Things you can learn from journalists when writing product descriptions

Published on April 27, 2012 Things you can learn from journalists when writing product descriptions

Writing product descriptions and writing a journalistic piece are very different disciplines but as a store owner there’s plenty you can gain from thinking more like a journalist when writing the product descriptions for your store.

One of the main differences between writers and journalists is the way that they approach a piece of writing. A journalistic piece must have a news angle – something that is different that will get the attention and interest of the end reader. Articles sell newspapers, drive traffic to news websites and there’s a lot of competition. So a journalist must come up with a clever angle – the news value in a story. That discipline can be applied to writing product descriptions to create catchy, powerful, unique content that will help you convert visitors to buyers.

How is a news angle relevant to writing product descriptions? Applied to products, the equivalent of a news angle is the thing that makes your product different from the others in its class, the way that you sell it to customers that is different – is it part of a package of other things? can you demonstrate the product in a different way? have you thought of a use for that product that nobody else hasn’t? Is there a benefit to having the product that customers may not have thought of? Is there a unique linkage to an event or something currently in the news that will get people’s interest.

The thing about news is that it’s current. News is today, tomorrow it’s history. Keep your product descriptions relevant, interesting, unique and new. Update your product descriptions to reflect things that may be interesting to your audience. Read news articles about things in your industry and if your products have relevant linkages, update your product descriptions appropriately.

One other thing that journalists do when writing a press release that other writers often don’t is write content from the top down: the most important facts are first, then the next most important facts and so on. This is because a journalist’s article may be cut off by the news editor at any point, so they must write the article top down as they don’t know how much of their article will make the cut.

Customers scan descriptions much like they do news stories, so get the most important facts and benefits about your product in first. You don’t know when your customer will stop reading.

In an online store, there’s no store person to ask a customer can I help you, so the product description and the picture have to do the work to sell the product. Put yourself in the shoes of the buyer, think about what they might be thinking about the product and address those things in your product description, interest them, and surprise them. Tell them something useful rather than shoving the manufacturer’s blurb down their throat. That’s what journalists do differently from other people, they tease out a story that appeals their reader’s interests rather than force-feed it to them.

Things you can use to write the best descriptions you can:

• Use product videos – if you don’t have any consider getting a video company or photographer to develop you some
• Use quality photos – a picture really does tell a thousand words online. Think about all the angles you can cover and what things you would look at if you picked up the product in a shop
• Include benefits not just features – tell people why features will benefit them and how the product is different to others by the same manufacturer
• Write descriptions top down – the most important facts should be first
• Describe product options if they apply – use colour swatches for example if your product comes in different colours and include a link to a size chart if your items are clothing so people know whether your sizes match up with other items they’ve bought from other manufacturers.

Think creatively and strive to get the attention of your reader and not just insert the pre-written blurbs from the manufacturer that all of your competitors are including (which is a sure fire way not to get indexed) to boost the chances of getting noticed by both search engines and your customers.