Here are 4 simple steps to writing great product descriptions.

You’re Missing Out on Sales!

So you’ve made yourself some great handmade products that you can’t wait to sell!

One of the next steps is to write some awesome product descriptions that are going to get people to actually buy them!

This might seem simple but a lot of people get this wrong and it costs them sales.

One study from Nielsen Norman Group found that 20% of purchase failures are potentially a result of missing or unclear product information.

That’s a lot of business to be missing out on for something so simple like a product description.

It would be such a shame seeing your hard work, your time, and effort making your crafts go to waste when all you’d need to do is spend a little extra time crafting a super clear and engaging product description.

Writing product descriptions are definitely a valuable asset that you, initially, have to invest resources into.

Today I’m going to give you some tips on how to write great descriptions!

I hope you can take these and use them to get your crafts into buyers’ hands.

1. Define Your Ideal Customer

First, you need to define your ideal customer.

Before you start writing any kind of product description you need to know who you’re writing for.

You want your customers to read your descriptions thinking that they were written especially for them. That way they’re really going to get engaged with the product and they’re going to feel like this product is for them.

But how do you know how to do that if you don’t know your customer in the first place?

Essentially what you need to do is sit down and try to get inside your ideal customer’s head.

• Who are they?
• Where are they from?
• What are their problems?
• What are their interests?
• What really makes them tick?

Pretty much every business, regardless of the industry, has to go through this process.

I have a video here that shows you my own proprietary technique for how to identify your ideal customer.

Once you know who that person is, you’ll need to learn more about her and what makes her tick.

What does she enjoy? Maybe she likes feeling comfortable so she often wears cozy, thick sweaters.

Then figure out what problem she may have regarding sweaters. Maybe, she loves to shop but she’s jaded with chain stores because of their poor ethics towards the environment.

Once you’ve done this work you can start to see how you can tailor product descriptions for your customer.

There would be no point in trying to write a product description for this person, if you’re talking about speed or profitability. She’ll have more of a connection with the fact a product was sustainably produced.

I know it can feel like you’re only talking to one person and you’re turning away lots of other potential customers, but this is exactly how you make those sales.

The more specific you can be, the better. 

If you are too vague, general, or trying to appeal to everyone, then you’re going to appeal to no one.

Just speak to the one person, and the rest will follow, I promise you! 

2. Benefits

What are the benefits?

If you want your customers to buy your products then they need to know what’s in it for them.

After all, they’re taking the risk and parting with their hard earned money to buy your product.

How do you convince them to buy?

As the maker of our own product, we tend to get too deep into our own work.

When we think about all the specifications that went into making the products we forget about what the benefits are to the customer.

They don’t want to see a list of stats and specs unless they’re buying a piece of tech.

What they really want to see are the features and benefits of what you’re selling.

• A feature is a fact about the product.
• A benefit is what the product does for them or how it makes them feel.

Anything you can write that will put the idea in the customer’s head of a solution to their problems will be more effective in selling than any kind of list of stats and specs.

Here’s a snippet of a good example of one of my product descriptions.

This was written by someone I hired on Upwork almost ten years ago, unfortunately I can’t send you her name because she’s not on there anymore.

This is for my pumpkin pie necklace.

The features include:

• the sizing
• what the necklace comes with
• what it’s made of
• and so on.

“Measuring approximately ¾ of an inch in size, this scented charm is designed to look simple, elegant, and understated.

The real attention grabber of this 18-inch sterling silver ball necklace is the scent, which draws people in close to admire its elaborate detail.”

This is the benefit, which tells more of a story and gets you feeling emotions.

“Delicately scented with a touch of ginger and clove, our pumpkin-scented charm is a delicious reminder of cozy winter nights huddled in front of the fire. Subtle, yet contemporary, the fragrance is sweet and fruity with a musky undertone – perfect for ladies a little less pink or candy obsessed.”

You can see how the benefit is more story-driven, there’s a bit more of a narrative here.

Telling stories starts to evoke emotions and feelings with your customers and we tend to buy things more with our hearts than with our heads.

If we have a good feeling about something then we’re far more likely to buy it. 

Telling a story is also another good way of being unique and setting yourself apart from your competition.

3. Tone

This is where you can really set yourself apart from other sellers.

Anyone can write generic phrases like ‘this product is handmade’ or ‘this necklace is amazing’ and that’s not going to appeal to your ideal customer.

This is too broad and not specific to them.

Are your products a bit alternative? If that’s the case why not have specific language to reflect that in your descriptions?

Get creative and make your customers feel like they’re talking to a person rather than reading faceless copy.

If you feel confident writing funny descriptions and you feel that reflects your brand then go for it!

If your stuff is classy then go for a classy vibe.

Really let the personality of your products and brand shine.

At Tiny Hands, we go for a very warm, bubbly, friendly and of course delicious vibe, because that’s our brand!

Compare my pumpkin pie necklace description with this bangle from Tiffany.

“Wrapped around the wearer in a continuous, unbroken circle, this hinged bangle features scintillating diamonds and a strong “T” motif at the center.

A reinvention of a Tiffany icon, Tiffany T1 designs represent individual strength and perpetual power, worn outwardly to express what lies within.

Stack this hinged bangle with other Tiffany T bracelets for a bold look, or simply wear it on its own.”

Just reading that, you can expect this to be thousands of dollars.

They’re using words like “individual strength”, “perpetual power”, “bold look”, “reinvention”.

Those words are a lot stronger, more powerful and more aggressive than the words I’ve got for my necklace, which are “cozy”, “sweet”, “heartwarming”, “cute”.

Even words have their own brands and you get a different feeling with the different sets of words.

Tiffany knows the kinds of customers they want to attract.

Once you understand this you can start to develop the tone of voice for your store.

Don’t be afraid to have fun with your tone of voice if you feel like that reflects your store.

4. Descriptions

Make descriptions scannable.

We all live busy lives! Our attention spans are all like goldfish these days.

And your customers are no different.

With so much content on the internet they want to review your product descriptions nice and quickly.

One way of doing that is to present information in bullet points.

That way your audience can see important information nice and quickly in a way that’s easy to digest.

Innocent drinks does this really well.

Their descriptions are super simple and they’re condensed into nice big bullets that are eye catching enough to grab your attention.

What they also do here is replace bullets with check marks which gives a positive feel to the page and gives a suggestion that it’s there to solve problems.

That positive feeling is subconscious, and it’s subtle, but it’s there.

Another site that uses bullets is Amazon.

If you look at the description for the Echo for example you’ll see that there’s actually quite a lot of detail there but the bullets break it up to make it a little more easy to read.

If all hat text was in a block it might look a little intimidating and put customers off.

Having too much detail in one paragraph is a sure fire way of putting people off a product.

The easier you can make information digestible the better. 

Again, like the other steps there’s an opportunity here to be a bit creative just like Innocent Drinks has done.

You could use arrows or some other icon as your bullets to draw your customers eyes to the benefits of the product, if that is on brand for you.

There are plenty more tips out there to make the most out of your listings and plenty more videos on my channel to help you out with your craft business.

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Good luck with writing your descriptions and if you used these tips, or have any more of your own then let me know in the comments below.

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