Your website should be like your ultimate sales person. All knowing, all helpful, all the time.
As more and more dealerships and retailers are jumping into the motorcycle and powersports e-commerce space it’s going to become more and more important that you do some key things that differentiate your web store from everyone else.
One area that has a huge bang for the buck is having your own powerful, compelling, and well written product descriptions.
If you really want to set yourself apart from the competition, you need to do things differently especially when it comes to the product descriptions on your site. You shouldn’t be relying on the descriptions that come from the OEM or a distributor catalog. While they might be a good place to start, in general they are just not up to the level you need to truly be a best in class operation.
There are several advantages to doing this:
- Obviously better descriptions that are written to really inform the customer and turn that browser into a buyer will increase conversions and sales. Benefit: More money
- A side benefit is that better descriptions should lead to better search engine rankings. Even if they don’t get you to number one or number two (or even three or four) if everyone else is using the same canned descriptions, your unique description when picked up by the search engine and used as that little summary below your link (when well written as a sales tool) will lead more people to click your link even if you are nut at the very top (of course you still need to be at least in the top 10). Benefit: More traffic
- A last benefit I’ll spell out here is that you will slowly become known as the place on the web to go for in-depth information on motorcycle and powersports products. Sure you might be shouting at me (or at least my goofy picture above the column), “So I put all that time and energy into writing great descriptions, millions of people visit my site, then they go to some web discounter to get them for less!” Well yes, that may happen, but the increase in reputation, traffic, and so on will undoubtedly lead to more sales in the long run. Benefit: Better reputation and brand image
And of course unlike having to educate and train parts people over and over as they leave your shop and new one come in, once you put it on the website, it’s done!
Where does this in-depth product knowledge come from? Well, it should be coming from your parts department. If the people in your parts department don’t do much more than hold down the counter with their elbows waiting for a customer to come in or call, and when they do all they do is read the customer the description out of the product brochure or distributor’s catalog, they are not really providing a very unique service.
If you don’t have a parts staff that could, at any moment, give a customer a more compelling reason to buy some widget or doodad than that customer could get from reading a brochure, the manufacturer’s website (in most cases), or a distributor’s catalog, you need a new parts staff. Or at the very least you need to begin a comprehensive product training program so that your parts staff can provide the level of service that will blow customers away and that you can use on your website.
After all, some one’s dealership has to be known as the best place in the world to get the highest level of motorcycle and powersports information. Why shouldn’t it be yours? Are you afraid you’ll make so much money that you won’t know what to do with it all?
With your website acting as a never sleeping extension of that parts sales team, you should be doing everything you can to get the knowledge that’s in their heads onto your web customer’s computer screen when they visit your site.
Now obviously not everyone has the ability or education level to be able to write to the level that public display on a professional website requires and that’s where having your own professional merchandising copywriter comes in.
Hire a person that can write really, really well and have meetings between that person and your parts staff to go over all the products that you’re selling. Have your knowledgeable parts staff go over all the features, advantages, and benefits of the products and then let your merchandising copy-writer put them into words that sell. It is it’s own unique art form to write in a manner that sells products. Don’t assume that just because you have a warehouse full of monkeys banging away on keyboards that they have the ability to write truly amazing web copy that sells.
If you’re doing decent business, or want to be doing decent business, I’d recommend hiring someone internally. If you don’t want to go that way, there’s plenty of writers that are looking to make some money while they are waiting for their Great American Novel to get published. Look for someone with a background in catalog (remember mail-order) copy-writing that is also a motorcycle or powersports enthusiast and hire them on a contract basis.
Now if you are on a turn-key platform you may not have the ability to re-write the product descriptions for products that come out of their “catalogs.” Obviously this puts you at a potentially huge competitive disadvantage against the dealerships and other retailers that have taken my advice and not relied on these canned solutions.
It’s time to make a decision. If your website does not allow you to have the level of control that you need to be successful, then it seems like it might be a good idea to start developing a plan to get onto your own platform and take control of your future.
Next month I’ll expand on the product merchandising vein by talking about why it’s important to invest in your own product photography.
Tags:Column, copywriting, DealerNews, E-Commerce, ecommerce, Merchandising, motorcycle, powersports, SEO
