the problem, it's what pain are you solving for them that is a little bit deeper than the surface level? And then the problem it solves is really the high level okay, people buy deodorant for this main reason. But the differentiating point is what's going to define that potential customer. Then you get into what desires does it fulfill? For this theater and it would be something like feeling healthier, more responsible towards their bodies and the planet, maybe just feeling less dirty and smelly. They could be that generic. And maybe they've been fertilizing their garden all day with a Joyful Dirt and now they don't want to come back into the house and smell. And then you need to be thinking about what objections people have. And this is where it's like, hey, why are you using a natural deodorant? Or maybe other natural deodorants just don't seem to work or they lie about the ingredients. Those are all types of things you should really be thinking about there. The next question you really want to ask yourself is why you? Why your brand? Compared to the other guys, why does this deodorant actually work? And then last of all, definitely not least, but you really want to think about what words your consumers are using so you can mirror what they're looking for there. And this is great, this is where user research can really come in, just interviewing consumers, doing some user testing, for instance so when they talk about what words they use, things like natural, fresh, perhaps scent or confident, and those are words that you can bake into your product description. They're going to write it for you. And if you go and you answer all of these questions in an outline, kind of like I just did where I answered each question a little bit about deodorant, you'll have most of your product description written and then you can move on from there. Announcer: You're listening to Drive and Convert, the podcast focused on eCommerce growth. Your hosts are Jon MacDonald, founder of The Good, a conversion rate optimization agency that works with eCommerce brands to help convert more of their visitors into buyers, and Ryan Garrow of Logical Position, a digital marketing agency offering pay per click management, search engine optimization and website design services to brands of all sizes. If you find this podcast helpful, please help us out by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts and sharing it with a friend or colleague. Thank you. Ryan: I know though, pictures are worth more than words and so do you consider the images on the side of a product description as part of the description? Or is that different entirely? And that's a whole nother conversation around the images? Or do you use them together? Jon: I think it's a whole nother conversation, quite honestly. Although people say a picture's worth a thousand words, I think that's true. And that's why pictures, we should do a whole nother episode on that because I do think it matters. And I think that there's a lot of things out there that you could be doing. I think on model, off model, 360, in use, size comparison. You really got to be thinking about all the different types of images that you could be doing. And a lot of brands will focus on the words, because a lot of consumers will go to the words and with one good photo you can still get them to convert. But after that, you really need to dive in and start thinking about all the other photos that you could do. And that's a ripe opportunity for optimization as well for sure. Ryan: Got it. You've done a lot of obviously user testing and listen to a lot of people go through the process of buying, are there certain types of people that are only going to pay attention to image and some that only pay attention to the words and that's just is a personality or a person? Or is it everybody's taking all that information in together? Jon: I think that as humans we're visual, but there are some people who will, if you have a video, they're just going to watch the video and they're going to skim. This is really huge on B2B websites where you want to bake in video because what's going to happen, meaningful video, Telling you about the product and walking you through it, et cetera, because consumers are going to just scroll until they find video and then watch that video while they're doing something else like on a bus or in traffic or eating lunch. I just did that. I was evaluating some software for our business, for The Good, over lunch and I was eating lunch, watching product videos. I didn't want to read about it. I just wanted to sit there and watch the video. I just put it on one and a half speed and then go. And I think that's a lot of people will do that. And I think in terms of images, it's similar. A lot of people will get that content from the images, but they're not going to get all the features and benefits that way. They're really not. People still need the bullet point list to see all of the features. People who are going to be watching the video, looking at the images, that's where they're going to start and if you don't get it right there, they're not even going to go on to read the bullet list. It is important for a segment of the audience for sure. Ryan: I think of product descriptions kind of like I think of one on my website and I think of the one on the Amazon and I probably put more time into the Amazon one, but I have more volume on Amazon right now. And so, but Amazon has multiple areas for information. You get the top there's image and then a short description and then you go down and you have A plus content and the expanded descriptions. And now that I think about it, a lot of websites have that same type of feel built out around them. Are you seeing a lot of focus needing to be on the short snippet, kind of at the top, more than at the bottom? Because sometimes the descriptions I see, especially on B2B, all the spec tab that is really long and drawn out, you can tell people are just dumping information from an SEO perspective sometimes in there. Is there one area that's more important in all of that? Jon: Yes. I think in the concept of the description, this is what those towards the top of the page. Often you'll have images on the left and then all the product description content on the right. As you scroll down, you can take those bullet points we talked about earlier with the benefits and the specific features and that bullet list and break that down throughout the page. That's typically what I would recommend. Have the bullet point and if people want to dive into each one of those, so say you're talking about the deodorant as we talked about earlier and you want to look at the ingredients list. Well, you can say all natural ingredients as a bullet point. And then at the bottom you could start saying all natural ingredients and then you break out what those ingredients are and talk about the benefits of each and how it's truly all natural and it doesn't include, what is the big one? Aluminum or something that people don't like? I don't know. But I think, it's something like that where you would use the rest of the page to truly break it down. And that's where you can also inject some brand. And it's also where you should be injecting supporting content like blog articles. To me, too many brands put the blog on the homepage, so they have like this lineup of blog posts that nobody cares about on their homepage. The blog post is top of the funnel. It's great for getting people to your site. It's great for SEO for instance. But then if they're on product detail page and you send them back up the funnel, you need to make sure that it's done in a supporting fashion so that you're not just sending them right back to the top of the funnel for no good reason. What I mean by that is maybe you have a blog article all about those ingredients or a specific ingredient that you're using and you want to talk about why it's more superior and you need a 1,000 or 1,500 words. Well, that's not good for your product detail page, but it would be good to link to that and say, "Hey, want to learn more about this? Read this blog post about it." That's also going to help your SEO and Google find all of that content together. Ryan: Yeah, I think exactly zero times have I ever gone from a homepage trying to research a brand for a product and gone to the blog and be like, hmm, let me read some blogs. Jon: No, not going to happen. Ryan: Never happen. And I'm like, no, I'm here to buy a product or research the product, not read about how the product worked on X, Y, Z in these conditions. Jon: Yeah, but when you're on a product detail page and doing your research and you're far enough down that step, it might be relevant to some degree to know that it's there. Ryan: Awesome. No, obviously Jon you've broken down and torn apart a lot of product pages over your life. What are some of the questions that you've had clients ask you as they've gone through the process and tried to implement a lot of what you've talked about, even with your template? And are there any funny ones or when it makes sense that other people are probably going to be asking after they start doing this? Jon: Yeah. Yeah, you're right, I've probably broken down hundreds of thousands of these at this point. I don't know that might be exaggerating, but it is kind of like what's that movie with the kid where he's like, "I see dead people." That's me. I can't go down the internet and shop without seeing messed up product detail pages everywhere. It's just unfortunate side effect of my job. But I will say, I do love when we have a positive effect on those. And so I'm always happy to answer questions, but yeah, I do get some off the wall ones. I think the biggest one I get all the time is, can't I just copy my description from a competitor? It's working for them so why not? I hear that all the time. But I'm shocked I even have to answer this. But yeah, the short answer is no, you can't lift product descriptions from your competitors. Look, beyond the SEO challenges of that, meaning that it's going to be a challenge where Google sees the same as that content across two sites and then you're playing a really hard to win game because Google is going to pick one of them or when they do that, it's likely not going to be you because it knows that content has been on the other site longer and so that's what it considers the original source. Ryan: Now what about product descriptions from the supplier or the manufacturer? Especially if you've got a site with a 100,000 products on it. Jon: Well, you might want to evaluate why you have a site with a 100,000 products. Ryan: True. There's a lot of them out there. Jon: Yeah. I wonder how many of those are just dropped shipping, not doing that great. And that's why they're not doing that great. If you really want to be successful at something like that, you need to customize the heck out of it. And so you really do need to sit down and do this for all the products so it's not just the manufacturer description. Now you can base it on that manufacturer description, but don't copy and paste that because everyone else who's drop shipping that product is doing the same thing. Or on top of that, you're not really adding any additional value and I can promise you, most of those subscriptions are D level work. They're not even a passing grade in most cases. I think copying is a moral issue for me in addition to the SEO issue so it's two strikes you're out rule, really. Using the manufacturer, I think is the SEO role and ineffective. It's just a non-starter. Ryan: And I think that if you are in the eCommerce world and you are assuming something, you're going to lose. You never assume that this is working for a competitor because they're doing it and you think they're bigger than you. And you assume that somebody knows what they're doing. Obviously I have a wine and beer read business and you drink wine, if you read wine descriptions, those are generally written by somebody sitting at a desk at a winery that's coming up with weird terms. One of my friends owns a winery and I'm like, "Well, how'd you come up with your descriptions?" "Oh my wife and I started drinking wine and decided, let's start putting these things in there." You can't assume that, if it works it's on accident many times. Jon: I have a good friend who runs an agency that does nothing but branding and labels for wine and spirits brands and that is the number one challenge that they get from brands, their customers that they work with, is that those vineyards will send over the descriptions and they're like, this isn't going to fly, we got to help you optimize this. It's a challenge. It's not unique. They're like, you might as well just label it alcohol, alcohol from grapes. And that's always the joke. My friend is always just like, "You sent me this description. I'm just going to change it and say alcohol from grapes." Ryan: We're planting wine grapes right now. And I told my wife, it's like, "We're going to make some wine with it." She's like, "You think it's going to be good?" I'm like, "Probably not, but we're just going to call it Ryan's Yeast Juice. It's going to be great. It's going to sound like crap." Jon: When you gift me a bottle, I'll know. Ryan: Yeah, Ryan's Yeast Juice. That's actually why, I add grape juice with some yeast in it that sat in the bottle for too long, became alcoholic. Jon: Can't wait, can't wait. Ryan: I can't wait for my marketing to go, all the marketing energy I have, Ryan's Yeast Juice. I should probably trademark before it gets out. Jon: Yeah. Made with Ryan's fertilizer. How's that? Ryan: Yeah. Jon: Joyful Dirt line. Well yeah, I think the other question that I get a lot here is how long product descriptions should be. And I think it's not a one size fits all. It's long enough to be helpful, short enough to be digestible and depends on the product. A few quick sentences could work for your products or you may need to write 1,500 words, but I think it's something where you really need to understand your audience. Are they here quick? Are they deciding between a couple of things and want a feature list? Or should you put more effort into the story? Also, there's the brand aspect. There's a lot of brands who have a lot of fun with their product descriptions. And then there's a lot of brands who are just dry. That's just kind of their brand and you go from there. Ryan: Okay. Over the past, let's just keep it recent, three years, who would you say of companies you've at least seen their site, you don't have to work with them, probably did the best with their product descriptions? Jon: Yeah. Are you familiar with Chubbies? Ryan: I'm not. Jon: Ooh, okay. Chubbies is a men's, mostly men's clothing brand and they do some hilarious descriptions. They started out, I believe selling swim trunks. Ryan: Oh yeah. Yeah, now I remember. Jon: And it's now a bunch of other stuff, but they've always done some good work. I haven't looked at the site in a while, but they were pretty good one from back in the day. And I think, generally there's brands like OLIPOP and a few others like that who are new and are doing a really, really good job with it. I don't know if you've heard of OLIPOP. It's kind of like a new flavored seltzer brand. They do a really, really good job with it. I also think that there's a couple out there around more around eyeglasses, Felix Gray, things of that sort, that do a really, really good job. And I think that their biggest competitor is Warby Parker. And I think Warby Parker does a good job, but Felix Gray has really made their calling card being better content on the page. Ryan: Got it. Jon: The other one that I really like is Cards Against Humanity. I don't know if you've ever been to their site. Ryan: I love that game. It's the most inappropriate fairly game we've played with my in-laws. Jon: Okay, I was going to say, yeah, that could be awkward at best. Ryan: Oh it for sure is. Jon: They have a teenager version I've played with my cousins and I will tell you, that got awkward real quick too. But they have add on packs and all this other stuff and they do a great job with branding. And they have a couple of sentences, they'll say, "Hey, this is just," they'll be very quick. This is all about these topics. It's 300, but they'll inject some brand. They'll say, "All new absurd box contains 300 mind bending cards that came to us after taking peyote and wandering in the desert." And it's kind of like, that's funny and I know what I'm going to get is just weird random stuff. And then it's, they did in the bullet points. 300 brand new cards to mix into your game. This one's pretty weird. They're going to be weird, I get it. It's an expansion. It requires the main game. Now I'm like, okay, I get it. It's expansion pack. And you have nothing to lose, but your chains, I don't know what that even means, but that's what they're telling you. I think, it's on brand because it's super random. And I think that last bullet point is all meant to just demonstrate the randomness that you're going to get out of this pack. And then if you go down the page, they have a lot more info about and some samples and stuff, but that kind of gives you a good example there. Ryan: Thank you. That's awesome. Any parting words or places people need to be focusing and getting started on? Jon: Yeah, I think look, it's there's a simple formula that you can follow and too many brands don't even try to follow the formula. And if you go to The Good's website and on our insights or articles page, or just go to thegood.com/insights/product-descriptions, we have a really great article that breaks all of this down and more. Gives you ton of examples and it's a great way for you to just take the template we've got on there and start using that and applying it to your product descriptions and Ryan, it sounds like you may have some work to do, but it will get you a higher conversion. Ryan: I think I might. But thanks for the time, Jon. I appreciate it and educating me as always on how to make my site work better. Jon: All right. Well, I'm looking forward to seeing the results on that. Thanks for chatting today. Announcer: Thanks for listening to Drive and Convert, with Jon MacDonald and Ryan Garrow. To keep up to date with new episodes, you can subscribe at driveandconvert.com