How To Do More with Your Product Content

When your store is a website and your product aisles are page links, your customer experience — including sales associates, dressing rooms, customer service counter, and checkout — is your product content. 

In this article, ContentFactory1 will show how rich content (enhanced descriptions, image galleries, and video) can increase your shop’s visibility and improve each customer’s experience.

This results in purchases driven by more than a low price tag. When the product lives up to its promises, it creates lasting customer relationships that can better withstand inflation, competition, and changing market conditions.

To demonstrate this, let’s follow a shopper as they purchase a jacket online.

The Search

Sleeves rolled up and coffee in hand, Markus enters “men’s jacket, all-season.” He is shown sponsored options of every color and material from the biggest e-commerce players followed by products from smaller retailers. Where does your “Knitted Fleece Jacket for Men, Maroon” appear on the page? This depends on your product page’s SEO.

These tips will help you stay on top. 

The title comes first. 

50-60 characters. First key term | Second key term | Brand. Done.

Make your meta descriptions count. 

In as few words as possible, you need to get the potential customer interested in your product. Include the main key phrase. Highlight the features and benefits that matter most to the consumer. Keep your meta at 155 characters or less, and use an active voice that compels the consumer to click.

Every product page on your site must be unique. 

Google lowers rankings for sites with duplicate content. You may have a product portfolio of 10,000 items, but each product page needs original, up-to-date content. 

The (Online) Store 

Markus chose your “Knitted Fleece Jacket for Men, Maroon” from the Googe sea and is taken to the product page on your website. 

In person, a salesperson would ask Markus what he’s looking for and show him the store’s best options. Or he would browse, touching the material, reading the label, and holding the jacket up to his chest. Here, you have a main photo and a short description that must convince him to “favorite” the item or put it in his cart in an average of 60 sec. 

Get the basics right

• 50% of shoppers have returned a product because it did not match its description.
• 87% of consumers would be unlikely or very unlikely to make a repeat purchase with a retailer that misguided them through inaccurate or insufficient product information. 

Your product summary is your single important item. 

A product title, a few lines of text, and an image…how hard can that be to put together? 

First impressions are everything here. Make sure your main image is not only clear and high-quality but also the best representation of your product in a single view.

Next, the importance of your short product description cannot be overstated. You need accurate, complete product data, carefully chosen features and details and text that persuades with every word. The price usually follows, so everything before it must make your product worth the cost. 

Since you did that successfully, Markus decides this jacket is a good option and puts it in his cart. After looking around a bit more, he’s ready to take a closer look.

The Product Page

Choosing a jacket involves more than looking at the label, liking the color, and confirming the size. Markus wants to try it on, check the shoulder fit and arm length, feel the material, and imagine wearing it on a blustery fall day. Will it be warm enough? Does it look good? Will it last past two seasons? Does it feel right? 

Rich Product Content creates a multisensory experience for the customer with text, imagery, and video that leaps off the website page. The result? A 15% higher conversion rate on average.

Rich Product Content is

• Product descriptions that are creative, informative, and persuasive
• Image galleries with zoom features and that leave nothing to hide
• Feature highlights that engage with pop-up descriptions, 360-degree product spins, or videos
• Supplemental information such as comparison charts or downloadable guides

In a recent study, 84% of customers surveyed were convinced by the product after watching a video.

Your expanded text is both product label and personal shopper. 

It needs to understand the consumer mindset and use this knowledge to talk about the most meaningful feature benefits and details Markus wants to know. 

• Use sensory language
• Avoid generic phrases
• Make descriptions scannable
• Tell a story
• Speak to your ideal customer
• Search engine optimization
• Know your audience
• Focus on benefits
• Keep it simple
• Optimize with keywords

At ContentFactory1 we take this one step further with the ultimate differentiating factor: Emotion. 

Questions such as, “Is this what I’m looking for?” and “Is it worth the price?” may influence Markus’ decision, but a gut-level, “I love it” is what makes his wallet come out. 

1. Emotional reactions are 3,000 times quicker than rational thought.
2. The persuasiveness ratio of emotion to reason is 24:1

Power your product descriptions with emotion

If purchase decisions were completely rational, crafting the right product content would be straightforward, including clearly stated features, product details, and peace-of-mind extras such as easy returns or a guarantee. But given consumers’ blended logical and emotional motives, your content must bring out Markus’s emotions while building positive brand emotions. 

Here are a few ground rules for adding emotion to your texts. 

• Open with the right hook. Emotional Clicher. Grab them from the beginning. Bring your customer into the story from the start.
• Decide on tone of voice. Who should be selling your product? A business professional, inside expert, good friend, chef, sports coach, their mother?
• Make every word count.
• Balance keywords with sensory words and vivid imagery. Maintain tight word counts to keep your copy punchy and powerful.
• Mention the benefit of the benefit. A jacket doesn’t just keep you warm, it lets you live your life without weather limitations.
• Appeal to universal human needs: love, nourishment, protection, companionship and community, belonging, accomplishment, independence, self-expression, inner peace… 
• Lastly, speak to the consumer in their native language.

Retailers can immediately add emotional value to their content by serving it in the native language of the audience. From a global perspective, translation breaks down the barriers between countries and people. It supports global expansion in a way that feels native to every audience.

What does this look like for your company? Just ask us to show you and we’ll create custom product content you can test with your customers.

Where does AI fit in? 

At ContentFactory1, we believe it is an assistant you guide, not a content expert you trust. Machine learning excels in analyzing large data sets, finding patterns, and classifying data in seconds. Deep learning takes this one step further, working with unstructured data, such as images and unprocessed text. AI is a nimble, versatile assistant but doesn’t generate the needed emotion without a human touch. 

At ContentFactory1 we developed an approach called Human AI that leverages the unlimited capabilities of artificial intelligence where it works best with the equally vast insight and expertise of the human brain. We use people to speak to people.

Read more about it here: https://www.contentfactory1.com/human_ai/

The Checkout

Markus reviews the items in his cart. The images and video made the jacket come to life. The product description resonated with him. This was grounded with clear details about the size, material, and manufacturing. He decides the Knitted Fleece Jacket for Men, Maroon is just what he’s looking for and makes the purchase, knowing he’ll be happy with what he receives.

Content Factory 1 has 24 years of experience creating product content that leads to sales while simplifying processes and saving your company money. We are trusted by leading retailers and would like to be your dependable content provider. 

Try us out for free! Send us five products and we’ll create content free of charge. Just message lgray@contentfactory1.com