Product Descriptions

Store Manager has three descriptions fields you can use to describe your products:

1. Short Description
2. Special Instructions
3. Long Description

Understanding how to use these fields will make your website more useful to shopper and improve your online marketing efforts.

We often tell retailers to write the Short Description similar to how you would describe the product to the consumer in your store.  You want the Short Description to be well-written sentences that effectively describe your product.  Do not copy this content from any other sources, it must be something that your write that's unique to your store.

Short Descriptions is the most important description fields on the page because in addition to providing useful information about your products for consumer, it is also vital for your online marketing efforts.  Modern Retail uses these Short Description when sending your products to marketplaces like Google Product and TheFind and is what gets displayed in the search results when someone looks for your products on Google or Bing.

Always follow these guidelines when writing your Short Descriptions:

• Always use sentences!
• Try to write 2 to 3 sentences for every product in your catalog.
• Use words that really describe the product, just as you'd describe to someone in your store.
• Short Descriptions should include 150 characters or more.

The Short Description is the most important description field on the site so please take your time and make it a good one!

Special Instructions

Special Instruction is an optional field used for "unique scenarios" where you really want the consumer to know something about the product. Example include when the product is a pre-order item, when it requires alternative or additional shipping costs or anything else you want the consumer to know before they buy the product.

Long Description

The Long Description is a great place to list descriptors of the product like fabric type, how the garment fits and care information. Essentially additional information about the product that you did not include in the Short Description field.  Most retailers like to use the bullet feature to create short and easy to understand statements about the product.

You can also use this field to include a couple of paragraphs describing your product as well, that's completely acceptable. 

However, there are a couple of things you should avoid with the Long Description field:

• Never copy and paste your content from Microsoft Word.  If want to write your content in Word first, then we recommend you paste it into a text editor like Notepad, and then from Notepad into Store Manager.

• We do not recommend that you change the font type or size because this over-ride the formatting that has been defined for your site. The font and size will “automatically” change to match the text on the rest of your site’s product page – you do not need to format it.

Following these above steps and guidelines will create description that both your consumers and search engines will love!