With demand for online shopping skyrocketing, brands will need great eCommerce copywriting to stand out from the competition and drive sales in a post-COVID world.
Is your eCommerce copywriting driving sales?
The ultimate purpose of your eCommerce copy is to persuade online shoppers to buy your products.
But excellent copywriting can also help build your brand, improve your online visibility, increase your online customer base, enhance brand identity and drive profitability.
Which begs the question: is your current eCommerce copy driving sales and performing as well as it could be? You could be spending a great deal of money on copywriting now that isn’t giving you a good ROI (Return on Investment) because it’s not achieving enough of the above.
Our team of in-house conversion copywriters have extensive combined retail expertise and a deep understanding of how eRetail platforms work. They explore what motivates your shoppers and use storytelling that taps into the emotions of shoppers to entice them into making purchases.
The result is best-in-class eCommerce copywriting that makes your products stand out from the competition.
What does great eCommerce copywriting look like?
Great eCommerce copywriting will shine a light on your brand or product’s point of difference or USP. It will emphasise that uniqueness and make it a more compelling proposition than its equivalents.
Storytelling is highly effective. It doesn’t just showcase the product’s benefits but also draws on human motivations and evokes sensations that excite potential purchasers. It demonstrates the product’s true value in terms of how it will potentially solve a consumer’s problem or improve their lives in some way. Storytelling creatively and memorably engages shoppers and prompts them into action in ways that bland benefits-led copy simply can’t compete with.
Is your product responsibly sourced? Then tell people about it. Is it great to share with friends and family? Then put that idea in consumers’ minds.
See the image below for an example of how we brought out these qualities and so much more when writing eCommerce copy for KitKat Senses Salted Caramel Box.
Your storytelling will also go hand-in-hand with your SEO and keyword strategy to drive your search, differentiate your product and help make it more visible than your competitors’ products. It’s vital that your copy appeals both to consumers and the eRetailer platform algorithms that make products more discoverable.
Your copy therefore needs to read well to the human eye. And it must strengthen SEO to achieve enhanced search results and product visibility on eRetailer platforms and external search engines.
These are just a few copywriting tools that all have a hugely important part to play as the popularity of eCommerce grows at incredible speed.
Why eCommerce copywriting is now more important than ever
As highlighted in some of our other blogs, global demand for online shopping in certain categories – such as FMCG, Health & Beauty, and Electronics[1] – has skyrocketed during the COVID-19 quarantine[2].
Short-term habits developed during the lockdown will solidify and become long-term, the result being that the increase in the popularity of online shopping will continue after the crisis is over.
People that have been forced into buying their groceries and other essential items online will realise how easy and convenient it is to shop this way[3].
Others will question why they ever went looking for products in crowded shops when they can easily research and buy them from the comfort of their own sofa instead. This means that, in light of these changing shopping habits and huge numbers of new online shoppers, there is a golden opportunity for brands to maximise their eCommerce growth.
Your eCommerce copywriting should help you do just that by making your product stand out from the crowd, become more visible, enhance shopping experiences and tempt consumers into not only making purchases but also coming back for more.
Copywriting Gap Analysis – the basics
One of the most important steps we take when a client commissions our copywriting services is to perform a Gap Analysis of their existing copywriting assets.
Does the client have all the copywriting assets that a successful eCommerce product page needs? Your copy will also need to be of a consistently high standard, be ‘on message’ and strengthen brand identity.
Will the client’s product titles stand out from similar products and make them more searchable? Those titles need to be immediately engaging, as there are only a few short seconds in which to capture the attention of typically impatient online shoppers.
Are there basic spelling or grammatical errors? Is the content set out in a logical way that’s easy for the consumer to follow and understand? Does the page provide enough product information, such as including ingredients?
It’s also incredibly important to differentiate your product from those of your competitors and strengthen your brand proposition. Is your product highly sustainable and ethically sourced? Unique in some way? Then your copy will definitely need to highlight that.
Consider also the variants of your product, and how Amazon and other platforms will reduce your search rankings if they find duplicate text and repetitions in your product range copy. We will provide differentiated copy to ensure this doesn’t happen – and delight your customers.
Creating stories that drive sales
Crucially – and this is where the talents of our team come to the fore – does the existing copy really tell the product’s story and entice consumers into buying it?
What inspired the product? What will it do for the buyer? Will it improve their lives in some way? What makes it stand out from the crowd?
Online shoppers can’t physically touch, taste or smell products they find on the online shelf, so how do you write in such a way as to create these sensations and excite consumers?
See the Antica Gelateria del Corso product description below to see how our brilliant team of eCommerce copywriters use carefully selected words to craft a wonderful impression of what it’s like to enjoy one of these delicious treats and to highlight the heritage and story behind them to create a truly compelling – and irresistible – description.
Your copy will also need to effectively incorporate SEO to make your content more discoverable while maintaining conceptual storytelling.
Our role is to learn about your customers and what motivates them, tap into their emotions and leverage all those insights to create great product stories that will increase your customer base – and, in turn, your sales.
In conclusion – great copywriting is vital to future eCommerce success
The popularity of online shopping was rapidly rising before COVID-19 and is now soaring[4].
It goes without saying that there is, as a consequence, a great eCommerce opportunity for brands to maximise their growth. But it also means that there will be even more competition online than ever before.
For your brand to win online in this new world, it’s therefore vital that it invests in creating great content – like conversion copywriting that creates a competitive edge.
Great eCommerce copywriting will drive online sales growth by enhancing organic search through effective use of the right strategic keywords, creating a strong connection between your brand and consumers, and ensuring that you differentiate yourself.
Contact us to find out how our copywriting team can drive eCommerce sales, or to learn how your teams can improve their copywriting through our H.O.W. Capability Building programs.
This article was written and created by the eBusiness Institute team.
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Sources
[1] https://moz.com/blog/4-ways-copywriting-can-help-your-ecommerce-conversion-rates
[2] https://neilpatel.com/blog/write-ecommerce-product-page/
[3] https://ebusinessinstitute.com/crisis-opportunity-time-to-strengthen-your-digital-presence/
[4] https://www.nielsen.com/uk/en/insights/article/2020/covid-19-uk-quarantine-living-preparations-lead-massive-spike-fmcg-sales/
