Description

Amazon Product Description Guide: Copywriting by the Pros

Writing a description for an Amazon product is the most do-it-yourselfers we stumble upon. And it comes back to the same two hurdles. First, you will not know who will ultimately the product as your target audience. The second is not understood as to using words to create a hands-on environment via the Web.

Pros are trained in expressing the features and benefits of physical products have a few tactics tucked away. They can take ho-hum language, watering it with a few unexpected adjectives, and causing it to stand out.

A copy of it is sent to Amazon product descriptions and has a dual duty, the capacity to search terms throughout the text without ruining the flow seamlessly.

The first step in this process is to know what the people you are communicating with are looking for.

Understanding Your Shopper’s Needs

It’s been about 20 years. I’ve been preaching the same sermon about the writing of a copy of another copy. The thing you always do instantaneously before writing a single word of your Amazon product description copy — is to understand your shoppers.

Too often, e-tailers on Amazon or any other independent websites focus first on the product. Before taking this approach, consider one thing:

When you go to a local store, you can interact directly with their employees. If you’re at an electronics store and have a question about a set of headphones, you ask a live person is standing by to explain its options and capabilities. They will its needs and its needs to compare options, and assist with the best option. That suits your needs.

On the websites, your copy is your salesperson. It fills the place of a person.

You can’t interact with Amazon shoppers; you have to anticipate their needs, wants, pain points, frustrations, concerns, and expectations of the product. Taking those details and incorporating them into your copy to spike your conversion rates.

How do you know who your customers are and what are their needs? There some simple steps to research this, including:

1. Use Facebook Insights, Facebook Ads, or a Facebook group.

Information and specifications from your manufacturers, if you’re a wholesaler or private-label seller.

2. Looking through your competitor’s reviews and Q&As on Amazon and other websites that carry your product or ones that are similar.
3. Searching for reviews of comparable products on Google, YouTube, and Pinterest.

Please pay particular attention to any information on its specific use. Problems shoppers have experienced and are trying to solve, age, life stage, and other particulars.

Taking the Infomercial Approach

I love to analyze the different marketing techniques. When it comes to engaging customers, is it the infomercial that catches their attention. Selling on Amazon is a $250 billion business, and it does one thing very well — it shows consumers why they can’t live without a product.

This is done by placing the product virtually in the consumer’s life. Demonstrations of such How To’s, changing parts, cooking meals, watching real people work out, and seeing those nasty crow’s feet fade away, bringing people closer to the point of using it themselves.

 

Consumers see or read about how a product can solve their problems while connections are made. Once references are created, a desire is born. Filling that desire means buying the product!

How can you incorporate infomercial-style tactics into a written copy?

1. Relating to how your target audience will use such a product.
2. Offering suggestions (it might be something that the consumer hasn’t taken even thought of, or didn’t know its capabilities.
3. Talking real-life issues such as being easy to clean, having an odor, or whether children can easily break it.
4. Discuss those results, informing shoppers what happens once they buy and use the product.

A World of Contradictions

As per Amazon, how long can product description titles be?

1. Generally 50 characters
2. No more than 200 characters
3. No more than 250 characters
4. Go back to number one

The answer? It’s number four, all of the above.

 

(A) Usually 50 characters according to Seller Central.

(B) No more than 200 characters

C) No more than 250 characters according to Add-A-Product (which will get your listing suppressed, by the way, see (B)). Not all categories show 250 characters in Add-A-Product, but the majority do.

Amazon tells you 250 characters; you can go up to 200 characters, and if you pass that amount space limit, an error will appear if you try to fill all the space.

That’s not the end of the confusion. After you check the flat file, titles can likely have up to 500 characters. The specific category “Style Guides” say something different. The fact that Amazon changes the title guidelines as inaccurate challenges you to keep up!

 

What’s a seller to do?

 Best practices for Amazon title description

1. Use 190 characters unless Add-A-Product states that there is a lower limit or Add-A-Product has a hard stop physically gives you an error after 80 characters or whatnot. The 190-character mark allows you a little room to make sure you don’t exceed the 200 limits and end up with a repressed entry.
2. Your most important number one key phrase should be in the title’s first 80 characters. If room permits, include your second most crucial phrase could be a few individual words from the words.
3. Include an explanation mentioning fundamental specifications and information that consumers need and want to know to make it more appealing. When they see your title on the search results page, that’s the only information they have when deciding to click on your Amazon product description page or not. You should include sizes, exclusive or unique features, gender, materials (plastic vs. stainless), and any other must-know specifications.
4. Entice the shopper if you have room. Sometimes including all the important specs and the key phrase takes up all the space. Knowing that you have a few characters left over, add a bit of prominent information
5.  To draw the customer in. Here’s a good example:

Crafting Captivating Key Feature Bullets

Once you’ve caught the attention of shoppers who are madly going through the Amazon search results pages, the next problem is to entice them with descriptive and engaging key feature bullets.

Ordinary words won’t help do it alone. Shoppers that go to stores have the advantage because they can speak directly to associates; they as well have full use of all five senses. Meaning they can see, hear, touch, smell, and taste products.

Online, your verbiage has to make up for the loss of that sensory information.

Incorporate creative adjectives, what I call super adjectives and verbs. Refrain from using lazy, overused words and phrases that customers have already read hundreds of times.

Also, find some keywords and key phrases included here. “Hand-painted wine glasses,” “goblets collection,” “wine glasses,” “gift for [wedding, graduations, birthdays, etc.],” “unique gift for him/her,” and others.

The above is just one format of Amazon’s product page. Another way of using those super adjectives and verbs is to style positions in bullets underneath the images and only display up to three bullets. To see the rest, the shopper must click “More.”

Using this page layout, you’ll want to take great care in refining those first three bullets, making sure they include the three most critical features and benefits. Applying this when shopping on the Amazon app on a smartphone should your targeted audience keep them continuing to want

Several questions that shoppers might ask have gone unanswered, such as what kinds of television there are? And what different options are you looking for or opportunities it already comes with, and what are they?

Here are some recommendations for writing enticing, optimized bullet points:

1. Expand your verbiage. Professional writers know that using the same old words over and over is mind-numbing.
2. Integrate as many sensory words as possible. The chance that you use all five senses for every product is almost impossible, but try to input as much information as possible in the Amazon product descriptions portion. For example, if you’re selling ink pens, you won’t talk about taste, smell, or hearing.
3. Include keywords and key phrases. The rule of thumb for the Marketing Words team is “Use as many keywords as you can without making the copy sound stupid!” Aim for at least one key phrase or the individual words from the phrase. Safely include more without ruining the readability of the bullet, do so.
4. The most important thing to remember is to describe, describe, describe. Just filling the bullets of your Amazon product description just to fill it up won’t help your visitors decide. They need necessary, helpful details about your product.
5. Connect with your visitors. Make references to your product’s real-life uses to help them see themselves using and enjoying the item.
6. Use all five bullets. If you can’t think of five significant features/benefits to writing about, you should spend more time investigating your product and target customers.
7. Take care with the first three bullets. You want to include your three most critical features/benefits here.

Engage Shoppers With Pertinent Details in the Product Description

The title of your Amazon product description is an introduction.

The critical feature bullets are a welcome and get-to-know-you session.

The description section is where the majority of your communication will take place; it should be filled with details that will help the customer respond, “Yes! I need that!”

“Does the description even matter? It’s way down at the bottom of the listing.” Well, sometimes it is, but sometimes it is positioned above the bullets.

On mobile phones, for standard listings, the description is positioned above the bullets. However, you only get around 200 characters before the text is cut off, so that copy needs to be indeed attention-worthy.

Don’t duplicate your bullet points in the description; expand on them. Our wine glass copy example makes this mistake. What a waste of space!

What should this listing have done? Continue the conversation with the customer. One technique for deciding what to say next is to ask yourself the question, “Why?” “How?” or “So what?”

Our hand-painted wine glasses will not only enhance the taste of your wine. How?

Express a remarkable sense of balance. How?

Sensually pleasing to grasp and handle. Essence makes fine wines even more enjoyable. How?

Every glass is different from the others while keeping the original taste of the artist’s lines. So what?

Do you get the idea?

Scroll back up to the questions I mentioned — the ones I (as a shopper) would have needed information about before I could make a buying decision. Include those in your description copy as well.

If you don’t personally have any questions, check competitor listings to see if there are Q&As on their product pages and work a few of the most commonly asked questions/answers into your copy.

The entire point of the description is to engage the people who need more information and make them comfortable — no confidence! — about buying the item you’re selling.

Keywords? Yes, you should incorporate keywords into the description copy as well. Like the bullets, don’t bombard the description with so many keywords that it overpowers the composition’s message.

 Here are a few pro tips:

1. Expand on the content of the bullets; don’t duplicate it.
2. Continue the conversation with your audience, helping them see the benefits of your product.
3. Incorporate product specifics and other information that is necessary for customers to make a buying decision.
4. Include real-life uses, the obvious ones, and the not-so-obvious ones.
5. Use the first 200 characters to provide an intriguing summary of your product that will entice your shoppers.

 Balance Your Keywords With Equal Parts Relevance and Search Volume

When choosing keywords/phrases to incorporate into your Amazon product description, most sellers’ spontaneous reaction is to aim for the terms with the highest search volume. Most of the time, those will be fine. However, I encourage you to temper your enthusiasm for big numbers with a hefty spoonful of relevance.

For years, I’ve watched sellers ruin their keyword lists by adding every possible term that is even slightly related to the product they are selling. This strategy may seem smart to start with, but it catches up to you eventually.

Because Amazon tracks everything, they are spying on your backend data. With a few keystrokes, Amazon can determine that you have traffic landing on your product page that leaves without spending money. When that happens too often, you’ll begin to slip in the search results.

What’s the best approach?

1. Research highly relevant keywords and phrases that are directly related to your product.
2. Choose terms that have high search volumes only if they are also highly relevant.
3. Don’t risk including extensive terms, even if other sellers are using them. It won’t likely pay off in the end.

 When you’re done, you should have an Amazon product listing that:

1. Communicates and connects well with your target customer.
2. Ranks high in the Amazon search results.
3. It is descriptive with text that engages shoppers and walks them through your item’s features/benefits.
4. Delivers much-needed details to boost confidence and knowledge, so customers are eager to purchase!