Savvy shoppers are seeking the facts before parting with their hard earned cash. Product descriptions can provide essential information on everything from fabric feel, features and benefits to styling tips and inspiration. Creatively, product descriptions are an opportunity to connect with customers and elevate the online experience. Each one should be unique to the product and (if desired) oozing with brand personality!
What makes a good product description?
Shoppers will be reading your product descriptions (or at least 87% of them!). So, ensuring your brand’s tone of voice (TOV) rings true through the words is rule number one. Consistent TOV across all areas of your website will strengthen your brand, make the shopping experience more enjoyable and encourage customer loyalty.
You’ll notice when shopping online that brands strike a balance between three key contributors within their product descriptions:
- Facts and features
All the important stuff! What the customer is actually getting for their money, such as: Fabric composition and feel, fit and style, pattern, color, sustainability credentials, functionality (e.g. pockets, waterproof, zips, hoods). - Inspiration
Storytelling elements such as outfitting or lifestyle associated scenarios and tips. Suggestions on how you’ll feel wearing or using the product. “Pair these floaty, wide-leg trousers with your favorite sandals for the perfect ‘beach to bar’ look.” or “The hard-wearing yet soft cotton will keep you cool and comfortable, this shirt is a layer you can rely on - whatever the adventure.” - Personality
Anything that speaks directly to the customer. This can be a great opportunity for brands to have fun with their tone of voice (if appropriate!). Cheeky humor, questions, inside jokes, or just talking to customers like you’re in the changing rooms together. “Looks good on you, babe!”
A brand’s unique recipe of the above is squeezed into one or two punchy paragraphs, often followed by bullet points that round up the facts to help customers get to key information quickly.
Seems simple, right?
The product description problem
Scale.
Copywriters can often be faced with 100s of new lines per week. Each one demanding their undivided attention and creative skills in order to release products into the e-commerce world with accurate and informative titles and descriptions, all tinged with a flourish of brand flair.
The creatives responsible for product descriptions also often handle the maintenance or creation of product attribute tags and setting categories within their product information management software (PIM). This vital step adds product features as metadata to ensure they’re accurately categorized for filtering, easily searchable and available for personalization.
This can be time intensive work, even for experienced copywriters, pulling their skills away from other impactful work.
Product description potential with AI
Artificial intelligence tools can now be used to detect product features from images and generate tags, titles, and descriptions automatically. What’s more, those descriptions can then be translated with a single click depending on your markets around the globe. Integrating this tool with your post-production workflow and image editing with Pixelz gives you the power to review, edit, and approve product descriptions, tag,s and visuals on one platform. While it can dramatically reduce workload and improve time to market, those familiar with AI know it’s not just a ‘set it and forget it’ solution. So let’s take a look at some of the pros and cons of using AI to write product descriptions.
Pros:
- AI can provide a great starting point
Instead of working with (or staring at) a blank page, you have content to edit and draw inspiration from. - Quicker time to market
Less time writing from scratch, categorizing and tagging products, more time uploading new lines! - Streamlined workflow
Saving time and resources on product descriptions allows your copywriters to focus on other, potentially more impactful work. - Improved SEO ranking
AI’s advanced algorithms can be designed to generate SEO-optimized product descriptions, rich with keywords and phrases to improve visibility and drive sales. - Multilingual
A simple click is all it takes to translate!
Cons:
- Tone of voice
AI-generated copy can be… let’s say, easy to spot! And people are wising up to its quirky and often repetitive vocabulary. Aside from the telltale signs of AI copywriting and lack of creativity, it will also lack your brand’s way with words. You’ll need to edit to add that human touch. - Inaccuracies
64% of shoppers have returned items due to inaccurate product descriptions. AI may misinterpret a product's use or describe its features entirely wrong. These tools are seriously advanced but don’t let the potential for mistakes go unchecked! - Lack of Emotion
AI lacks human experience. It doesn’t understand what evokes emotion and how, so it will miss opportunities to weave real life or inspirational scenarios into your product descriptions. - Sensitivity to society
Understanding the cultural and social nuances of language is a very human thing. AI algorithms will speak in matter-of-fact ways about potentially sensitive subjects that can be misleading or inappropriate.
Best practices when working with AI-generated product descriptions
- Spot the signs
Take the time to learn the language of your AI tool. Figure out what it does well, where it struggles and the quirky language it chooses when it’s trying too hard! - Edit, Edit, EDIT!
Generative AI is no use in the real world without a human touch. Ensure clear inputs are fed into the tool, edit the output for accuracy, weave in creativity and add tone of voice to work successfully with AI product descriptions. - Don’t assume it’s a one click solution
AI product descriptions are a timesaving tool, not the end result. You need copywriting skills in-house to drive and manage the tool. View AI descriptions as the jump off point for creating perfectly crafted descriptions quickly and easily - not as the end result!
Want to learn more about how AI product descriptions can help your brand reduce time to market and boost performance? Click here.