Why Product Descriptions are Critical for E-commerce Boutiques: A Beginner's Guide

As a small business owner, you know how important it is to make the most of your resources. Your time is valuable, and you need to focus on running your business. Every single day you fight a battle between doing what you need to do and what you need to do RIGHT NOW. What’s important for your business vs. what’s MOST important for your business. You have a reason for choosing what things you prioritize. Did you know that? To prove it, here’s a few things you would never neglect.

• Unlocking the door and turning the lights on at the beginning of the day.

• Helping customers currently shopping in your store.

• Checking people out that are trying to purchase from you.

• Putting new inventory out on the floor or in your POS.

Why wouldn’t you skip these things? Easy…because these are all activities that directly correlate to putting money in your business’s pocket. You might neglect sweeping the floors or replacing a light bulb. Maybe you wait another day to call back the sweet lady that just applied to work in your store, but the thing that you NEVER neglect, things that make the cash register ring. WHY?? Because when the register goes quiet, nothing else can move forward. Inventory costs money, employees need paychecks, your rent is due on the 1st, EVERYTHING stops if you aren’t making money.

Let me tell you why it’s important that you DO NOT skip on the quality of your online product listings. More specifically, writing quality descriptions for your online products.

Quick Note: Quality photos are critical as well. I’m not ignoring that. However, most vendors offer pretty decent stock photos. Not great, but decent. That’s not the case with descriptions. That’s why I’m focusing on them. They get neglected and they REALLY shouldn’t.

You have to think of your online listing from a holistic approach. Does the picture grab their attention? Great. Once they click on the item, does it have all the info they need to make an informed and confident decision? If not, they probably won’t click “Add To Cart”. Let’s say you have bad pictures and no description…Do you think they are keeping the piece once they receive it and realize that’s not what they thought they were ordering? NOPE. They’re returning it. That means it’s either frustrating them and costing them money, or costing you time and money. Both are lose-lose situations.

But…did you get it? Read it again and think about it.

Allow me to pontificate:

1. Product descriptions can benefit the SEO of your website (when optimized). That means that more people find you when they are “looking for things like the things you got”. (New Customer Acquisition)

2. Compelling product descriptions persuade new and existing customers to purchase because they WANT what they are reading. (Increasing Sales)

3. Detailed product descriptions speed up how quickly someone is willing to make a buying decision by removing questions they may otherwise have. (Increasing Sales)

4. If the customer doesn’t have any questions after reading a detailed description, they won’t need to ask you things like:

   1. Does this run true to size?

   2. Will this shrink when I wash it?

   3. Does this come in other colors?

   4. Where do babies come from?

   5. (Place holder for any other obnoxious question you have to answer approximately 500 times per day.)

5. If they have a detailed explanation of exactly what they are about to receive in the mail, guess what…THEY WANT IT. That means, there are no surprises. No returns. No complaints. No headaches. No wasted time. No wasted money. No stupid customer service questions. (Does it sound like I’ve been there before?) (Fewer returns and a customer service cakewalk)

Listen, don’t take my word for it. What do I know? If you need proof that product descriptions make a HUGE difference in your sales and customer satisfaction, check this out:

• 87% of shoppers say that product content is extremely or very important when deciding to buy. (source: Salsify)

• 54% of shoppers say that they return items because the product didn't match the description. (source: Invesp)

• Product descriptions can increase sales conversion rates by up to 30%. (source: BigCommerce)

Let’s put a bow on this. Product descriptions are your biggest strength that you didn’t know you were missing out on. They can increase your sales, reduce customer service time, mitigate unforeseen returns, etc. Overall, they literally save you time and money.

All of that is true…IF they are good descriptions. If your descriptions suck, they won’t. Think about it, if it sounds beautiful and everyone wants to buy your thing but it has no info, their questions still aren’t answered. If the description is clunky and robotic because it’s nothing but SEO and descriptive words, it’s not compelling. A good description is a thing of beauty and it’s not easy. But don’t worry. That’s literally why we exist. We WANT to help you. Even if you don’t hire us. We have been in your shoes and we wished we had us back then.

If you are starting to understand the importance of product descriptions for your boutique but don’t know how you could have the time, money, or creative bandwidth to do it, read this next article!