In 2024, eCommerce copywriting is a necessity. Already, about one-fifth of global retail consists of digital commerce, meaning that people frequently search for products and information on their devices. Your copywriting is there to attract these search engine users and introduce them to your merchandise.
eBook
20 Best Shopify Apps For Your eCommerce Store
Effective copy interests people while improving search optimization. As you inform potential buyers and nurture them through the sales funnel, it drives conversions.
As the field matures, various trends have arisen. They include AI-driven personalization, the increasing importance of brand storytelling, and real-time data analytics, all of which work to improve the user experience. We’ll walk you through what you need to know about effective copywriting and how you can incorporate it into your site.
1. What Is eCommerce Copywriting?
Copywriting has come a long way since the “big idea” days of the Mad Men era. Today's copy still requires strategy and creativity, but for an eCommerce site, it ultimately boils down to two key factors: brand consistency and SEO.
Both disciplines are equally important, but each requires unique tactics and skills to implement successfully. In this post, you’ll learn action items to improve your eCommerce copywriting, attract new website visitors, and increase conversions.
When used effectively, an eCommerce content strategy helps personalize the user’s experience. It can also attract visitors through more modern search methods, like voice search. Creating material for these users involves building content tailored to particular keywords.
As you develop a robust SEO strategy, you’ll want to combine technical SEO knowledge with compelling storytelling to write material that will resonate with your target audience.
2. Understanding Your Target Audience
Before writing product copy, you should know who will read it. To get started, define your ideal buyer personas and identify the needs or pain points that they want to address.
The tools available to analyze and understand your target audience continue to become more powerful with each passing year. Data-driven insights from tools like Google Analytics can help you track users as they navigate your website, so you’ll know what content they engage with and how they interact with your business before buying. Social media insights can also provide valuable information about people’s demographics, hobbies, and interests. You can then combine this knowledge with lead data from your site to produce thorough buyer personas that will power your long-term strategy.
As you create in-depth buyer personas, you can seize opportunities to develop personalized messaging that will better connect with your leads. The more you get to know potential buyers, the easier it will be to identify what types of content they appreciate, what encourages them to buy, and what they want to know before purchasing. This helps you produce highly customized content and boosts the bottom line.
3. Product Page Optimization
Effective product descriptions directly answer questions and maintain a sense of personality. Remember that your voice and tone should align with your overall brand.
Consider how you might speak to a buyer in an in-person setting. Authenticity and personality on product detail pages can help brands distinguish themselves from big-box online retailers.
In addition to adding personality, be sure to incorporate SEO best practices when creating product detail pages. For example, we recommend including a relevant search keyword in the following areas of each product page:
- Page title
- H1 heading
- Image name
- Alt text
- URL
Be careful not to go overboard with keyword stuffing. Above all else, you should write your page for humans, not search engines. When you embrace this approach to eCommerce copywriting, you’ll follow Google’s SEO recommendations and increase the likelihood of achieving high search rankings.
As you work on product page optimization, take advantage of all the opportunities you have to add details about your items. For example, adding video-based descriptions and using hashtags can help you attract users who look for products through video searches.
Focus on a few key techniques to highlight the value of your products:
- Use concise copy; people don't want to read long passages.
- Show, don’t tell, with benefit-focused copy.
- Integrate customer reviews and user-generated content (UGC) into your product pages to boost authenticity. People trust the word of fellow buyers over pure advertising.
4. FAQ Pages
Frequently asked question pages present one of the most significant opportunities to follow SEO best practices for eCommerce because they directly relate to search queries. When properly implemented, FAQ pages and sections can increase organic website traffic while improving overall user experiences.
We recommend starting the eCommerce copywriting process by listing five to 10 questions that repeatedly show up in customer support inquiries. You can also include obvious questions that you know your customers will have, such as inquiries about shipping and returns.
Once you’ve identified the questions that you want to answer, it’s time to format them appropriately. Use the checklist below to get started:
- Write your question with a clear heading tag. This will typically be an H2 tag if you create a separate FAQ page. However, tagging the question with an H3 or H4 will work as well.
- Write the answer in one or two sentences. If you need more room, we recommend having your answer’s introduction serve as a summary with a more detailed explanation that follows. This can help search engines pull your summaries into search results as “rich snippets.”
We recommend incorporating question-format schema data into your page to increase the likelihood that rich snippets will surface in organic search results. Once you customize the code below, you can place it at the top of your body section:
<script type="application/ld+json”>
{
"@context": "http://schema.org",
"@type": "QAPage",
"mainEntity": {
"@type": "Question",
"text": "Insert Question Name",
"dateCreated": "Insert Publish Date (example: 2019-3-14T20:07Z)",
"answerCount": 1,
"name": "Insert Company Name",
"author": "Insert Author Title",
"acceptedAnswer": {
"@type": "Answer",
"text": "Insert Question Answer.",
"dateCreated": "Insert Publish Date (example: 2019-3-14T20:07Z)",
"URL": "Insert Page URL",
"author": "Insert Author Name"
}
}
}
</script>
Remember to prioritize SEO when you build your FAQ pages. Short-answer questions can provide excellent opportunities to incorporate keywords into a page, boosting your rankings and improving the user experience by providing clear, concise answers to common questions.
To find more questions and topics to cover in your FAQs, consider looking at the “People Also Ask” section in Google results for a question. Google’s related keywords can also help you find terms that you could use to expand your breadth and attract more readers.
5. Category Pages
Category pages create eCommerce copywriting challenges because they rarely include suitable places for copy. However, we’ve found that incorporating select related content can improve a page’s personality and search rankings.
In the example below, West Elm does a good job of including additional text at the bottom of its category pages without going overboard. These paragraphs contain high-value keywords to help the page rank well in search results.
To learn how an athleisure brand benefited from our professional copywriting and email marketing services, read the case study. Effective eCommerce copywriting helped to significantly increase the company’s revenue.
Your category pages offer many opportunities to include keywords that boost search rankings. Including keyword-rich introductions and content blocks on these pages will help your eCommerce content strategy yield better results.
To build engagement with potential buyers, further enhance your pages with short narratives and testimonials. You will draw people in by helping them relate to existing customers, something that encourages them to explore your products.
6. About Pages
Although it may seem like a lesser priority, an “About Us” page offers a fantastic opportunity to highlight what makes your brand unique. People want to know why they should buy from you, and this page allows your brand to say, “This is who we are.”
We recommend keeping the page concise. However, brands should take the time to craft well-constructed stories that tell users about their histories and reasons for being in business. You can also include related content, like explainer or overview videos, to strengthen the user experience.
If you’re unsure where to start, try including a high-level overview of your company, your mission, vision, and key differentiators. List any awards, testimonials, or press mentions.
This page also represents the perfect place for eCommerce brand storytelling that conveys your brand mission and authenticity. Quality storytelling connects you with your audience because they will feel more invested in your business.
Features like team bios, information about the company’s mission, and its value proposition can all help humanize your brand while building trust with customers.
7. Calls to Action (CTAs)
Overall, effective eCommerce copywriting helps capture a buyer’s attention and guide them through the purchase process. High-quality, conversion-focused copywriting not only increases conversion rates but attracts more potential customers through organic search engine optimization.
As you create a page, your call to action needs to be a top priority. Your CTA lets people know how they should respond to your brand and its content. For example, you might have CTAs like:
- Add to cart
- Learn more
- Get started
Each of these examples sends a short, clearly defined message to users, telling them precisely what to do next. You can use A/B testing to compare your CTAs and see what phrases yield the best results.
Conclusion
Effective eCommerce copywriting helps drive conversions by enticing customers and encouraging them to learn more about what you have to offer. Conversion-focused copywriting provides opportunities to use keywords and write informative, high-value text that people respond to and easily find on major search engines.
If you want to learn more about how you can use SEO best practices for eCommerce and copywriting to build your retail store, reach out to us today. You can also download our “20 Best Shopify Apps” eBook to learn about optimizing your online store. Another option is to get started with a free website audit and begin building your copywriting strategy with Groove Commerce today.
