Are Your Product Descriptions Missing Important Information?

Recently, due to a convergence of events, I have been spending large amounts of my time dealing with written product descriptions.

I have been working with an employee of one of my clients, teaching her how to write effective product descriptions (fortunately, she has a knack) and also teaching her how to include minimal HTML to make the descriptions easier to read (this has been less successful! LOL)

In addition, I have been working on several of my own personal niche sites, writing my own product descriptions based on information provided by the product’s manufacturer.

So, I ask you, if anyone is going to know EVERYTHING about a product, wouldn’t it be the folks who actually make the product?

Well, they may know everything but they don’t seem willing to share it in their product descriptions! And we aren’t talking industrial espionage issues here. We are talking BASIC information about said product!

The rant you are about to read is aimed at both product manufacturers and product retailers .

Have any of you looked, REALLY looked, at your product descriptions?

• Have you checked to see whether your descriptions include the basic and obvious information about your product?

• Have you simply been assuming that anyone searching for your product would already know this information?

Let me give you a couple actual examples from my recent web surfing and then I’ll give you TWO simple but powerful reasons why you need to include obvious information in product descriptions.

One of my niches includes power tools of varying kinds. I love woodworking and my previous career path included woodworking as part of my job description, so this actually isn’t the leap it may seem on the surface.

But, getting back to the subject at hand, I was researching bandsaws online.

Bandsaws are a specialty tool and can be used for either woodworking or metal working. However, in many instances, a bandsaw model is designed to do one or the other, but not both.

To further confuse the issue, bandsaws come in several flavors (or styles) and a couple of the styles are pretty much exclusively either woodworking or metalworking.

In theory, you could argue that a knowledgeable person can often tell whether a bandsaw is a metalworking or wood working model, simply by looking at it and, possibly, by reading the specifications.

But, like most assumptions, this one is fraught with difficulties!

The second common lacking that I noticed was the failure to specify the blade length needed for a specific model of bandsaw. Now, yes, you can argue that bandsaw blade lengths are standardized, but they aren’t easy to remember. A 14 inch bandsaw blade uses a 93 1/2 inch blade.

I’m probably not going to bother spending the brain cells it would take to remember this when I only purchase the saws occasionally. I’d rather just look it up. And, to be sure that I am getting accurate information, it makes sense to look it up by using the bandsaw model in my search.

While the blade length is probably included in the bandsaw’s documentation, it should also be included as part of the online product description or product specifications.

In my previous life I was occasionally the person choosing and ordering new power tools. When I did so, I always purchased multiple blades along with the new saw. Most often, this was simple expediency because I know that the blades would not be available locally.

So why does it make sense to place obstacles in my way. Make it easy for me to purchase the saw I want and, preferably, the correct blades!

Why Your Product Descriptions Need to Include the Obvious

Here are TWO extremely important reasons to include obvious information in a product description.

The first reason is pretty obvious:

1) What if the person is not an experienced user?

The person could be handling purchases for a company or the person could be purchasing a gift for someone.

The second reason is less obvious but is far more critical to your website’s online success:

2) If the information isn’t included in the product description, it probably isn’t available to the search engines – either for site wide search on full internet search.

This can be a long term catastrophe.

Someone searches for woodcutting bandsaw and your product doesn’t appear in the search engine results because the search engines are idiot savants. They can only report what you tell them.

It doesn’t matter if your product is the best known product in that category. If your product doesn’t appear in the search results, the searches will be purchasing the models that do appear!

So, take a moment to carefully peruse your product descriptions. try to look with fresh, ignorant eyes.

Are those product descriptions providing the information needed, either by humans or search engines?