Five useful ways to create content for service and product pages

Content development knows no bounds!

As you’re likely aware, every bit of your website or blog needs content development at one point or another. However, I find that many people get stuck when it comes to developing content for their business’s service and product pages.

It’s easy to get creative when writing a blog or creating a guest blogging strategy, but product and service pages can scare people off. We end up seeing pages full of boring, traditional text because the content on those pages may has been deemed “unimportant.”

It’s true that that this is a place where you might need to be more creative and you need to invent your own ways and ideas to produce content. But the good news is that if you do, product pages have an even better chance of ranking highly and getting more traffic as landing pages.

So, if you need some help figuring out how to invent new ways to create content for these pages, check out some of the ideas below.

Ask: what do people want to know about our products and services?

When you are stuck trying to develop content, a good starting place is to ask what it is exactly that your audience wants to know. After all, your products and services should act as a solution to their needs. Yet, do not leave your products and services as stand-alone documents, answer the questions that your customers are asking.

A really great way to do this is to have a creative Q & A section. You can either develop these questions (and answers) yourself based on what people ask you and your sales team the most, or you can actually turn to social media and emails where people have explicitly asked your product and service related questions.

In any case, developing content around this notion of product Q&A will show your ability to anticipate the needs of your customers, but it will also give you an interface that you can constantly update, change, and revise for fresh content.

Below is an example from QA Flooring Underlay Accessories:

In the example above you can see that under the various product and services tabs they have designed a Q&A section for customers to review. This is a great way to give them the “so-what” and the “why” explanations about your product.

An interactive sales person: be conversational

There are so many ways that you can be innovative in presenting these pages as a space for an interactive sales experience.

According to CopyPress, your website should act as an online sales person – not just offering descriptions of products, but focused on sales and giving your audience plenty of reasons that people might want to buy from your site.

This idea is most important when developing summaries for each product or service. You definitely need to have one, but you have to do it right.

Your description really should be more of a “brief summary.” While it doesn’t need to be lengthy, it does need to provide some explanation as to why the customer should choose to buy it from you.

Descriptions of the product itself are not enough. Take this as an opportunity to provide some information to your client so that they are not left with questions hanging over their heads before purchase. Here are some things your summaries should tell:

• Why the product or service is useful
• Why they have a need for your product (that they hadn’t considered before)
• Why your company is the best option

Remember that you don’t want to overwhelm them with information – being concise and considering careful integration with this kind of content is key. Use first-person language to help answer the questions above, but keep out all of the fluff.

Keep your content organized and then move on to other elements of the page.

Create a sense of urgency

Creating a sense of urgency with content on a product/service page is a balancing act. On the one hand, you don’t want a buyer to think that a product they fall in love with is going to go away out of the blue once they purchase; but on the other hand you don’t want them to wait to purchase your product or sign up for the service.

One of the ways you can create a sense of urgency is by making sure that you utilise content on these pages to send that message.

Develop content that is going to get visitors hooked and also feel the need to buy or sign-up ASAP. There are a variety of ways to do this: promotions, monthly offers, showcased products, all of which involve creatively developing content which can be updated on a regular basis!

The example below from Shoedazzle shows how they used a monthly offer to help keep visitors hooked with their content:

Make content unique and capture attention

Since this is an opportunity for creative freedom and being innovative, push the limits with uniqueness.

Here are some ideas that you can make content more unique on these pages and also increase conversions:

• Pay attention to aesthetics like layout, style, and color choices
• Find ways to use appropriate images and video
• Incorporate your brand and mission as often as possible
• Utilize customer reviews to make a claim for success stories and satisfaction
• Make customer reviews visual
• Link to other related content on your site
• Add a “suggested” section based on demographics and user interest

All of these points are becoming more commonplace on product and service pages, but it’s still a great way to offer your audience something more.

Take Just Fab for example. Their layout has different tabs you can click with different information, one tab being reviews. The layout is easy to understand and covers everything a customer would want to know without being overbearing:

Continue to brainstorm for new approaches

When you are trying to be innovative in developing your product and sales pages, it is always your best bet to turn to the people that know the product best.

Ask your employees the aspects of products they have to explain over and over again. Ask your regular customers what it is that they love about your product. Ask members of your local community why they choose to shop at your store (online or in-person) over others.

While there is not necessarily a one size fits all plan for creatively developing these pages, figuring out what your brand wants to say and how these pages need to tell your story boldly to new clients is one step of the equation.

Remember, doing this market research will be an opportunity for you to continuously develop and grow the content on these pages, and this in turn will help your SEO. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to make your service and product pages as appealing and interesting as they can be.

The takeaway

When you start with a question, “what do people want to know about our products and services?” you are making this effort customer-centered, and that is going to be apparent for those who land on your product pages.

Consider your site an interactive salesperson, where your job is to convince people through summaries (rather than boring old product descriptions) why your products are the ones they should choose.

You also need to create a sense of urgency, so that people feel just the right pressure to sign-up today rather than tomorrow.

In the end, you can do these things by making content unique and attempting to capture the attention of your audience from the very beginning. There are a lot of ways to do this, but beginning with brainstorming is just one way you can get the ball rolling!

Do you have experience developing your product and services pages with fresh content? Let us know in the comments section below.

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