How to take your product description to the next level
1. Create compelling subheadings with containers
Subheadings are an important means of guiding the reader. Especially if they don't read the entire continuous text but scan it, such outstanding text parts as subheadings have an important function: They offer orientation to the eye and convey the most important content.
If you formulate subheadings with a rather general statement, you miss out on giving the reader crucial information. To create specific, varied subheadings, it is a useful option to include containers in the automated text creation process. With containers, you get flexible subheadings that elaborate on the content in the following section and create more variance.
Specific subheadings summarizing the next paragraph
Often, with subheadings, one is satisfied with the smallest common match that fits the entire product range and formulates generic statements without containers. However, it is possible to be more specific about the features explained in the following section and thus create more variance at the same time.
Example: Paragraph about the camera of a smartphone
- generic subheading:
- Feature: Camera
- Beautiful pictures with your smartphone camera
- specific subheadings
- Capture experiences on Ultra HD videos. (feature: Ultra HD recording)
- Capture experiences with dual-lens cameras (Special camera functions available)
- Capture experiences with your camera (only standard functions)
With this approach, you can highlight the special features or prioritize features: So you can decide to use the most important feature in the subheading. If the product has no special features in this context, but only standard functions, you can fall back on the more general statements.
2. Using summaries to support purchasing decisions
Product descriptions should provide buyers with enough details to help them decide if the product is right for them. Sometimes, however, the details do not lead to a clear purchase decision, which is where summaries at the end of the product detail page can be helpful for the customer.
- They summarize the most important product features at a glance
- In some cases, summaries can be the first orientation before the buyer reads the details.
- They can serve as a basis for decision-making
- As a self-contained text module, they also serve to structure and visually break up the product detail page.
These summaries can either be written out in one or two sentences or can also be output as a list ("The benefits at a glance").
The text conception of summaries in NLG projects.
Good product descriptions specify the fundamental aspects of a product, so they provide all the relevant data and the conclusions to be drawn from it. This is done by building inferences from the data in the project and configuring condition nodes.
Summaries can then be created based on this preliminary work. Thereby, only the derived statements are used, not the values. And usually, only the characteristics that are positive for the product are displayed.
TIP
It also is possible to design the summaries as a list of pros and cons, then the features are sorted according to this.
Example "washing machines"
| Category | Product description | Summary |
| capacity | With a capacity of 9 kilograms, the device is suitable for a large household of 4 people or more. | large capacity |
| water consumption | Water consumption is also very low at around 8,000 liters per year. | low water consumption |
| energy efficiency | It has the energy efficiency class B | --- |