5 Ways to Write Persuasive Descriptions for Your Rental Products

The art of the product description is a vital component in the realm of e-commerce. A product description is typically the marketing copy that tells the reader what a product is and why it’s worth renting. It aims to provide important information about the rental item’s specs, features, and benefits, so your website visitors are compelled to rent.

But knowing how to write enticing product descriptions is a tough skill to acquire. For one, many entrepreneurs and rental business owners are susceptible to making the same mistake: writing descriptions that merely describe the product.

Moreover, people have questions about your products, and if you don’t answer them, they might go somewhere else.

Knowing how to write a good product description is an essential part of effective website design. By sticking to a few tips and tricks, you can learn how to best engage your customers and write product descriptions that convert.

5 tips for writing compelling product descriptions

Let’s have a look at five simple ways to persuade your website visitors with well-written product descriptions.

1. Focus on your ideal customer 🎯

If you’re writing a product description that’s trying to appeal to everyone, you’ll end up addressing no-one. It’s a common adage in the world of copywriting.

Instead, ask yourself who you’re targeting with each of your rental products. That means the visitors’ expertise should affect the information you share in a product description. Before you start writing, know how familiar visitors are with your products. Jargon and specifications might not be for everyone.

For example, inexperienced visitors might need guidance in choosing the right product for the right situation, while more knowledgeable people might look for unique features and specs. Here’s an example:

💡 Pro-tip: Consider how you would speak to the customer if you were offering advice in-person. Using that language in your product descriptions will resonate more deeply with them.

2. Provide features and benefits 🤩

Describing how a product solves a specific problem will instantly capture the visitor’s attention and motivate them to keep reading.

You want to make sure you include something the visitor can relate to, rather than summing up technical specs and features. People don’t think in abstract words and facts — they need something good to imagine. Using both features and benefits helps achieve that.

A description of a camera body might begin with something like this:

Explaining how certain features improve performance makes the rental experience more relatable and easier to understand. It also makes your descriptions more exciting to read and therefore persuade visitors to learn more.

💡 Pro-tip: Although benefits are great, your descriptions should also include specifications to set the right expectations and clarify what’s included in a rental.

3. Make your descriptions scannable 👀

Now that you know what to write about, it’s time to think about formatting. In the age of the internet, people aren’t inclined to read complete pages. That doesn’t mean there’s no place for text in your product descriptions. They just don’t have to be lengthy.

Regardless of the amount of information you share, formatting your product descriptions in a scannable way makes them more readable and easy to understand. Following a few simple tips goes a long way.

Here are some tips to improve the readability of your product descriptions:

• Use strong, to-the-point headlines
• Use bullet points wherever you can
• Include plenty of white space
• Keep your descriptions short and sweet

4. Include the right keywords ✍🏼

The words you use aren’t just meant to persuade. Keywords are the words and phrases people type into search engines to find something. They’re also known as search terms or search queries.

Including relevant keywords in your product descriptions is essential for your visibility in search engines such as Google and Bing. Spending some time optimizing your descriptions for SEO promotes higher rankings when people are searching for the items you rent out.

Strategically placing these keywords in product titles, for example, will improve your performance in search engines, and therefore drive more potential customers to your rental website.

💡 Pro-tip: Many people use locations in their search terms as they’re looking to rent something. Use Google Keyword Planner to discover the most valuable keywords for your rental business.

5. Show, don’t tell 🤫

You’re probably thinking: “Wasn’t this article about product descriptions?” You’re right. But descriptions and images go hand-in-hand. You might have noticed the power of photography when you first saw the examples above.

Think about all the different things your customers might want to know about your rental items. If you’re renting out party equipment, maybe they want to know what the dimensions are in real-life. If it’s a surfboard, maybe they want to know what it looks like from different angles.

Photos communicate these things more effectively — better than words ever could. And since Booqable allows you to add multiple images per product (and per variation), you can use photography to give your visitors an in-depth look at your rental items.

Key take-aways

• Writing with your target audience in mind prevents your descriptions from falling on deaf ears.
• Explaining how certain features benefit the customer make them more relatable.
• Proper formatting makes the information more scannable and easy to read.
• Including relevant keywords improves your website’s performance in search engines.
• Photography makes your product descriptions more powerful and sets the right expectations.