Special Features of Online Store Product Placement

What leads to purchase online? Advertising, wise marketing, design or optimization? No doubts, all these elements are important, but they won’t work, if the main element is absent – quality product description. Low-quality content on online store is like product with damaged packaging on the supermarket shelf.

Quality of product placement is the most obvious, yet the least valued by specialists and online store owners successful sales technique. Most of attention is paid to advertisement, search engine optimization, huge efforts are directed to polishing registration and order forms, etc. It seems that user doesn’t exist in time lab from time he arrives at the site till the moment he clicks the “buy” button.

Meanwhile the chain of store visitor actions is the following:

1.    Complex of marketing efforts which drive the user to the certain online store. (On this stage exactly SEO is applied as well as advertisement of different types, and other tools which direct users to the store).

2.    User performs some actions in online store, after which he makes decision whether to buy here or proceed to another store (actions are searching and receiving additional information about product or service).

3.    User makes purchase.

The conclusion if the person doesn’t make purchase is that your online store “failed” on the step 2. Having not found relevant information, answers to his questions and doubts, the user will never become your customer, regardless of advertising budget and selling techniques effectiveness.

Quality content of online store has a list of important, but not always obvious, advantages:

1.    People love useful sites, they readily back there to buy new products and recommend such shops to their friends.

2.    The aging speed of online store content is comparatively low (in comparison with news portal, where news gets old in a day already). Once composed, product description can serve you for years and drive new visitors to the site.

3.    Each product page can become a high-quality and optimized landing page. Coupled with good marketing campaign, such pages give great results.

4.    As to the types and formats of content, online stores have almost no limitations. They can use photo, graphics, infographics, video, podcasts, optimized and not optimized texts, and the list goes on. With such plethora of tools, it is possible to create a website which will become not only useful, but number one as well for the visitor.

General recommendations as to the online store content

Try to avoid “copy-paste”. It is always better to write several unique lines than copy large descriptions from elsewhere. It won’t give you credit and will severely damage online store SEO.

Choose quality images and other visual information. They are able to increase conversion rates. Very often purchases are made as result of attractive pictures. Poor visual elements kill SEO, marketing, and text as well.

You should not work with people in your team who are not up to standard. If you trust store content to interns or buy it on markets for peanuts, then be prepared to corresponding results. In this case the shop will end up filling with low-quality, boring content, which doesn’t take into account niche peculiarities, product and target audience.

We don’t recommend buying testimonials, ordering them somewhere, and so on. At times such testimonials are so not useful that may spoil impression even about good product, and the store as a whole.

It is considered unprofessional and not right tactics to express negative opinion about other store and their products. Instead, write why you think your product is better than competitors’. For example, its price could be lower, or you offer free delivery or longer guarantee term.

The ideal text size is 1000 characters. If the product description is too large and there are no sections for product technical characteristics, use bullet points. Descriptions without tables, lists, paragraphs, and links make the information hardly presented readable. So even if there is some genius selling text in them, it is very uncertain whether it will be read.

Good description basic rules

1.     Use common sense. Obviously, online buyer interests are quite similar with offline buyer’s: product characteristics, price, method of payment, guarantees. What will a buyer at the supermarket do, if he doesn’t find a price tag on jeans, for example? Most likely, he will drop them and continue searching in another place.  So online store buyer will do the same.

2.    When create text, write it first of all for people, not for search engine. Keywords could be and should be included in the text, but very carefully and on point. The same goes for links suggesting other goods which could be bought as well. Such product recommendations usually work very well, but they should be relevant.

3.    Remember about those who will read you, and focus on your target audience. Imagine that you are telling your client about the product: a young man  – about new mobile phone model, a girl  –  about new fashion dress, parents – about children toy. Speak with the customer in the same language, tell what benefits this product will bring to him exactly.

4.    Simple language is perceived very well, however, it doesn’t mean you should simplify it too much, similarly as you shouldn’t write banality or directly call to purchase, as most buyers don’t like when somebody pushes them. Persuade them in product advantages instead.

5.     Highlighting advantages, make sure to mention functional benefits. Emotional part and personal point of view could be appropriate only if it is women or children product. And still don’t go too far. If you write about the sweater, then make sure to add to “awesome and appealing” the fact that it is knitted and made of 100% wool and corresponds to current fashion trends.  

6.    Emotional part of text should not exceed the informational part. For greater description effect, you can add a touch of literature to make it more “lively” and sincere. However, please remember that you still write product description).

7.     Writing about benefits, try to mention each of them not more than once, otherwise it will make the text pushy and worsen impression about the product. The user might come to the conclusion that if such benefit is mentioned too often, then the product in fact doesn’t have it.

8.    Don’t squeeze into description all the information (unless it is a special product for professional use, where it is important to list all the functions and special features). Write only about the most essential and justify why it is good. People tend to value:

• famous brands, corresponding to the latest tendencies (prestigious, emphasizes on superior status);
• practical things: wearable, shockproof, durable (money you spent will not be wasted);
• natural components, certified, approved by special organizations (seem to be safe), hypoallergic.

It is also necessarily to mention what makes your product so special and different from others. Even if the only difference is color, it could be presented as an advantage.

9.    The most important pros should be mentioned at the beginning of the text. At the top should be also placed product reviews and manuals. In the bottom part – product recommendations and links to similar products for comparison.

10.   Don’t use words such as “expensive” or “cheap”. People will easily compare the prices and decide by themselves whether this leather jacket is expensive or not. Product price should be mentioned not as a factor influencing the product choice, but as an advantage. A wealthy person will be able to buy your goods at moderate price, but he won’t want “cheap”. Nobody will pay up for nothing too, however, will readily purchase something to show their status.

11.  Write descriptions thoughtfully. “Cream could be used on different skin types, especially on oily skin” – will women with dry skin want to buy this?

12.  Try not to begin the sentence with “also” or “and” (also this product…), if possible use less times negative sentences (doesn’t suit, is not used, etc.), the word “very”, and also adjectives in superlative degree. In general, try to be careful with adjectives.

13.  Descriptions should not also contain factual mistakes. Ideally, grammatical mistakes should not occur as well, but if absence of comma or typos could be forgiven by the user, misleading information about the product can make him leave the site at all. Who will come back to the store where one bought clothes item of wrong size or inappropriate car detail?

14.  As we mentioned earlier, don’t write banality. People read description to get information about certain product, not to find out that “without mobile our modern life is impossible” or “we need electric stove to prepare food”.

To sum up, if you are puzzled with the question “how to increase sales online “, don’t neglect such simple instrument as product placement which can . Keep in mind, that content absence or its poor quality may neutralize all your business marketing online efforts.

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