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Want to get your ecommerce site showing up on Google and converting customers? Your ecommerce copywriting is going to play a vital role.
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In ecommerce, having great products is not enough.
We’ve all seen this in action. Whether it be a brand getting a ton of sales with a sub-par product or finding a brand with a top-quality product but a fraction of the sales we’d expect - we all know that products don’t exactly sell themselves.
Just like a song may have a great tune, but needs a great beat, accompaniment, and production to make it a hit, a great product needs a great supporting cast too.
Whilst it’s the creative direction and visual identity that may pique the interest of your potential buyers, it’s the quality of your ecommerce copywriting and content that transforms them - entices, informs, and persuades - turning those potential buyers into happy customers.
When we get knee-deep into building a brand, ecommerce business owners often get super excited around product development, branding, and the marketing aspects, but get stumped when it comes to ecommerce copywriting.
Through tons of projects in collaboration with ecommerce businesses, we’ve found that ecommerce copywriting is one of the most difficult aspects to nail down and get right. This guide aims to give you everything you need to know about copywriting for ecommerce, including writing for product pages, collection landing pages, and more.
Copywriting is the art of getting the feeling, and idea of your product, service, or business across in a way that reflects your brand’s vision and values. Regardless of if a customer is looking at a billboard, has been fed an ad on meta, or has even made it to your site, your copy is going to be one of the first things they subconsciously notice, so you want to make sure it’s converting.
Here’s an inconvenient truth about ecommerce that probably doesn’t sit well with copywriters.
On average, only 20% of webpage copy gets read.
That might be because ecommerce is rife with sub-par, boring copy, which doesn’t exactly inspire the reader, but the point remains - a lot of what you write is not getting read. So, regardless of how brilliant your writing is, if it’s not captivating audiences it’s not only unlikely to be read, it’s especially unlikely to be acted upon.
This means that your copy needs to grab the user’s attention, get them hooked, and reel them in. Creating high-converting ecommerce copy is not easy. It requires deep customer insights, persuasive storytelling, and a whole lot of testing and iteration.
We all understand that copywriting is an instrumental part of ecommerce, and the wider marketing sphere in general, but the more visually-focused of us may see it as secondary when compared to design work. This could not be further from the truth, as ecommerce copywriting, especially when it’s done well, presents your brand with a ton of value.
In its simplest form, your ecommerce store’s copy has a functional value, in that it tells your customers information about your products and services. Whilst we highly doubt we’re breaking new ground with you here, letting your customers know things about your products, services, and your business is a near necessity for you to make any sales at all.
Just as a skilled salesperson uses words to sell, the copy used across your ecommerce store is instrumental in grabbing a customer’s attention, guiding them through a store, and ultimately getting them to check out. Once your marketing has done its job and customers are on the site, it’s time for clear copywritng to help get them across the line.
This is where we see most brands, who’ve maybe not prioritised copywriting previously, first dip their toe into the discipline. Copywriting is not something you can directly measure - but your SEO definitely is.
In order to compete with, not just your immediate competitors but hopefully commerce giants such as Amazon, you need to boost those oh-so enticing organic search rankings. In order to rank higher, you need to include those key search terms in your website’s copy, and do so in a way that seems natural.
Every time a customer interacts with your marketing, website, or with your products, they’re given a touchpoint that will build their perception of your brand. And what touchpoint do they encounter more frequently than your copy?
This is all to say that, when nailed, your copy is going to drive up your brand experience, whilst simultaneously increasing your conversion rate and your organic search rankings, all in service of bringing more sales to your business.
Your website’s homepage is the virtual storefront for your business. It should not only present an attractive, branded look, but it should also highlight your best products, current sales and promos, and other brand messaging.
For most brands, their homepage’s copy will grow out of their brand standards and style guide. The basic written content of this page may not need to change over time, but it should work in tandem with your visual content and page design to improve user experience and conversion rates.
If product pages are your sales floors, then landing pages are your virtual sales associates, guiding customers in the right direction. Landing pages are less concerned with relaying every possible detail, but getting the key information across quickly, and inviting a customer to explore further.
Before a customer has an opportunity to learn about the specific details of an individual product, you can let them know the details of a product category or collection through a concise collection description.
Product pages are to your ecommerce store what a sales floor is to a physical one, with product descriptions acting as your virtual salespeople. Well-written product descriptions are a vital resource to your business, as one of the primary things that will dissuade a customer from purchasing is insufficient information about a product. Whilst you could plainly list all of the features of your product, a written product description gives you an opportunity to tell a story around your product, inform customers as to how it will benefit them, and remove all hesitation they may have in adding it to their cart.
A good route is to use sensory language to evoke the feelings and experiences your product provides. And to do it all while staying true to your brand voice and the way your customers actually speak.
Unlike product or collection pages About Us Pages are one of the few pages on your website dedicated exclusively to selling your brand. They’re instrumental in switching a customer's thoughts from “I would like to buy XXX” to “I would like to buy from XXX.”
What makes you different from other online retailers they find on Amazon? Why should customers feel good about choosing to shop with your ecommerce business? When customers are able to emotionally connect with the mission and values of your brand, they’ll be much more likely to come back to you and purchase again.
About us pages can take many forms. Whether they be biographies from your business founders, mission statements or something else, as long as they’re telling a compelling story, they’re doing a good job.
If we think of ecommerce copywriting as similar to an in person sales pitch, then there are a few things we need to establish off the bat.
Ecommerce Copywriters can get hung up on using extravagant language that paints an abstract picture of a product or service. That’s cool, but a customer just wants to know what the benefits of a product are. Customers want to read ecommerce copy that flows naturally, with few interruptions. Your words should describe benefits, making the points clear to the customer.
And this is true of your business too. Selling is simply more important than anything else. So we need to prioritise customers from all walks of life, being able to understand our copy.
This is not to say that your ecommerce copy should be boring, or uninspiring, just that it should be easily read. Rely on simple sentence structures that use as few words as necessary, whilst getting your information across.
Ecommerce copywriting, especially on collection and product pages, is there to inform & guide the customer, not reinforce your brand. Whilst you ideally do both at the same time, your customers want those key pieces of information displayed to them plainly. So you need to highlight product features, sales and discounts, shipping and return policies and do so plainly.
The more you use words that elicit positive emotions from your customers, the more likely you are to get a higher conversion rate. At the same time, you want to be careful that you’re not just stuffing these words wherever you can on your pages. Instead, try to incorporate these overall sentiments into your style of copywriting.
The reverse is true of negative emotions. Whilst we may assume that talking about problems a product will solve would be beneficial, it seems that most customers want to focus on the positive impacts of your product, not dwell on the problems that they’re facing without it too much.
The flip side of this is that anger is just as powerful of an emotion as joy or excitement, and can get customers more intimately involved with your products or services. Anger, or similar emotions are especially powerful in CTAs, such as “don’t settle for less” or “Click here to stop XXX,” - the lesson here is to not be boring,
Whilst copy is required to direct and inform a customer of your products and services, it is shown that, as you continue to add more and more words to your site, your conversion rate actually drops.
Any more than 300 words seems to be a bit of a tipping point for ecommerce landing pages, where customers will start to bounce from your site more frequently. So, try to keep your landing pages and product descriptions relatively short and sweet so as to not overstay your welcome.
The best ecommerce collection and product descriptions aren't collection & product descriptions, they’re outcome descriptions. They’re focused, not on the specifics of a product, but of what benefits the product will give them.
For example, let’s look at the details of a leather biker jacket. Whilst said jacket may be made from corrected grain leather, have contrast stitching etc.. a customer is more interested in how the jacket has a rugged biker feel, and how it will make them feel like a rugged biker too.
This exists on a scale of course. Those higher price point products are going to have to rely on this more and more, as cheaper products will be bought just because someone needs the product in question.
On the other hand customers won’t buy an expensive dress because they need a dress, it’s more about the experience itself and the status that comes from it.
Covering this one last as many ecommerce stores won'tt have people dedicated to handling their sales. But if you do, then it’s invaluable information freely available to you.
The best sales people are said to have a 50% chance at making any sale, meaning if someone comes in for a 1 on 1 consultation, that salesperson has a good chance of converting them. Imagine if your copy could do that. Involving your sales people who are selling the products in a live situation, is going to massively help your copy.
Remember that 20% metric we mentioned before?
If you want to ensure that more of your copy gets read in the first place, you need to be making it easy to read. Just as customers don’t always want a sales pitch when they’re just browsing in a store, they don’t want to be greeted with walls and walls of text when they’re browsing your ecommerce store.
This is where looping back with your design team is key. At what point is there too much copy on a page from a design perspective? Could you potentially use bullet points in place of a big paragraph? Anything that makes your copy easier for a customer to read at their own pace is key.
As we said before, we could give you a 20 step guide to writing copy that converts, laying out each and every step you should take, with a ton of examples lumped in there too.
Following that wouldn’t guarantee even a 1% increase in conversion rate (assuming you had copy in place beforehand).
Keep in mind your unique audience, what products your online store is selling. You can use this data as inspiration to test new variations on your copy and see how they impact your ecommerce metrics and customer analytics. Even something that on paper shouldn’t work, might do wonders for your site, so don’t be scared to get your fingers dirty.
Want to work with us to improve your ecommerce copywriting and conversion rate optimisation? Contact us!
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