Everything You Need to Know about Ecommerce Content Copywriting

January 26, 2019

The world of online retail is fiercely competitive. Your ecommerce website needs unique, high-quality content to stand out. DailyPosts copywriters work with manufacturers and retailers to improve SEO rankings and gain the advantage with unique content the appeals to and converts potential customers into customers, and customers into loyal buyers. Luckily, ecommerce website content writing for your business website isn’t something you have to figure out on your own. Whether your challenge is how to get started, or you need help doing customer research and developing your story, here’s everything you need to know about ecommerce content copywriting.

The Right Ecommerce Content Copywriting Makes a Difference

Overlooking quality copy for your ecommerce site is like preparing for a big job interview, making a superb entrance, but then mumbling unintelligible answers to the interviewer’s questions. You’re not getting the job.

Unfortunately, most ecommerce websites have no product description on their sales pages. Alternatively, they make use of stock manufacturers’ copy that is a poor fit for their company tone and image and that is at risk of being filtered out by Google as duplicate content. Professional ecommerce product description writing will increase search traffic and drive sales for your website. This is mainly because high-quality copy creates the right impression about your business and increases the amount of time that users spend on your site. Your ecommerce copywriting strategies should focus on your audience and on what is relevant to them.

Remember to create a unique tone of voice that represents your brand and that the audience finds persuasive. Regardless of the tone you choose, it’s important to have simplicity and readability. Build their trust, and be creative and informative when explaining how your brand’s products and services can solve their problems.

With all these you might begin to wonder, should I hire a professional ecommerce content copywriter?

For ecommerce retailers, it can be challenging to come up with good content. Different things affect site functionality and usability, including constantly-changing product offerings, and having to deal with order fulfilment and suppliers.

Ecommerce website content writing that drives sales goes beyond avoiding spelling mistakes and putting fullstops in their proper place. Well-written copy will seduce your users into completing the sales cycle. To achieve this, you need an expert copywriter, someone who can write specifically for ecommerce websites, which is different from any other kind of writing. A qualified copywriting team can provide you with access to experienced ecommerce content copywriters and strategists who can produce top-notch content that helps you reach your goals for your ecommerce website.

This is where companies like DailyPosts, offering professional ecommerce content writing services, can make all the difference. At DailyPosts, we’ll take care to ensure that your voice resonates with your target audience and your message comes across the way you want it to. We have a wide range of copywriting experience in several industries, and we can help you with ecommerce product description writing, in addition to editing, blogging, branding, messaging, mission statements and much more.

What Mistakes Should You Avoid in Ecommerce Content Copywriting?

When you do get started with ecommerce copywriting, you might find that it’s a minefield where significant errors can cost you your existing customers and also drive people away from your products, instead of towards them. Here are some mistakes that occur in copywriting and how you can avoid them in your content.

Mistake #1: A Complete Lack of Personality

People simply don’t like to deal with a faceless, soulless business. If your text is not engaging or connecting, you’ll sound like a dull corporation and it’ll be challenging to sell the value of the products you’re offering. A dash of personality on your ecommerce site is what you need to connect with your readers. Copy is a direct conversation with the customer, so think about the way your website would sound if it were a real salesperson. What tone of voice would they use? Would they tell stories? Crack jokes? Which words would they choose? Before you decide on a tone of voice, consider your target audience. Try to imagine an individual buyer and think about how you’d talk to them in real life. Be human in your writing and avoid sounding like a big corporation. Because that’s how you make potential buyers engage with your website.

Mistake #2: Ignoring the Power of Storytelling

Using stories in a copy helps potential buyers forget that they’re being sold to. It lowers their natural barriers to sales messages and your content becomes powerfully persuasive. With stories, the content becomes more meaningful as the readers are able to see themselves owning and using the product. Follow these tips to apply the power of storytelling in ecommerce content:

Keep stories concise and concrete. Let the story be focused on a single idea. For example, you can come up with a story about the sourcing and development of your products to increase fascination and convey the perception of quality.
Dig deeper to find interesting details. Talk to your customers, suppliers and customer service representatives. The more you uncover, the more stories you have to bring life to your writing.
Avoid the obvious. Unexpected stories engage, entertain and, more importantly, they sell. Avoid overreliance on facts, figures and data. The most persuasive description writing combines both story and fact to engage the reader and justify their purchase.e adjective before a noun. Instead of ‘authentic, romantic set’, go for ‘romantic set’.

Mistake #4: Too much Product Focus

Putting too much focus on the product for sale is an easy mistake to make. Even experienced ecommerce copywriters make it. The focus of product description writing should be on the benefits of the product and how it will make the buyer’s life better, instead of its features or specifications. Customers aren’t interested in all the fancy features and facts; they want to know what’s in it for them when they make a purchase. Sounds simple, but there’s one more step that is not always discussed – you have to highlight the right benefits. You are not your customer, and the benefit they need to read might be something different from what you expect. Just like focusing on the product alone, listing out the wrong benefits is also a mistake in copywriting.

Before you begin creating ecommerce content, outline the benefits of each product feature. Remember, it’s all about the customer. Your copy should convey the message that life with the product would be an amazing one – more pleasure, less pain, less stress or hassle, and so on. You can also interview existing customers and find out about the biggest benefit of the product for them, or if they’ve discovered unexpected uses for the product. Their answers should then guide your copy.

Include clear calls to action

Call to action (CTA) refers to the part of your content that tells your visitors what to do next. To do so effectively, calls to action must be clear, concise, informative and descriptive. They should never be longer than a few words and make use of a strong verb to send the message. With CTAs, you can ensure people quickly perform necessary actions by adding a link. Examples of useful calls to action include:

Start now, Learn more, Click here, Contact us, Buy now, Get started, Talk now, Shop now, Sign up now, Enter your email here, and so on.

These calls to action are brief and helpful. They tell existing and potential customers what they should do in a few simple words, and they’re perfectly clear. Calls to action should be put at the bottom of your copy so that they’re the last thing visitors read on the page. Additionally, you’ll be creating a convenient link to another page on your site that could convert visitors into paying customers.

Have a clear plan of action

When it comes to ecommerce content copywriting, it’s advisable to begin with a solid plan of action in mind. You may be tempted to simply start writing, but that means you don’t have the chance to properly formulate your thoughts. This not only applies to ecommerce product description writing, but to blog posts, copy for a new website page and all other forms of online content writing. Even if the outline of your plan is just a few bullet points, it offers the text a clear objective and structure.

“Writer’s block” is a common struggle for many copywriters, and, if it happens in the process, simply create a first draft of your plan and leave it for a while before coming back to it. New ideas for the project and other areas in need of improvement will usually jump out at you then. Having a clear-cut plan in place provides a list of ideas that will guide you and make the description writing process easier.

Make it easy to scan

Most people don’t actually read on the internet, they tend to simply scan through. When it comes to keeping people engaged in website content, lists and other easy-to-read formats perform well because readers can access the information they need. To aid scanning and keep readers on a page, you can add a few elements to your ecommerce website content writing, such as:

Section headings to break up text into smaller, more manageable chunks that allow quick scanning. The main purpose of these headings is to offer extra white space that makes reading easier on the eyes.
Bulleted lists to provide back to back information in little bits, so that readers can easily digest it.
Numbered lists to keep things organised, and can be used for your whole copy or a small section of it.
Bolded/Italicised words can be used to highlight certain words and phrases, calling more attention to them. If you need to create lists without using numbers or bullet points, using bolded or italicised words can help direct your reader’s attention towards your information.
Multimedia should usually be added to any form of content writing. In today’s online world, you can hardly position a product or service effectively without adding supporting audio or video. Presenting information visually will boost readers’ interest and increase the time spent on your page. Examples of multimedia to use include images, videos, slideshows, podcasts, and so on. Always remember to include descriptions on each piece of multimedia to boost ranking.

Appeal to their imagination

You’re selling products and services online, so your potential customers cannot physically touch your items to help make a purchase decision. Creatively captured videos and large crystal-clear pictures can help, but there’s also a copywriting technique to increase desire: allow your reader to imagine how it would feel to own your product. Many ecommerce product description-writing experts make use of this method to sell, and the results speak for themselves. To practice this trick, start a sentence or paragraph with the word “imagine”, and continue by explaining in as much detail as possible (peppering the lines with both power and action words) how your reader will feel when using your product..

Appeal to your readers’ emotions

Effective ecommerce content copywriting requires an understanding of human psychology and knowing the right emotional “hot buttons” to push. To persuade someone to buy, you need to have an idea of what drives him or her to take action. With this knowledge, you can make potential customers feel something and guide them to take action on those feelings. There are “trigger” or influential words that can be added in ecommerce website content writing to achieve the needed results. These include power words and action words and are useful for provoking strong emotions in the reader and giving your copy an energetic and active feel.

Using these trigger words is the easiest way to turn boring ecommerce content into a far more compelling and emotion-reviving copy that creates long-time customers. Examples of power words include breathtaking, eye-opening, incredible, luxurious, staggering, whopping, and no obligation. Action words that can help you hammer in a product’s features or get readers to take action include: catch, choose, find, go, hurry, make, test, taste, and so on.

Create a story

Successfully influencing, educating and informing your target audience doesn’t come from the products or services you offer, it comes from why you do what you do. And there’s no better way to achieve that than telling a story. Think up a compelling story about your brand and weave elements of that story into various aspects of the copy on your website. For example, if you’re a hair care company that specialises in natural products, then that information should be emphasised in your About Page and also feature in your product descriptions (for example, you can highlight that a conditioner is made from organic plant products, or that a portion of the profits from the sales of your hair products go towards organisations engaged in research for alopecia.

Adding short stories to your product descriptions also serves another purpose. It lowers customers’ rational barriers against persuasion techniques, helping them forget that they are being sold to. Copy that does the above is highly effective in that it not only assures visitors that they’re in the right place; it also helps them see that your business is run by real people too.

Understand your product thoroughly

If you’re a business owner doing your own description writing, you already have the advantage of in-depth product knowledge that you can use to draft top-quality copy. However, if you’re outsourcing the job, your copywriters need to properly understand your products and/or services before starting on the copy. Consider the unique features of your product and come up with the most enticing and attention-grabbing ways to describe them to your target audience and win their hearts. While this depends on what you’re selling, the rule of thumb is to try to avoid an aggressive hard-sell and to remain as low-key as possible. You want to avoid alienating potential customers and discouraging them from engaging with your brand.

Find out what your audience wants to read

Asking “what does the audience want to read?” is another great starting point in ecommerce content copywriting. Your aim should be to develop trust and prove that you can provide the products your audience need. This is the easiest way to persuade your individual readers to make a purchase. No matter the product being sold, ecommerce copywriting often follows this pattern:

Pinpoint a problem or issue that people have
Discuss possible solutions to this problem
Offer the solution to this problem

Every customer has a problem in need of a solution, and your job is to connect it with them, whether the problem is how to decorate a nursery, finding the perfect outfit for an office brunch, or ridding their home of a rat infestation. In ecommerce website content writing, you must demonstrate the benefits, usability and practicality of your product, using the correct tone and a combination of informative and compelling language. Also, remember to write in an active voice and make simple sentences to create a flawless copy. Great description writing makes a company’s products and services seem like the best solutions to the common problems customers face. This approach to copywriting can increase search traffic and also boost conversion rates as well. Put simply, creating your copy around what the audience wants to read can make a huge difference to the success of your business.

How Can I Get Started with Ecommerce Content Copywriting?

Now that you understand the essential qualities of high-quality content copywriting for ecommerce websites, it’s time to get started on creating the actual copy. However, it involves a bit more than putting pen to paper or tapping away at the keyboard. Here are the steps you need to get started in the right direction:

Define your audience

Defining your audience really means knowing their needs, what they are looking for when they come on your site, the different questions they might have, and the type of information that would benefit them. Defining your audience provides your copy with an objective for the set of eyes that will read it, respond to it, and ultimately share it. The idea is that, by having a defined audience, you can easily tailor your content to your target audience – thus, improving the relevance and impact of your content. Therefore, it’s crucial to know who you’re writing for, so that you can personalise your content accordingly. For instance, cart abandonment is a common issue with online shopping. Think about the possible reasons why customers might add items to a cart only to leave the website without making a purchase.

This information can help you create a copy that leads to a successful transaction rather than constant click-offs. Bear in mind, however, that your ecommerce content could be found by anyone on the internet. This means that, unless your business belongs to a technical or academic niche, it should be readable for a general audience. So, try to avoid idioms and overly-clichéd structures that might not be appreciated by the majority of your audience. This, in turn, will ensure clear communication of your brand’s message via your content

Copywriting that is Usable

Usability experts agree that it takes as little as 3 seconds or less for your visitor to decide whether or not they will stay or abandon your website. If the rate of engagement is low, you need to investigate the reasons for that. While there are many things that can put off potential customers, formatting issues such as unnecessarily long sentences and paragraphs, tiny text and using white text on black backgrounds are common issues. Visitors only need a glance to figure out if your ecommerce content is readable, so make liberal and appropriate use of headings, subheadings, pictures and bullet points. Sentences and paragraphs should be as short as possible, and always remember to define your industry jargon.

Copywriting that is Search-Engine Friendly

Google has made some key changes, and website content now needs to be high quality to feature in top search results. So, to compete with other site pages for rankings, your ecommerce content copywriting must not only educate and enlighten your readers, but also be written in a way that Google can understand. Using keywords in your copy can be very helpful, since they ensure your site will rank for certain words used in online searches. Also, carry out research for synonyms and variations of keywords, including long-tail queries to incorporate into your website content. Keyword phrases can also be used multiple times on the same page, as long as they don’t compromise the copy’s readability and persuasiveness.

Another thing to consider when crafting SEO-friendly product descriptions for your ecommerce website content is to avoid using stock manufacturer descriptions. This is important, because search engines apply duplicate content fillers to prevent multiple copies of the same text appearing in the SERPs (search result pages). Sticking to stock manufacturer product descriptions, therefore, increases your chances of being filtered out of search results. Ecommerce website content writing should be unique, and, if you run international sites, consider cultural keyword preferences for each location to prevent problems with duplicate content across your own domains.

Copywriting that Builds Trust

For many customers, shopping online is a risk of sorts. They not only have to trust that their information is confidential, but also that the purchased items will really satisfy them. Therefore, your copy should address their typical doubts and fears about your company and about the product.

Make customers trust your company by providing testimonials. Even though you’re not composing these, it’s a great idea to request them from customers and encourage them to share their experiences with using your products. You can also write out a customer service information and a comprehensive privacy policy, and ensure it is easily accessible, especially on your site’s pages where customers might feel anxious about offering information (account registration, email signup, etc.).

Customers crave content because they want to reduce the risk of wasting their time and money or being disappointed. They have uncertainties and fears about products and services offered online, and it’s your job to provide information and answer their questions to put their minds at ease. Get into your customers’ heads and boost trust for your products by adding reviews to your product descriptions. Browse through reviews submitted to your site and on other sites like Amazon, and others where customers rate individual product attributes, tag reviews and vote for the most helpful ones on the products.

While planning your ecommerce product description writing, look for answers to these questions:

Who buys this item and why?
How long did the product last?
What’s the worst thing about the product?
What other uses did customers discover for the product?
Did the product live up to expectations?
Would the customer recommend it to friends and family in need of such a product?

Why Do I Need Ecommerce Content Copywriting?

There are several reasons why highly-engaging content should be one of your top priorities for your website. There are also countless reasons why you should care about ensuring your website features high-quality ecommerce product description writing. Some of these reasons include:

To define your brand

An ecommerce copy can be used to introduce your company to the world. Whether existing and potential customers think of your brand as quirky, futuristic or bold depends largely on your copy. Proper content copywriting also provides brand enhancement and can strengthen your image. This is why most businesses opt for copywriting to describe their brand, products and services online,

To boost sales

Ecommerce product description writing can communicate with your target audience through concise and compelling sales messages. Whether you’re selling luxury holiday trips to vacationers or baby clothes to new mums, professionally-worded content will focus on each audience’s needs in a creative way. Copywriters employ persuasive language, compelling stories, attention-grabbing headlines and clear calls-to-action to portray your brand in a positive light, create an emotional connection with readers and elicit the right response. Site visitors who engage with your content are then ready to enter the sales process – which is right where you want them.

To attract your audience/customers

Who are you trying to sell to? To be effective, your copy must appeal to your unique customer base. Ecommerce content that takes a specific tone (serious, funny, sarcastic, cutesy, and so on) which appeals to your target audience while providing solutions to their unique problems will be extremely effective.

To boost site SEO

Ecommerce description writing is important if you want your website and pages to rank high in search engine results. This is possible through search-engine-optimised ecommerce copy, involving properly-researched keywords that are creatively woven into your content. Top search engines such as Google require websites that catch the attention of their audience and persuade them to interact online. How can you achieve this? Through brilliantly-written, entertaining, valuable and relevant ecommerce content. High-quality content will naturally encourage sharing and linking; creating the kind of organic link building that boosts SEO for your ecommerce site.

To inform your customers

When customers visit your site, they should be able to find all the information they need about your company, products and/or services. Great ecommerce content copywriting is the best way to deliver that information to your customers. Your content should give insight into your company history, accurately describe your products and provide logistics related to shopping on your site (cost of shipping, when orders ship, how to contact you if they have problems with items, etc.).