Shop Descriptions and the "More Info" button

Ok, let's continue here!

Simple recap. No ecomerse sites use(or at least I do not know any) a shortened description in the product page itself. Why does shapeways think this would be better.

A short description would be great if showing multiple items on the same page.

I think Ana has take note of our feedback and requests, so let's try to use this thread to assist people in presenting their items in the best light until the dev team can meet us halfway on the format.

My intro description is roughly as follows:

First sentence: State the models title and what category of object it represents, including at least one descriptive word that hopefully brings some positive associations. If the product has a characteristic that distinguishes it from usual examples of that type, state it here, separated by a comma.

Second sentence: Describes function, basic usage, or appearance. Ideally, as much of this as possible should also be apparent from looking at the clear, well-lit, tightly-cropped photograph of the printed product.

Inspiration, instructions, sizing, buying info, etc should be in the extended description. You can keep the sections separate by adding line breaks ("<br>" tags). Here is an example:

first off, imo, the model title should be above the picture... if ppl scan the at least they'll have half a clue what they're looking at.

soz off topic


[edit] actually Aaron, the way your example reads, it is a functioning item and possibly open to legal stuff (TV adverts don't have hidden text telling the truth)

I use truncated descriptions for all of my ecommerce clients, they're certainly the trend right now. For my clients I generally show about a paragraph and then I'll have the more info link. Actually for ecommerce I usually organize information via tabs but same theory.

Looking at Aaron's nifty screenshot, it looks like his description just vanished into space. I think a "read more" link directly after the cutoff would be more helpful in addition to the more info link on the bottom.

Different products also require different description lengths. If I'm on a site that sells only books or beads, I know what I'm getting. On shapeways, half the time I have no idea what I'm looking out.

If I'm scanning, as customers do, I'm not even going to see the more info link. I'd certainly consider minimizing the line height and making the link more prominent. Just my $0.02 while I'm waiting for Blender to boolean.

cadalu, a couple of questions

Are truncated descriptions trendy because that's the way it is done, what the (website) customer wants, what is percieved as the most informative for the prospective purchaser or something else?

And, are the truncated descriptions written by a professional...erm... 'truncator' or the seller of the items?

just curious

cheers,
Paul

It seems SW want truncated descriptions because they are trendy and rather than limit us to 140 characters they prefer to limit the pixel space for descriptions arbitrarily.

It's dumb because the model description page's purpose is to present the information a customer needs about a model, not a summary or shortened version of that information.

SW!=Twitter.

Have a close look at Ebay
You see a title, short description (sometimes), photo, current price, 'Place Bid' button and a whole lot of less interesting stuff. If you are interested enough to want a description then you have to scroll down and the description is in one of two or three tab on the second screen as you scroll down.

@stop4stuff - It's a mix.

Truncating works, research shows that customers don't want to read long text, scroll, hunt, click or do anything at all. The research/statistics into customer behavior is actually terrifying.

On the other hand the more content you have, the better your seo results so it makes sense to shorten content into manageable segments.

BUT - it's usually over used for ad placement. Everyone (including the big box retailers) want their ads at that prime time eyeline so it's a race to cram and condense as much info into above the fold as possible.

It's also a trend. I remember when there was a great call for scripts to summarize blog content, rss feeds, and all the social networking media that followed. Add to that the minimalist trends of Apple and other giants and you get the current climate.

So yes I recommend it to my clients for e-commerce functionality and they request it so they can look like the big guys. , For my ecommerce clients I usually write a script so the client easily controls what information shows in the short description rather than truncating at an arbitrary character or pixel limit. I may set and outlier character amount to preserve other template features but I like my clients to have the control. Different products may require additional info like sizes, colors, styles etc.

So I'm all for shortening the info, but just not the way it's currently being employed by SW.

Sheesh, I can't spell today, sorry!

Agreed. But I assert it's my choice as the artist who created the model to choose the length of the description I choose to sell the model.

In other words, if I want to use a shorter description to drive more sales, then I'll do that - but if I need or choose to use a longer description I'd rather SW didn't interfere with that.

@cadalu, thank you for the info, how things have changed!
So now, comes the cruncher... when will the likes of google penalise (again) web pages that have hidden (i.e. non-readable) text?

@Bill, with eBay, the description is on the item page... additional payment & postage information for the item might be a click away... as it happens the item title is the top-most text on the item page (aside from the usual ebay stuff)

I can understand the limitation of the description and found it a challenge to adapt my descriptions to match better into the new look and feel.

It does challenge us to make a fitting description in only a few lines or to invite people to click the more link.




But currently it IS still too limited imho.
And I also agree with the more info below white space issue.

Perhaps let the shop owners define the first paragraph via <p> </p> ?
The preference would be to show the contents of that paragraph fully.
Unless it exceeds a certain maximum number of lines/pixel height.

But this way if we want a one or six liner the "more info" could always follow the last line.

Regarding Aaron's example, I find his text is actually very clever, as nothing told there is a lie nor hiding a real truth

Yep, but it's not on the first screen, i.e. you don't see it until you decide that the page is interesting enough to scroll down and find out more, rather than going to another page.

True though what is not shown could be very miss leading and if anyone lawyers come a knocking about false advertising I will send them to shapeways.

Here is a perfect example: Planetary Die

I just noticed today though my description is accurate shapeways cut off the vital information that the gears do not work. I know one person has ordered this die since the changes were put in effect and zero before so it is possible this customer will be very unhappy. So what does this gain shapeways? WE have an unhappy customer that will likely never come back, shapeways will have to refund them because it is there fault that they were advertising it falsely, possibly have to refund tax, and customs to keep customer from thretening legal against them. And I lose a possible valued customer and most likely the markup from this sale. So in total a huge negative for a very short term gain.

Not sure what ebay you're looking at, but for me, I search for an item, click on the item in the search results, and the item page description and all is there... i might have to scroll down the page to view all of the text, but no clicking or page changing involved, just a drag of the wheel on my mouse, or if my hand is over the keyboard, tap the page down or down cursor button whereas the full text of the description on the Shapeways model page is, look at screen, find [more info], move mouse pointer, then click and if the description falls off the bottom of the page, I still need to scroll down to read it all. Ebay page = simple, Shapeways page = more effort involved than simple

i think he is looking at the page listing a whole bunch of stuff. That page has truncated results but that is where truncated results should be used. not on a product page.

I don't think a 1997 article about newspaper on the web is a good source for best practices in 2011

I feel the entire description should be available (or at the least a lot more than what we are currently given). The designer of the model should have the freedom to decide how they wish to describe their art. If a potential customer loses interest right away they will stop reading. If they don't they will continue. Personally, I feel it is a bit presumptuous to assume what the attention span of our customers is.

Where is any description on this page?

Ana, I appreciate the explanation of your reasoning, but I don't agree with it across the board, and I would appreciate it more if you let us decide with what size description to sell our own products. I have some experience selling mine, and when I want a very short description, I write one.

Sometimes I punch it up with line breaks.

Which your current setup does not treat kindly.

Some items are best sold with a tweet, but others are nichey or nerdy, selling only to people who are not afraid of blocks of text, and need that information to know that they're interested.

I am the only person who knows which are which.

Eight lines is a very reasonable compromise.

Please reconsider.

That ebay page has the description not visible yet. It starts to be visible in taller screens or with smaller fonts, or with easy user action. So agreed that order for info matters, nobody seems to be asking for putting things randomly.

Each site has different means to provide that information. A new page after a click is one... and really slow: aim at target, click, wait for new page to load and render. SW is going with slightly faster method: aim at target, click. Ebay, Amazon and other places have a faster one, the extra info just goes below. Aiming at scroll bars is faster because they are bigger than a "More info" controls, while more common options of rolling the mouse wheel or pressing space are even faster as they rely on physical items, not tiny virtual targets (which to add insult to injury, sometimes require scrolling anyway).

Bathsheba wrote a nice explanation, by the way.