Most e-commerce product copy answers a question nobody asked. It explains what the product is. The customer is standing in front of a photograph of the product — they can see what it is. What they cannot see is whether it is right for them.
The description trap
Description feels safe. It is accurate, it is factual, and nobody gets in trouble for it. So the page fills up with dimensions, materials and feature lists, and the one thing a buyer is actually weighing — will this solve my problem, and will I regret it — goes unaddressed.
A specification sheet is not persuasion. It is the reference you check after you have decided you want something.
What to write instead
The situation, not the object. "Water-resistant to 5 ATM" is a fact. "Fine in the shower, fine in the sea, you do not have to think about it" is the same fact translated into the customer's life. Facts inform; situations sell.
The objection, answered in the copy. Every category has one dominant hesitation. In furniture it is size. In clothing it is fit. In electronics it is compatibility. If the page does not answer that hesitation, the customer leaves to find the answer elsewhere and frequently does not come back.
Who it is not for. This feels counter-intuitive and works extremely well. Telling someone a product is not suited to a particular use makes every other claim on the page more credible, and it removes the buyers who would have returned it anyway.
The goal of a product page is not to describe the product. It is to let the right person recognize themselves in it.
A short test
Take any product page you own and delete every sentence that would still be true if you were selling a competitor's version of the same thing. Whatever survives is your actual copy. On most pages, very little survives — and that is the finding.
Where the words come from
The best product copy is rarely invented. It is collected. The phrases customers use when they call to ask a question, the way they describe the problem before they know your terminology, the comparison they make unprompted — those are the sentences that belong on the page.
This is a large part of why we run a call center alongside the writing. The language that converts is already being spoken to us every day; it just has to be written down.