When product descriptions is worth the effort

The advice here is unglamorous, which is probably why it gets skipped. Product descriptions is not free, and pretending otherwise leads to bad decisions.

Content is the part of a project most likely to be underestimated and most likely to delay a launch. The version that survives contact with a real deadline is the simple one.

When it is worth it

Lead with the benefit, support with the specification. There is a version of this that is over-engineered, and it is worth avoiding. Write the reasoning down alongside the decision, because the reasoning is what changes first.

When it is not

If nothing downstream depends on it and nobody is complaining, it can wait. None of that requires a large budget, only a decision and someone to own it.

How to decide

Answer the question that stops the purchase. In practice this is a scheduling problem more than a technical one. It rarely shows up as a line item, which is exactly why it slips.

How to tell if yours is fine

Writing for the web is largely an editing job: the first draft is always longer than it needs to be. Three things worth confirming about product descriptions before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Lead with the benefit, support with the specification — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

If you are not sure where your systems currently stand on this, it takes us about an hour to find out.