Copying Webstore Descriptions and things to think about
Writing good webstore descriptions to accompany your web products is an important element in selling product online, as it isn't just how the items are presented to the customer, it also affects how easily they find the products or your webstore in the first place.
Internet search engines constantly browse and crawl over websites to then produce search results for anyone searching online.
This advice sheet further explains how to write those web descriptions and what to look out for in creating them, so it's highly recommended to have a look there as well:
It's often very convenient and quick to copy over the descriptions from other websites, or text that you find online regarding the product you wish to sell. However, there are a number of things to consider, and check for, in copying this text.
Look and Feel
The descriptions used in products, along with the way menus and images are laid out, are a huge factor in how the webstore looks and feels.
The single most important element in this, regardless of what wording is used, and what styles are applied, is that there is a unified / coherent feel to the website. This means there should be regularity or a standard in what Font styles/types are used, and their sizing.
Copying descriptions from another website, will frequently bring in the aesthetic choices that those websites have made:
- Font styles used and the Font Colour
- Font sizing in different areas
- Whether they are Upper Case, Lower Case or a mixture.
- There are even options for adding different colours behind the text, especially in Tables of information, which will include border boxes, their thickness, and positions.
A website or page that uses a big mixture of different styles, sizes and letter casing ends up looking amateurish or ugly at best, and downright chaotic at worst.
For letter casing in Product Names, there're options and a tool in Retailer that can help with updating them, but not the Web Descriptions. Click HERE for information.
It's often a good idea, when copying the descriptions to update their Font Styles/Types and Sizes to fit your own choices, and keep these standardized across products. The Rich Text Editor in the Web Description (Retailer Stock Screen -> Extra Details) allows you to do this, just like in Microsoft Word or other document editors.
Additionally, there are options in the TWC weblink that can remove some of these from the product text as it's updated to the website. Click HERE for details on those options.
Wording and Online Searches
While the way the words are shown affects the overall look of the website, the words used and how they're put together can also play an important part in how easily customers may find the web pages, and how well the website ranks in online searches.
Using the web description verbatim from another website, likely places your website below them in priority during a search. In certain situations, if the source website that is copied from begins to get de-prioritized, your website may get brought down with it due to the similarities in your descriptions.
So it can be vitally important that your website develops a unique voice, by describing items in your own words and style. You can do that in the Web Description section in the Retailer Stock Screen, under the Extra Details tab. The Rich Text Editor that it uses contains most of the tools normally found in document editors like Microsoft Word.
Retailer contains integrations that can help you develop your own web descriptions. Learn about these integrations in this video HERE.
Webstore Safety and Reputation
Descriptions taken from outside sources/websites can frequently have coding or links embedded in them. You can see in this article itself how we are able to insert links as words that can be clicked on.
Copying descriptions like this will bring them across to your webstore. This can potentially create a link from your webstore to somewhere else on the internet, which can be a big advantage or a bad association.
This could also bring in legal considerations, if someone has protected their website through using things like trademarks, and now your webstore is connecting to them without permissions, and possibly plagiarising their content.
The text can also contain web code, that runs programs. This can create confusion if the code runs something that isn't from your website or business, and in the worst cases, collect information on your customers for a third party.
So, it's important that the descriptions are checked for any signs of links or coding. You can copy these into something like Notepad or Microsoft Word, before putting them into Retailer. This should let you see if there are strange words and formats, or symbols amongst the text, which you can then remove.
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