Soapbox Engage Blog

Have you added, or are you interested in adding an e-commerce store as an innovative source of funding? You’re not alone! An online store for people to shop can be a steady source of year-round revenue for your organization, which can be ideal for nonprofit oranigzations.

There are many platforms that can support your e-commerce store. For example, the Soapbox Engage Shop app allows you to create a customizable shopping experience to sell subscriptions, merchandise, or memberships while storing important customer/donor data in your CRM. Here are top things to consider when choosing an e-commerce platform.

After you’ve chosen an e-commerce platform, it’s time to focus on making whatever you’re selling as enticing as possible. That means you need to write compelling product descriptions that will boost your nonprofit merchandise sales.

Table of Contents

• What is an e-commerce product description?
• How to write strong product descriptions for successful e-commerce

What is an e-commerce product description?

A product description is the marketing copy that explains what a product is and why it’s worth purchasing. It must supply customers with important information about the features and key benefits of your product so they’re moved to make a purchase.

A strong product description will answer the following questions in an engaging way:

• What problems does your product solve?
• What do customers gain from your product?
• What makes it better than the competition?

How to write strong product descriptions for successful e-commerce

1. Know your audience

When writing a product description, you should have your “ideal buyer” in mind. If you try to appeal to too large of a crowd, you’re likely to write a description that is too broad and ends up compelling no one.

With a defined audience, you can decide what is most important to include in the description. You should also write like you’re having a conversation with this person directly. Answer questions they would ask, use words they would use, and make sure to actually use the word “you.”

2. Make the benefits clear

You know the features of your product, and you’ll need to include that in your description. But why is the feature exciting? How is the feature going to benefit your buyer?

This is where knowing your audience is helpful too. What’s in it for your ideal buyer? In what ways will your product will make their life easier/more fun/more interesting? That needs to be communicated in your product description. Use positive adjectives to entice your buyer with the benefits of your product.

3. Tell stories

You likely already know that storytelling is one of the major keys to strong fundraising. Well, that doesn’t change when you’re selling a product! Including stories of people in your descriptions, as opposed to simply talking about features, appeals to your buyer’s emotions and helps them forget they are being sold to.

Here are some guiding questions that can help you come up with stories for your descriptions:

• What inspired creating the product?
• Who is making the product?
• What obstacles did you need to overcome to make the product?
• How was the product tested?

4. Make it easy to read

Extremely long product descriptions aren’t necessary, and you’re likely to lose your buyer if you have too much text. It’s important that your web design encourages visitors to read your product descriptions. You want it to be scannable– short, easy to read, and something that can be skimmed and they’ll still come away with the important information. Using bullet points in your description can help with this!

5. Include social proof

If your buyers don’t know which product to purchase, they’ll look for suggestions about what to buy. Buyers are frequently swayed to buy a product that has the highest rating or number of positive reviews.

Make it easy for folks to leave reviews, and make that content visible with your product descriptions. Most buyers are attracted to buying something popular. Highlight the products that are customer favorites on your website.

6. Remember SEO

Don’t forget to keep your keywords in mind! From a search engine optimisation (SEO) perspective, using the right keywords is going to help bump your pages up in the search rankings.

Including reviews like we suggested in the above tip will help with this as well. Collecting and displaying product reviews bring SEO benefits to your product pages.

7. Set goals

All of the above tips will help you write great product descriptions, but you have to review to make sure it’s working. Decide on a set of metrics to track on your product pages. The Soapbox Engage Shop app makes metric tracking easy, and defining these metrics will help you understand what product descriptions are working best and help you improve underperforming ones.

Common KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to monitor include:

• Conversion rate
• Cart abandonment
• Return rate
• Support inquiries
• Organic search rankings

Product descriptions are incredibly important to the success of your e-commerce store. Your product descriptions can answer questions, tell stories, and speak to your target audience in a way that builds connections. They can also really help boost your page’s ranking in search engines and bring more traffic to your online shop, and subsequently your organization and mission. Use this guide to make sure you’re writing product descriptions that will bring you the most success.

Here are three more blog posts to help you with your fundraising journey:

• 10 Best Practices for Nonprofit E-commerce: We told you all about product descriptions, but maybe you still have more questions about building your e-commerce store in general! This blog post offers best practices for just that.
• 8 Top Online Donation Software Options for Nonprofits: Online donation software comes in all shapes and sizes, and they're designed to address a wide range of needs. This blog walks you through a few top online donation software options for nonprofits to help you select the best one for your unique needs
• How to Plan a Fundraising Event: The Complete Guide: Fundraising events are key parts of a successful fundraising strategy, but planning an event can be an overwhelming process. In this blog post, we have all the information, resources, and tools you need to plan a successful event for your nonprofit.