Signs it is time to revisit product descriptions
There is no clever trick in this one, just a handful of decisions worth making deliberately. A few signals that product descriptions is due some attention.
Content is the part of a project most likely to be underestimated and most likely to delay a launch. The failure mode is not doing it wrong, it is doing it once and assuming it stays done.
The signals
- Nobody can say when it was last reviewed
- The answer depends on who you ask
- Lead with the benefit, support with the specification
- Manufacturer copy is duplicate content
How we handle it
Answer the question that stops the purchase. The reasoning matters more than the rule, because the rule has exceptions. It rarely shows up as a line item, which is exactly why it slips.
In practice
Pages that answer a real question outlive pages written to fill a slot in a sitemap. Three things worth confirming about product descriptions before you move on:
- Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
- Manufacturer copy is duplicate content — and you know whether that is true here
- There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped
Worth checking on your own setup before it becomes someone else's problem to fix.