What to do when writing unique product descriptions is impractical?

[gcdtechnologies]

Hi Guys,

Obviously in an ideal world all product descriptions would be high quality and unique. But do you ever have a client who you know they'll be totally impractical for?

For example, one of my clients is a niche book store with 10,000s of products. There are only two members of staff. They currently C+P the blurb. I would love to recommend that they write unique copy for all their books, but considering the books have a low retail value and a fairly short shelf life, I doubt that unique descriptions would be worth the ROI.

My initial thoughts are:

• Identify the high priority books/best sellers and write new product descriptions for them
• Encourage more customers to leave on-page product reviews

Can anyone recommend any better solutions?

[JakubMovic]

This two are good. I would try to find bloggers (followerwonk) writing about books, and ask them to leave a review about their favorite book at this store. It should be simple to get a nice scale.

Next step can be organize contest for best book review. Books as awards, and best reviews you can use as deafult to that product.

If some new ideas will come to my mind, i'll let you know!

btw: this is good topic for brainstorm.

[gcdtechnologies]

Thanks Jakub! Two really great ideas

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Alice,

I think you are on the right track, identifying top selling books for which it will be a priority to write unique copy. The key here will be setting up a manageable task list. Whether the owners can handle writing 5 new descriptions a week or 25, figure out what the golden number is that they can achieve without feeling overwhelmed. Progress on a project like this typically has to be modestly paced, because the inventory is so large. Can they, perhaps, hire a copywriter to help them with some, if not all, of the work?

[gcdtechnologies]

Thanks Miriam, they're a bit reluctant to hire a copywriter because of the relatively short shelf life of many of the books. I think it's a matter of prioritising and working through as many high priority descriptions as possible. Thanks for the advice!