Tips For Optimizing Your Product Descriptions

Product descriptions are a vital part of your success as an online seller. Designers spend an enormous amount of effort to make sure that our patterns launch with the right titles and descriptions…but how often do you check back in with your patterns once they are live on your selling channels? Crafting the perfect description doesn’t end once you make your listing live for the first time. It’s important to regularly check in with your products and ask a few key questions to make sure you’re on the right track, not only for the current listing but future ones too. If your sales are sluggish you may want to refresh your product listings because that could be a big part of why. This is your nudge to give your product descriptions a refresh and level up your selling channels!

If you want a refresher on the basics of what makes a great product description you can check out our handy product upload checklist. 

This guide will help you make sure you’re writing product descriptions that sell. We’ll cover tips for search engine optimization and how to apply it to your product descriptions with the goal of improving your conversion rate. By asking yourself these questions, you'll be able to create product descriptions that entice customers and increase your sales!

SEO, or search engine optimization, which is the process of improving the ranking of a website on search engines. You can optimize your product listing content, structure, and on-page elements like titles, image alt text, and product descriptions. When a website ranks higher on search engines, there is a higher chance that people will find it when they are looking for specific keywords or phrases. This can result in more traffic and more sales for small businesses. This is also true for product listings on marketplaces like Etsy, Ravelry, and LoveCrafts.

Let’s start by reviewing your pattern listings and seeing which titles are working for you. Adding more descriptive language can make a big impact on sales. Rather than saying "knitted beanie" to describe your pattern, try saying "Knitting Pattern for a Ribbed Winter Beanie". 

It's important to remember that you're competing against similar products for customers. A product titled "knitted beanie" is competing for views against every other product titled "knitted beanie" on the marketplace. As a result, your product descriptions need to be well-written and convincing in order to stand out from the crowd and show customers why they should select to buy YOUR pattern. 

By adding persuasive copy into your titles you are able to pull in a more specific pool of customers and provide valuable information to them right off the top.

Writing in an easy-to-read style with short sentences and paragraphs is key not only to bring clarity to your customers but for boosting your SEO too! Shorter paragraphs are better for SEO purposes. It's important to be clear, concise, and focus on highlighting the benefits of your product. 

Referring to our “Knitting Pattern for Ribbed Winter Beanie” above, you may say something like:

This is a beginner-friendly pattern for a cozy ribbed winter beanie. It works up in the round and has a meditative repeat stitch.

Or you might say…

The Ribbed Winter Beanie Knitting Pattern works up in the round and is great for beginners. It uses DK-weight yarn and the pattern has multiple sizes available.

In each of these examples, you are giving both clear and concise information while adding value to the customer on why your pattern works for them.

Try looking at your description with fresh eyes or better yet, get a friend to read through the description for you! Would your wording make sense to someone who knows nothing about what you created? Does it tell a clear story? Nobody knows your products better than you do. Just make sure that your creativity isn’t getting lost in translation to your customer.

Check your alt text and use your image descriptions to help make your products more accessible and illustrate its features! Some selling channels will automatically create alt text for your images and others will allow you to write them yourself! 

Think about when you type in a search in Google and select the “images” option! Using alt text is an often overlooked win-win for sellers. Making your patterns more accessible allows more makers to support your work. 

On top of being the right thing to do, it's also smart! Search engines take alt text into account, and it's yet another opportunity to describe what makes your products unique without making your titles longer. 

If you sell through multiple selling channels then you know how challenging it can be to keep your descriptions consistent. Even when copying and pasting your description you have to be prepared to make adjustments for each selling channel's guidelines. From word count to formatting it can be challenging to keep it all straight and things often get lost in the process. 

We know this can be tedious when you sell across multiple selling channels, but it is a vital step to achieving more sales. 

Uploading your patterns through your gosadi account will allow you to edit a pattern in one place and then send it out to multiple selling channels in a few clicks. We’ll do the heavy lifting of making sure the information you’ve input goes to the right places in the correct format. You won’t have to worry about editing your pattern multiple times. However, you can do that with gosadi too! 

You’ll have the option to change up the wording of a pattern across the board but you can also make pattern-specific changes if let's say your Ravelry audience responds differently from your LoveCrafts audience to the same pattern. We’ve made gosadi to work for you!

We hope this inspires you to take a second, third, and forth look at your current listings. You don’t need to revisit your patterns every day but checking in a few times a year is a great way to make sure that you’re staying on track. 

Remember that there’s always room for improvement. Using eye-catching descriptive language, making sure you’re being clear and concise, strengthening your Alt text, and focusing on cross-channel consistency are all easy ways to give your listings the refresh they deserve!