Category pages are usually the most valuable and least written pages on a shop. They carry the searches with real buying intent, and on most sites they hold a heading, a product grid and nothing else. Product pages have the opposite problem: plenty of words, none of them answering the question actually stopping the sale.
Category pages carry the strongest buying intent on a shop and usually hold a heading and a grid.
What ecommerce copy means here
Writing the category and product pages so they answer the buyer’s real question. For a category that means what the range covers, how the options differ, and which one suits which situation. For a product it means the specific details someone needs before committing, and the things that go wrong when they get it wrong.
It’s not description for the sake of having words above a grid.
Who it’s for
This suits shops where the buying decision needs help:
- ranges with sizes, fits, materials or grades that customers confuse
- categories ranking on page two with nothing but a product grid on them
- shops whose support inbox answers the same product question daily
- catalogues where the manufacturer’s supplied description is used unchanged
The problems it usually solves
Category pages with no content. A heading and a grid gives a search engine almost nothing and gives a buyer no help choosing. These are the pages with the strongest commercial intent on the site.
Duplicate manufacturer copy. If the supplier’s description appears on your site and twenty others, it does nothing for you and nothing for the customer.
The buying rules live somewhere else. On one client’s range the answer to how much longer than the opening a seal should be was spread across a buying guide, a FAQ page, two blog posts and a variant dropdown, and two of those sources contradicted each other. The blog was wrong, and it was the page that ranked.
Critical information buried. The same client’s own guide said the most common installation failure was surface preparation, not fitting. That detail sat in a FAQ several clicks from the product page, where it couldn’t prevent a single failed installation.
Quantities hidden in variant names. Where the amount of a consumable changes with the size chosen, and the only place it appears is inside a dropdown. Nobody reads a dropdown for specification.
What’s included
- A rules audit across your product data, guides, FAQs and blog posts, which is where contradictions surface
- Search research per category, so the copy targets how people actually search the range
- Category copy that explains the range and helps someone choose
- Product copy covering the specifics, the fitting or sizing rules, and what goes wrong
- Comparison content where the range splits into genuinely different options
- Schema for products, offers and breadcrumbs
- Internal linking between categories, products and any supporting guides
Where the copy goes on a category page
Not a wall of text above the grid, which pushes the products a buyer came for off the screen. A short, useful introduction above, and the fuller explanation below the grid where it helps the people who scroll and doesn’t obstruct the people who don’t.
That arrangement satisfies both audiences, which is usually the argument clients expect to have to make against SEO advice.
What you get
- Category and product copy, ready to publish
- A list of contradictions found in your existing content, which is often the most useful part
- Schema for the templates
- An internal linking plan across the range
Limitations
Copy can’t fix a range customers don’t want, and it can’t override a delivery or returns problem. Where a product genuinely isn’t competitive on price and the market buys on price, better writing narrows the gap and doesn’t close it.
What this won’t solve
Where the decision depends on something the customer has to measure or picture, copy has limits, and a tool does the job better. That’s interactive tools and calculators work.
Talk to the person doing the work
There is no account manager here and no team to be handed to. If you get in touch, it is me who reads it, me who looks at your site, and me who does the work if we go ahead.
Get in touch, or start with a free assessment.
Engagement and price
There are no list prices here, and that is deliberate. What a piece of work costs depends on the state of the site, how much of it there is and what you actually need, none of which I know before looking at it.
So it starts with a free analysis. I look at your site, your Search Console and who you are really competing with, then come back with what I would do first and what it would cost to do. No obligation attached, and if the honest answer is that you do not need me yet, I will say so.
How the work gets done
Ranges are researched through the strategy planner, comparisons built through the comparison page builder, and pages checked through page analysis and the schema toolkit. This service sits under content. See the FalseEyelashes.co.uk and GaraDry case studies.
FAQ
Do category pages need text on them?
They benefit from it, because a heading and a product grid give a search engine very little and give a buyer no help choosing. The question is placement. A short introduction above the grid and the fuller explanation below serves both audiences properly.
Can I use the manufacturer’s product descriptions?
You can, and they’ll be doing nothing for you, because the same text sits on every other retailer’s site. Rewriting them for your own customers, with the details your buyers actually ask about, is one of the more reliable improvements on a shop.
How much copy does a product page need?
Enough to answer what a buyer needs before committing, and no more. For a simple product that’s short. For something with fitting rules, size constraints or preparation requirements, it’s longer. Padding a product page to hit a word count makes it worse.
What if my product information contradicts itself?
That gets found during the rules audit, and it’s often the most valuable output of the whole job. Contradictions between a buying guide, a FAQ and a blog post are common, and the version customers see is usually whichever page happens to rank.
Get your ranges written properly
Get in touch, or start with a free assessment, which includes a look at your category pages.