Descriptions are essential and invaluable for SEO (search engine optimisation) and customer experience. It’s all very nice having beautiful, eye-catching images, but without further information in the form of a good description, customers are unlikely to purchase without knowing all the finer details. Descriptions are the equivalent of a written image (which is fundamental for visually impaired customers—a description is what they depend on while choosing whether to purchase).

A good description usually consists of features or USPs (Unique Selling Propositions) - these can be traits exclusive to the gift voucher and a body of text. Still, sometimes, just a strong body of text is effective enough. Usually, bullet-pointed features list all the unique features so a customer can determine them at a glance. The text, however, gives the customer reasons to buy the gift voucher. You need to tell them why they need the gift voucher, how it can be used and what it is compatible with. If you can, reduce ‘buyer’s guilt’ too by detailing the potential usability and longevity the customer can expect from the gift voucher.

The description above contains 151 words. The information bullet-pointed at the top of the description is expanded in the paragraph below to make it easy to digest.

When writing your descriptions, you need to:

A description of around 200 words is the optimum length, but be aware that the length will affect how the gift voucher displays on PDFs and emails. When creating your gift voucher, it’s a good idea to regularly click the Actions button in the top right-hand corner of the page and select Preview Voucher PDF from the drop-down menu. This will allow you to see how your description will display at a glance; ideally, your aim should be to keep your PDF content limited to a single page.

There are 180 words in the description above. This description doesn’t use bullet points to highlight the features but is still short enough for the reader to quickly summarise the details

Search engines ideally want all online shops and websites to be filled with unique content, and as a result, the highest-quality content achieves higher search engine results. Duplicated content, however, indicates that the content has come from elsewhere, so the ‘authenticity’ of the shop or website may be questioned if none of the content is unique.

Of course, you do - without using keywords, search engines would not know where to display your gift vouchers in search engine results. However, how you use the keywords is essential - once you have a list of keywords to include in your description, you must write these naturally for a customer to read. Badly written descriptions where keywords have been forced are obvious, off-putting, and can create a negative customer experience.