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Review: 73 Ways to Describe a Widget

Never Be Brain Dead Again When Having to Write Catalog Copy or Sales Material, by Marcia Yudkin

About ten years ago I was faced with the task of writing dozens of product descriptions for a jewelry site.

Each description needed to be less than 20 words.

And it wasn’t easy. Once you have described the first ten pearl necklaces, it can get pretty tough saying something different about the eleventh.

At the time I wish I’d had a copy of Marcia Yudkin’s “73 Ways to Describe a Widget”.

It isn’t a long guide – just 35 pages – but you’ll find it immensely useful when writing product descriptions for a catalog, web site or sales brochure.

73 ways to bring a product benefit to life

The guide opens with some sound advice on focusing on product benefits, not feature.

Then Marcia proceeds to show us 73 different ways to write benefit-oriented description.

And she does it by writing examples.

If I were working on an assignment to write product descriptions right now, I think I would use this guide as a brainstorming tool and a source of inspiration.

I would think about the product I needed to describe, and then browse through the “73 ways” until I hit upon an example that made a connection for me.

Like I said, writing numerous descriptions can be very hard. But with this guide you’ll find yourself inspired to take some very interesting new approaches.

All within one voice

You have probably noticed that the voice used to describe one company’s products may have a quite different tone when compared to the voice of another company selling similar products.

Getting the right voice, a distinctive and unique voice, is an important aspect of branding and company positioning.

Once again, it can be very hard writing multiple descriptions while maintaining a consistent and engaging voice.

Marcia tackles this in her guide, and you can see how she addresses it in her own examples.

Concluding thoughts...

This is a fairly short and certainly inexpensive guide. But for anyone writing catalogs or other sales material, it will become an invaluable source of help and inspiration.

Highly recommended.

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