Calling Truce in the Product Copy Production Tug-of-War
Erin Morgan
Talkoot VP of Customer Success
I’ve been working in ecommerce content production for about ten years, supporting customers ranging from small sportswear brands to global CPG companies. Through the decade it has often felt like change is the only constant. There was the rise of specialized direct-to-consumer brands. Then Covid toppled everything we thought we understood. The growth of delivery apps meant even toilet paper and cases of soda could be ordered online. And now we’re solidly in the era of generative AI.
Through these evolutions quality product content has remained critical, but the purpose of that content has shifted. PDP copy, which was originally intended to help assure you that you can, in fact, trust these jeans will make your butt look great, now has more jobs than my cousin Shane. Good product copy:
- Optimizes for SEO (and AEO, and GEO)
- Answers customer questions before they’re asked
- Prevents returns
- Maximizes sales
- Sound like a chat with your best friend
Creating good copy is hard to do. And when so many outcomes are expected from one tiny block of text, you can bet there are an equally high number of people invested in its creation. It’s easy to assume that getting everyone’s input will make the content better, but I’ve seen the opposite. In fact, stakeholders with competing interests is the most prevalent content-production struggle I’ve seen. It impacts almost every customer I work with, from the small and specialized to the global Fortune 500s. And it’s only getting worse.
Brand wants the perfect voice.
Product wants everyone to know about their next new thing.
Legal needs to ensure zero risk.
SEO wants maximum discoverability.
Ecommerce needs all this to get done at scale, super-fast.
Executives want to see a solid green line from PDP to sales (and while I deeply believe the correlation here is strong, the line is often a bit dotted and wavy).
The challenge is that all of their opinions are valid. Products need to be discoverable. Copy needs to be accurate and aligned with the brand overall. Brands definitely need to not get sued.
Compounding the problem of these competing interests is the fact that, almost without exception, the team responsible for creating product copy is not the team empowered with the final say. Instead, decisions about what ends up on the PDP are left to a combination of teams and approvers. Everyone believes their input will make the content better, but it rarely does. Let’s look at an example.
Product Copy Creation for a Carry-On Bag
Consumer: I’m ready to buy a new travel bag. I need it to fit under the airplane seat, and I need it to hold my laptop. I want to know if it has a zipper, because I don’t want my water bottle to roll out when the plane takes off. I also need to know how it feels, because rough leather gives me goosebumps in a bad way.
Copy team: Creates a description that answers consumer questions. It’s written conversationally, includes a few keywords, and doesn’t make any wild or inaccurate claims.
Brand: Says the language is a little too conversational (it’s a luxury brand, after all, so everything must be very serious).
Product: Chimes in and wants to make sure the copy includes explicit mention of each interior pocket (good info, but it’s visible in the photos and might be better suited to a bullet point).
Legal: Is concerned about suggesting the bag fits a water bottle, because the leather isn’t water resistant. Nixes that reference.
SEO: Needs the copy to include 4 silhouette variations, all of which include the word “bag”.
After all this, what started out as compelling copy has been torn apart. A useful conversation with the consumer became bland, keyword-stuffed jargon. And worst of all, the copy no longer answers the questions the consumer is asking. Reading the edited version, I can no longer see myself sliding it under the seat in front of me. In fact, I no longer know whether it fits my travel essentials at all.
Even though everyone who reviewed the copy thought they were doing their job correctly, with the best interest of the company in mind, no one had the customer in mind.
Ok, the copy isn’t perfect, but what are the consequences? Incorrect facts lead to higher returns. Missing answers to key questions cause customers to shop somewhere else. Inconsistencies between your PDPs and other marketing content lead to consumer distrust and can hurt AEO impressions. Even a 5% increase in returns or a small decrease in add-to-cart means a big change in the bottom line. The bottom line is copy needs to serve its original purpose: answering the questions consumers are asking most.
The Solution for Too Many Cooks in the Product Copy Kitchen
So you know you have too many cooks in the product copy kitchen, and you admit your copy is struggling with clarity. But what’s next?
- Create a hierarchy of priorities and stick to it. Your list should be documented and have buy-in from all relevant teams. Most importantly, it should include a clear definition of what quality content looks like for your brand. Here are some tips for managing competing priorities:
- The customer comes first. The goal of your copy should be getting the consumer the info they need to click buy.
- Do not make legal claims that can’t be defended, but don’t allow low-risk concerns to cannibalize content.
- Brand voice matters but recognize the PDP copy has a different goal than a marketing campaign. Create clear, easy-to-follow guidelines to stay on-brand. Include good copy examples, as well as banned words and phrases.
- Know the difference between innovations that the product team cares about and innovations that consumers care about. Does the customer care that you spent 5 years developing a new sucrose compound? Probably not. But they do care that your soda has zero sugar, zero calories, and tastes like the real thing.
- Once you’ve aligned priorities, trust your copy team to do what they were hired to do: create compelling content that reflects the hierarchy everyone has agreed to.
- Create a copy-production workflow, using your new guidelines as a foundation. Key teams can still review and approve copy (within reason), but the copy team gets the final say.
- Using AI for copy creation? Great! Once you’ve established a process that works, AI can help you scale. But a word of warning: Bringing in AI before you’ve clarified your copy goals will only exacerbate existing chaos. You can’t expect AI to create a quality output before you’ve defined what quality is.
Once you have a shared definition of quality, an empowered copy team, and a process that supports creation at scale, the impact is measurable.
Better for Business
- A scalable, sustainable content production process that enables faster time-to-market for product launches.
- Content that answers consumer questions, supporting higher conversions and lower returns.
- Consistent, effective messaging across platforms, helping your products rank in AEO and GEO searches.
Better for Teams
- Empowered copywriters.
- Reduced friction across teams.
- Fewer, faster rounds of review.
And, most importantly, better for consumers. Clear, relatable product stories give shoppers the confidence they need to feel good about clicking buy. In other words, they know they’ll look good in the jeans.