“How do I create a product page that will entice my customer into buying from me?”

As pivotal a question as this is to a business’ online presence, the answers to it are as diverse as the businesses that ask this question. However, regardless of what your business is, it comes down to describing your product in way that will convince a site visitor to become a valuable and loyal customer.

In fact, when you think about it, a good product description boils down to just one thing: the customer. If you have that down, everything else will fall into place. Like this article did, in fact. With the customer as my focal point, a good chunk of this article basically just wrote itself.

1. Characterize Your Buyer Persona

First off: who or what is a buyer persona? To put it in simple terms, a buyer persona typifies your customer-base. But there’s more to a buyer persona than the factors that normally define a target customer-base, i.e. cold, hard statistics and demographics. A buyer persona takes those hard numbers and shapes them into a virtual personality; it makes them an entity with personal tastes, feelings and social behaviors. In building a persona, your market research needs to center around questions that go beyond broad descriptors like age, location, and occupation, such as:

-What kind of websites/blogs do they generally visit?

-What kind of personal or professional challenges do they find themselves facing that your product/service is likely to be an answer to?

-What kind of families did they grow up in? What were their experiences at school?

-What are their tastes in reading, music and other leisure activities?

Hubspot has a handy list of questions that you can use to determine your customer persona. With the buyer persona in place, you’ll find that you can tailor your descriptions in the right tone that appeals to a more precisely targeted audience.

2. The Value Proposition

It’s easy to imagine that simply listing out the various features and controls on that sleek fitness gadget you’ve spent months developing is enough to have fitness freaks clamoring to buy it. Except, that it likely won’t. No one likes to read a generic laundry list of features. Rather, they want to know about your product’s value and benefits over other businesses which offer the same product.

Put it this way: as a customer, a value proposition doesn’t simply answer the question, “Why should I buy this product?” Rather, it’s about, “Why should I buy this product FROM YOU?“

A good place to start is by listing out the features of your product and rendering them into the benefits that they offer. A good value proposition ideally has the following essential features:

-A headline that encapsulates the benefit of the product

-A visual representation of that benefit: an icon/image/video

-A 5-6 line paragraph or 3-4 point bullet list that describes the benefit in detail

Square, a mobile transaction company uses the value proposition to great effect for their product, Magstripe Reader.

3. Brevity, Yes. Wordiness, No.

Say what you will about him, but copywriters can take a lesson from ol’ Ernest Hemingway.

Waxing poetic about your product will put your customers off. Research has shown that 79% of readers tend to scan the page rather than read it word for word. Therefore, product descriptions should be scannable, that is to say, a customer should be able to gain all the information they need about your product within a short time.

-Use headlines and sub-headings to highlight the main points
-Bulleted lists are preferable to wordy paragraphs
-Use images and interactive graphics to complement the text
-Stay away from purple prose and “promo-speak”!

4. Include a Visual Interactive Element

OK, this is not always possible. But, where applicable, it can definitely add value to your product page. A visual element that allows customers to virtually picture or experience what the product does/feels like will increase their chances of purchasing it.

Businesses which offer customizable products can use interactive elements to great success the way BMW does here.

In conclusion, the only limitation to an excellent product page is your imagination. Build your product page with your customer as the focus, not the product.