Original content and the Google Panda Update

[eunaneunan]

We are an online furniture store with about 1300 products on the site, and we mostly use the catalogue descriptions for the product.

Recently I have been reading about One Way Furniture:

http://ecommerceprnews.com/e-commerce_articles/2011/03/one-way-furniture-shifts-toward-quality-content-after-google-panda-update-201928.htm

They are a big american online furniture which seemed to have lost about a 3rd of there traffic due to being punished in the panda update.  Now it seems they are blaming the fact they use they use catalogue descriptions for the product (like us), and now they are going to rewrite all their product descriptions.

We are a small company and rewriting 1300 products (meaningfully) is no small task.  Looking at our own traffic we have taken a small slump since feb after about 18 months of general increased month on month traffic ( bar seasonal dips and boost), but we didn't have a "fall of the cliff" like One Way Furniture.  But have been expanding into other areas (and there for new keywords), so we had expected to be increasing our traffic.

So the question is, how important is unique content for all our products? is it worth all the time and money to fix all the pages?  Our plan is to make sure our category pages (and there for landing pages) have unique content, would that be enough on its own, or are the product pages damaging the site over all?

[EGOL]

I know of a small company (three employees) that sells in a niche area of sporting goods.  A few years ago they decided to rewrite thousands of product descriptions with SEO in mind and to give them a lot more detail for buyers who are unable to handle the product before buying.

It was a huge project and took one person almost a year.... but it was like finding the secret sword.

In a lot of the areas where I succeed, it happens because I am willing to do the things that others are not.

[eunaneunan]

I meant to say that there is of course the added benefit of good products descriptions for the customers.

Thanks for the reply and the real life example