When selling online, business owners don’t have the benefit of a beautiful storefront or helpful employees to push their product; a customer’s opinion is only formed based on how informative and eye-catching the product listing is. It is important to make a good first impression with an item’s title and main image, but equally as important is the product description, which is the key to convincing customers that what you’re selling is best. 

Here’s how to make sure your product listing has your merchandise leaping off virtual store shelves. 

Keywords

Paying attention to keywords is a large part of promoting any sort of product online. The more your product is search engine optimised the more likely it is to appear in basic search results. This means that each item should have a few keywords that best describe it that are placed throughout the product listing. 

There is such a thing as overloading keywords though, which can make a product listing look like spam. These keywords should be spaced out within the description so that they are still pleasant to read while also triggering the website’s search algorithm. 

Remember, write for humans, not the algorithm. If you engage in “keyword stuffing”, Google is onto you.

Title

The title of a product should include the most important of the keywords describing the item without being overly long (again in order to avoid looking like spam). A title should be straight to the point, as often shoppers’ eyes are simply skimming over a results page. Also, unless your brand is a household name that people would often search for on its own then it should never go first within a title, as it will decrease the search engine optimization of your product. 

Put simply, Apple can get away with starting their product listings with their name. Your brand may not be so lucky. 

Visuals

The main image in a listing should always be the product against a white background. This makes it clear what item you are selling and is easy to see when looking through a results page that has many images on it. However, the more visuals of a product the better. The best things to include are images of the item at different angles, as well as pictures or even videos of the item in use. 

Don’t be cheap when it comes to photos, either. Put in the effort for good lighting and consider a professional photographer. You may also want to put a watermark on your image, to stop scammers from using it to sell inferior products. If people see your product image floating around a bunch of different pages, they’ll write you off as a scam, as well!

Product Description

The main selling points of your product should appear in the bullet points that are listed at the top of the item’s page; these are the key item features. Most customers will simply scan through these, so they should be easy to read and to the point. This is where you want to list the most important features of your product, as smaller details can be placed in the larger description further down the page. If you want to draw attention to a certain word, consider putting it in all caps, though this method should not be overused or it can become hard to read. 

When writing a more in depth product description, large, chunky paragraphs should be avoided. Listing accurate details of a product is important, but part of selling is telling the customer why they need your product. Make sure to highlight an item’s benefits, and let the customer know how owning this product will make their lives better. 

Conclusion

Your product may be the best in the world, but if you don’t put the effort into selling it, your customers will pass you by. But with good images, strong writing and a little bit of search engine optimization, you can hook your target audience.