Good Product Descriptions: Where Online Stores often fail

Speed is everything. Whether in procurement, service, or delivery, online store operators must be quick to meet today's customer expectations. Anyone who slips up in one of the numerous disciplines will be punished. Poor reviews, lousy product descriptions, or even public criticism on social media are often the result. And once your reputation is ruined, it is very difficult to regain the favor of your customer base. That's why online retailers place great importance on providing their customers with first-class service.

However, one core element of every online store often leads a shadowy existence: target group-oriented, informative, and conversion-boosting product texts. For many e-commerce providers, first-class product descriptions are more of a hindrance than a sales accelerator.

Products have to be added to the online store quickly, because if you don't have new products in your portfolio fast enough, you'll lose sales. This means that product descriptions often take a back seat. Many online store operators are happy if they have images available. As a result, online retailers struggle with these three major challenges when it comes to product descriptions:

1. Poor quality product descriptions

Producing good product descriptions and launching them in a timely manner is not just a question of cost, but also requires a well-thought-out procurement process. Although online store operators often employ their own copywriters or even have an entire department responsible for content production, at the end of the day, fresh content is always in short supply. This regularly leads to a decline in the quality of product descriptions. All too often, interested online customers are fobbed off with bullet point lists that are incomprehensible and irrelevant to search engines.

And online store operators who cannot afford or do not want to have their own content department like to purchase copy from text agencies. These brokers often attract customers with low prices and also promise fast production and SEO-quality. The reality is often different. Competent and target group-oriented product descriptions are neither available at bargain prices nor do the copies perform well in search engines. How could they?

2. Incomplete and outdated product descriptions

When students, housewives, househusbands, or part-time workers—often referred to as the crowd by text agencies—copywrite en masse under time pressure, they quickly lose sight of the essentials. Important features, functional descriptions, and, above all, the utility value of a product often fall by the wayside. They are not recognized due to a lack of technical expertise. This is not meant in a negative way. Rather, it is due to the circumstances. The quality of product descriptions correlates with time, money, and expertise.

And it even happens that product descriptions from a previous model are recycled. Before a new product has any text at all, the text from the previous model is used as a stopgap. Of course, it would be better to highlight the advantages of the new product in the text.

3. The duplicate content trap

It gets even worse: some online store operators resort to using marketing text provided free of charge by the manufacturer. With disastrous consequences.

Let's put this to the test. Let's take an excerpt from any manufacturer's product description and run a Google search.

The result is alarming: over 3,200(!) hits are displayed, including a considerable number of online stores. Any individuality and uniqueness falls by the wayside here—many web shops sink into a sea of identical search results.

We can deduce three things from this example:

The use of marketing text in online stores robs web shop operators of any chance of positioning themselves and addressing their target group individually.

Automated text generation releases the content handbrake

The tension between quickly created content on the one hand and high-quality content on the other seems irreconcilable. And in fact, investing more staff, money, and time does little to help. This inevitably has a negative impact on sales and speed to market. However, all these challenges can be solved by automated text generation, for example with ContentNaicer.

Based on existing product data and attributes, product descriptions can be generated in real time. Think of it this way: once ContentNaicer is configured, not only will all existing items be described in one fell swoop, but so will all products that are added to the range in the future. The same applies to recurring content such as news, reports, or analyses.

ContentNaicer knows no time constraints, never takes vacations, and is never sick. When needed, it generates SEO-relevant and unique text for your target group in the quality and style you specify.

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