Your customers aren’t coming to your site to buy flowers. They’re not coming to purchase quick delivery or a red rose bouquet. Your customers aren’t coming to your site to buy keywords. Don’t let your product descriptions focus on the literal bouquet; instead, make it focus on the moment surrounding that bouquet.
What Product Descriptions Should Be
We’ll readily admit that keywords are essential to your product descriptions. Well-chosen keywords ensure your customers can actually find your site and start buying your products. However, a keyword-stuffed description will scare your customers away faster than a picture of a dead bouquet.
Keyword stuffing isn’t effective; rather, it indicates to the customer that your only objective is to sell as many bouquets as possible. It’s not enough to get your customers to your page. You’ve got to move your customers, too.
Unfortunately, to write a killer product description you’ve got to figure out how to tug your customers’ heartstrings while still putting in all your keywords.
Tip #1: Before You Write Your Description
Before you choose your keywords, think about your audience. Don’t think about your target audience yet—think about the customers behind the screen.
Think of the shy-eyed teenager about to buy his first boutonnière for a prom date.
Imagine the teacher picking out a goodbye bouquet for her first-ever student teacher.
Picture the husband agonizing over which flowers best say I’m sorry I mowed your prize tomato plants.
You’re not selling flowers: you’re selling a romance. A bittersweet farewell. A sheepish apology.
In short: think of the person first– and the search engine second.
Tip #2: Push, Don’t Shove
Lead your customer to the idea of buying your product. Don’t shove him off the cliff. Your descriptions should tug heartstrings, not yank them. Here are some things to avoid when writing your product descriptions:
- Too many adjectives. Enough with the brilliantly elegant displays of rich crimson flowers with pristine snow-white baby’s breath. Not only does this sound like a ninth grader’s poetry journal, it’s plain bad writing. Adjectives act like pepper on your steak: they enhance the meat. Your nouns are your meat. Use plenty of them—and go easy on the pepper.
- Empty promises. She is guaranteed to love this amazing gift basket! Do you know what this says to your customers? Nothing. If you told a person to draw an “amazing gift basket,” could they draw one? Give your customers concrete ideas, not empty promises.
Tip #3: Write First, Then Place Your Keywords. Carefully.
When you’ve written your description, look for places where you could naturally place your keywords. “These flowers” could easily become “This red rose bouquet,” couldn’t it? When you’ve outfitted all your nouns and pronouns with your killer keywords, read your description out loud. What sounds forced? What sounds overtly sales-y?
Tip #4: This Counts for Social Media, Too!
You’re practicing your best SEO copywriting skills, you’re picturing your audience, you’re finding those keywords, and you’re writing to sell. Good. Great. Fantastic…but you’re not done yet.
We live in the age of social media—if your Aunt Mildred recommends a flower company, you’re going to go with Aunt Mildred’s florist over a search ranking’s recommendation. Sell to Aunt Mildred—and everyone else on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. Use that social media muscle to your advantage: utilize these tips when you tweet your featured product of the day or post your weekly special on Facebook.
Nicki Porter graduated summa cum laude from Old Dominion University with a B.A. in English and her writing has appeared in publications like The Albion Review and the Wildwood Journal. When not writing for CopyPress (or otherwise), Nicki can be found wandering through farmers’ markets, making a mess of her kitchen, or snapping photos with her trusty camera.
Image Source: Pink Sherbert via Flickr
It’s all about common sense, isn’t it? I give my clients the same advice–put yourself in your customer’s shoes and look at your website’s content from his or her perspective. So many websites waste their content just touting how great the business is rather than showing the potential customer how the business can help that person. Kudos on some great tips that can truly make a difference in creating a website of real value!
Good piece of advise. It’s good to think from the perspective of your clients. It takes some practice too to come up with clear product descriptions that also are able to connect with your potential buyers.
Most webmasters make the mistake of looking like the customers are visiting their website to buy keywords. Just do a simple process. Get a friend of yours to visit your website. Ask him or her about the first impression that they get when visiting the website, and whether they shall love to buy it from you.
Keep experimenting with people like this, and you shall find the right mix.
Good suggestion, John Thomas. You could always do insighting from the feedback given by people close to you.
This is true now more than ever. After so many Google algorithm updates, the keyword-rich writing-for-search-engines approach is not even effective as it once was for better rankings in the SERPs.
We must focus on creating quality content. What better way to do it than to focus on the needs of the prospective customer who is visiting the Web site.. Vivid and concrete descriptions can move and persuade the potential customer that he/she is making the right choice in picking a particular floral arrangement.
Yes, I could not agree more!
“Give your customers concrete ideas, not empty promises.”
This caught my attention completely. I totally agree with this phrase. You can’t sell a promise in order to make a sale. Who knows? What if that promise is broken? You should be able to sell them believable ideas!
Never falsely advertise your products as something that “guarantees” a benefit, because sometimes, it may not happen and you’ve just lied to your client.
Start selling moments instead of selling flowers is absolutely amazing and true! As soon as you start giving people emotions instead of products you are totally winning them over.
I think that one of the best industries that does this great is the cruise ship industry which sells potential moments to their clients. By using images and video they can allow people to imagine that they are in Bahamas, on the sand, sipping on a Martini. And why wouldn’t you want to go there if you afford it?