How to use Reviews to write Product Descriptions (even when there are 26,735 of them)

Whether you are the founder, the one and only marketer, or a copywriter on a team of many, when you use reviews to write a product description you are a copywriter. And as a copywriter, it is your job to craft a narrative that is designed to convert a reader who has never bought from you before into a buyer.

The question is how?

What tools do you have at your disposal? What can you use to create the most compelling version of that product description?

Click here to see a fascinating, unique take on writing a compelling product description

One of the best resources at your disposal is customer reviews. You can use reviews to write product descriptions. Reviews show you what matters to your customers. You see what customers talk about over and over, what they really care about, and find out how they really use your product— in the wild.

Of course, when your product has 26,735 customer reviews (like these Crocs do), who has time to read all of them?

In this article, you’re going to learn how you can find the most relevant, useful, and meaningful parts of those reviews that will help you write product descriptions that convert. It will cover how to:

1. Read: look for recurring, specific, and surprising reviews to use in writing product descriptions
2. Organize the data: identify why they are buying and what pain points they are trying to solve
3. Write the product description: Reflect back on customer sentiment and use reviews to write product descriptions that convert

Read: Look For Recurring, Specific, and Surprising Reviews to Use in Writing Product Descriptions

When you have thousands of reviews, there will be a lot of wasted words. There are going to be reviews that are not even remotely helpful. After all, there are only so many ways you can say “great,” and telling your reader that your product is great is worse than useless. It’s boring.

(This is the part where it would be great to have software that could just suck those reviews in and separate them into useful buckets)

But, since that software isn’t available yet, here’s what you can do instead.

So when you read the reviews, you must read with purpose. In fact, you’re not really going to be reading, you’re going to be scanning.

As you scan, you are focusing on three key points: words or phrases that are:

1. Recurring
2. Specific
3. Surprising

Recurring

This one is the easiest one. People talk about things that matter to them. You know how you have that one friend who just prattles on and on about their hobby/obsession? And you wonder how they can talk about it non-stop.

It’s because they care about it. So, as useless as you thought mini 3D printing was going to be, you have now found a use for it: giving you insight into how people think. 

So, scan those reviews to find common themes. See what people talk about over and over and over. For Crocs, people talk a lot about comfort and how wearing them has helped with chronic pain. 

Your customers have started writing your copy for you.

Specific

If it’s not specific, it’s forgettable. People don’t buy forgettable stuff.

So, when you’re scanning the reviews, you are looking for very specific instances of those recurring themes you know your customers care about. 

One reviewer talked about being pregnant and her feet being “destroyed” until she started wearing Crocs. 

Find the specific. It’s copy gold.

Copy that uses that review will absolutely lead to product descriptions that convert.

Surprising

After 13 years of relentless testing, Frictionless Commerce has isolated 9 fundamental truths about how shoppers think.

Fundamental Truth #4 is that people are fascinated by surprising detail.

You can see the full list here: The 9 Truths About Online Shoppers.

As you scan those reviews, look for the out-of-place. Look for the weird. Look for the curious detail that you know you will talk about at the dinner table.

Because your customers are people, just like you. And they will be just as fascinated by surprising details as you are.

Like the sergeant, who said in his review, how he took two different pairs of Crocs to Afghanistan: one for the showers, one for the sand. Who knew? That’s something they could use when writing their product description.

Organize the Data: Identify Why They Are Buying and What Pain Points They Are Trying to Solve

Once you’ve gone through a reasonable chunk of reviews (not all of them— no one is reading 26,735 reviews, let’s be honest) you need to sort and organize the data.

In order to get your next customer to buy, you need to know why they are buying. For your copy to resonate with them, they need to believe that you are speaking to them. They need to see how your product helps them become a better version of themselves.

So, as you gather that voice of customer data, group the data on why they bought together.

Do the same for their pain points. See what problem you are solving for them. See what pain you are getting rid of (For Crocs customers, it is literally a physical pain that the product is getting rid of).

Why Your Customers Buy

List the reasons they bought. You can use reviews to write product descriptions by taking those reasons, and showing how your product addresses those reasons.

Nurses buy Crocs because they are on their feet all day and need shoes that give long-lasting comfort.

So you can see where comfort is a massive benefit of Crocs. Take a look at how they’ve highlighted it in the copy here:

How to Use Pain Points in Reviews to Write Product Descriptions

Copywriters talk a lot about pain points or problems when talking about writing copy.

They are that important.

When you see a review that speaks directly to a very specific pain…

Write. That. Down.

Here, a Crocs reviewer talks about her fibromyalgia, chronic back, leg, and foot pain.

If one person has that pain, there will be others as well. And now you have a very specific copy, written for you, without lifting a finger.

Write the Product Description: Reflect Back on Customer Sentiment and Use Reviews to Write Product Descriptions That Convert

Once you have read the reviews and organized the data, it is time to write.

It’s important to keep in mind the goal of writing the product description. You want to craft a narrative that is designed to convert someone who has never bought from you before.

To do that, you want to use reviews to write product descriptions in a way that speaks to that reader. 

Address the most common reasons why your customers buy. When you do this, it becomes far more likely that a reader who has not purchased from you will buy. They will see themselves in your copy. They will see how your product description speaks directly to them.

Be specific. Address pain points that are memorable. Remember the example of a reviewer who talked about their fibromyalgia. When you use a specific example like that, readers who have similar problems identify easily. 

Interestingly, readers that have somewhat similar problems will also make the connection that the product could be a good fit for them too. A reader who also has leg pain, but not fibromyalgia, can make the connection between the two and move closer to believing that Crocs are the product for them/

Use interesting or surprising details to delight your reader.

Use reviews as a source for these details. The use case you envisioned for your product is not always the way your customers use it.

Listen to what they are saying, and you will be well on your way to creating irresistible product descriptions that convert.

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Revealing It All

We hope you liked this article on how to use reviews to write product descriptions.

We have so much more to share.

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We want more marketers and CEOs to know about it.

Eventually, we’ll make this into a book. If you want an unfair advantage over competitors now is the time to steal our ideas because once they are published the cat will be out of the bag.

Each chapter in our forthcoming book will feed into the next. Click the link that best describes where you want to start the story:

Chapter 1: is all about conversation rate optimization (CRO). It talks about the history of CRO, statistics of CRO, and describes how most agencies do CRO. We need to describe how most are doing it before revealing our process (that’s the topic of Chapter 4.)

Chapter 2: For every 1,000 product pitches encountered the shopper buys 1️⃣ item (and we’re being generous). If the goal is to have the consumer choose your product we need to understand their selection criteria– we need to understand their buyer psychology. Marketers who nail this will always outrun their peers.

Chapter 3: Conversion optimization work typically focuses on design and layout changes. We don’t limit ourselves to design and layout. Through extensive experimentation, we realized that the thing that moves the conversion needle 🧭 are the words and ideas expressed on the page. Conversion copywriting is where it’s at.

Chapter 4: Marketers make a fatal mistake. They focus on optimizing the whole site. We focus on the tip of the spear. The most important page on your entire site is your product page. To understand why this is, read this post: Product Page Optimization.

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We only work with technical product DTC brands by improving advertising effectiveness by 20% in 90 days. This is achieved using a buyer psychology conversion copywriting framework. All paid traffic eventually reaches the product page and this is where we strike. Our process.

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