How to Tackle Your Product Descriptions Backlog with AI-Powered Bulk Descriptions

In eCommerce, things move around in a clockwork fashion. 

We begin from the start of the clock (January) when the New Year is upon us. Then, right on cue, come holidays like Thanksgiving, Easter, Valentine’s, and Black Friday. And once the clock hits midnight (December), we arrive at the biggest season of all — Christmas!

With every tick, the pressure builds to deliver fresh, engaging product descriptions that capture your customers’ attention. But let’s be honest: Crafting standout content in bulk for every campaign isn’t easy, especially if you have limited resources and team members. 

Combine that with tight deadlines around every holiday season and campaign, you might as well call eCommerce content teams “Cinderella,” with the way they’re running a race against the clock. 

eCommerce Lifecycle like Cinderella

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We’re no fairy godmother, but we’re here with a little practical advice on how to run your eCommerce store smoothly, especially during the holiday rush, with the help of AI. 

In this piece, we’ll acquaint you with (AI) tools and resources you can leverage to create product descriptions in bulk, make them stand out-worthy, and stay on top of your deadlines.

Let’s dig in? 

Benefits of using AI to manage your product description backlog

Before we dive into meatier bits (aka, how to use AI), let’s first understand the benefits of using AI. 

  • Reduced Costs. Compared to a human writer (who’ll charge an average of $23/hour), AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude are completely free to use. Alternatively, if you use an eCommerce-focused solution like Describely, you’ll still pay a small amount to create, edit, and update descriptions.
  • Faster Turnaround Time. Even if copywriters work at top speed, they’ll need at least 10-15 minutes per product description. Not to mention, the delivery timelines would differ based on the writer’s availability and schedule. In comparison, AI can create/update descriptions in bulk in a matter of seconds, at any given moment. 
  • Unlimited Revisions. If you work with agencies/writers, you might get up to 2 revisions for free. However, AI tools can keep up with unlimited revisions, making it easier to revise and update your content during every new holiday season. 
  • Easier to Scale. Due to faster turnaround times and better cost-efficiency, it’s easier to create new product campaigns with AI and scale faster. 
  • Consistency of Style Guide. Due to human nature, it’s possible to make errors with style guide requirements. And if you employ a bunch of writers, chances are, they each might have a different understanding of your style guide. However, AI sticks to what it’s given.  
  • No Errors or Typos. If you use AI, you reduce the risk of human errors in your copy (such as grammatical mistakes or inconsistencies). 

How to manage your product description backlog using AI?

In this section, we’ve listed all the solutions that’ll show you how to use AI to generate bulk product descriptions and manage your backlog. 

1. Rely on a self-serve AI content generation tool 

Self-serve AI content generation tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Describely, Jasper, etc., are excellent for the following scenarios:

  • Creating product descriptions from scratch
  • Updating or editing said descriptions (to either match campaign or style guide requirements, or to integrate certain keywords)
  • Gathering inspiration  

While solutions like ChatGPT and Gemini are free to use, they’re, unfortunately, not eCommerce-focused. That’s to say, they won’t be able to connect to your online stores, keep track of your catalogs, or take note of your style guide requirements. 

On the flip side, an eCommerce-focused AI solution like Describely can not only do the aforementioned activities (connect to online stores, track catalogs, and note style guide requirements), but can also: 

  • Generate, review, and audit your product content (i.e., descriptions, titles, bullet points, meta data, etc.) in bulk.

Generate in bulk with Describely

  • Create style guides and content rulesets for different seasonal events. For example, you can create unique content rulesets for Christmas, Easter, and Valentine’s, and ask Describely to refresh your descriptions based on the seasonal event. This will allow your campaigns to become more targeted! 

Create style guides

Keep track of content performance

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  • Invite your team members/outside collaborators, assign them custom roles and permissions, and ensure easy collaboration through product statuses and data log of activities. 

Invite team members

Describely has been trusted by eCommerce giants like Target, UGG, Cotton On, and more. Click here to know how we helped them in their product content journey.  

2. Use AI-assisted human content generation services

If self-serve content generation tools don’t do the trick for you or if you’ve got too many products to create content for, you can instead opt for AI-assisted human content generation services. In most cases, this would mean hiring an agency or an editor who can verify all the claims made by AI and ensure the copy is publish-ready. 

Due to the recent emergence of Gen AI tools in the market, this service is relatively new, too, but, as a rule of thumb, you can expect to pay editors anywhere between $30-$45 per hour. The charges for agencies will be comparatively higher, since they’ll have to consider overhead costs, too. 

Alternatively, you can alleviate the struggle of finding and screening editors and agencies altogether, and instead rely on Describely’s Concierge service to do the same task for a fraction of the cost. With this service, you get product content 100% done-for-you with satisfaction guaranteed, so you can clear your content backlog and handle high volume launches with ease.

If the Concierge service is something that interests you, here’s a little more information about it:

  • We work with seasoned eCommerce professionals to create high-quality content that sells. Our experts handle everything and ensure your descriptions are engaging, fresh, and written for humans, such that they capture the attention of your prospects while optimizing for search algorithms, so they rank on SERPs. 
  • We ensure your content meets your style guide requirements, has context and clarity, follows SEO best practices, and provides the reader with enough information so they can click on the CTA without any doubts or concerns.
  • You get to free up your content team’s time and create as many publish-ready descriptions as needed during peak season. Or if you’re launching your eCommerce store and are strapped for resources (or a content team), you can expect the Concierge service to take the content workload off your plate then too. 
  • We’ll provide you with tools that will help you quickly and efficiently review and audit your content in bulk. This way, you can confirm whether the content we provide you with matches to your expectations or not. If something seems off, don’t fret — we provide three rounds of revisions to get your content to where you want it to be! 

To learn more about Concierge and find how we can help *your* brand specifically, we’d recommend talking to our in-house experts!

3. Leverage AI in other ways to take your content to the finish line

Last but not least, here are a few alternative ways you can put AI to use to ensure your product content looks tip-top.

a. Enrich your product data 

If your suppliers give you sparse product details and you still need to fill-in-the-blanks on your product descriptions, leveraging AI for product enrichment is a great idea. 

[Side Note: When we speak of AI product enrichment, we mean using AI tools to find new product details, such as the dimensions or materials of your products.]

In Describely, you can enrich your descriptions in bulk. All you’ll need to do is select which products you’d like to spruce up, and click on “Enrich Data.” 

Once the Data Enrichment tab opens up, select which fields and categories you’d like to use in search. (For example, if you enrich your descriptions based on a title like “Baseball T-Shirt,” it’ll try to find qualities relating to the query.)

Similarly, you can add your own attributes or images, so it can use that in the search. Or you can even provide the link to the manufacturer’s site, so it can match details from there and come back with accurate results. 

Enrich your data

b. Ensure your content matches brand guidelines 

If you’re employing a bunch of writers, it’s quite possible that, in some instances, they might not fully adhere to the style guide requirements. Or, it could also happen that you’ve updated your style guide requirements recently and your older product descriptions need to be refreshed again. 

In both instances, AI can help — you can use AI to audit your descriptions, find inconsistencies, and update the copies. 

If you use tools like ChatGPT to complete this task, you might need to present your descriptions one-by-one so it can produce accurate results. Unfortunately, ChatGPT cannot handle large volumes of descriptions (say, 1000s of descriptions) at once. 

To combat this, we recommend using Describely’s Content Audit product feature. This will allow you to audit your descriptions in bulk and ensure they match the requirements set in “Content Rules.”

[FYI: In Describely, Content Rules acts as your brand’s style guide. You can provide instructions on how you’d like to frame your descriptions (incl. tone, length, word count, structure, restricted keywords, output language, CTA requirements, etc.)]

To use this functionality, you need to select the necessary descriptions, click on “Audit Copy,” and select “Audit Against Content Rules.” At this stage, you can select which content rules you wish to audit against. 

Audit your content

c. Generate product content from images 

Imagine this: You’re super busy working on a new Christmas campaign, and don’t have time to write product descriptions for the said campaign. However, you’re already done with the product photography. 

Well, good news for the imaginary you, because you can now leverage AI to create product content from scratch simply based on images. For reference here’s what the process looks like in Describely: 

Bulk refine

If you go forward with it, this is what your results can look like: 

P.S.: We selected “Descriptions” and “Bullet Points” under Product Details, so those are the results we’re getting.

Generate from image

d. Audit and review product claims 

To ensure legal compliance and keep your company reputation up to par, you’ll need to confirm that your product description doesn’t contain any false claims your product can’t fulfill. 

If you have thousands of descriptions, this might not be an easy task to do, especially if you’re rushing on some tight deadlines. But you can use AI to highlight the most important product claims. 

In Describely, it’s possible to do this task in bulk, too. Same as before, select products and go to Audit Copy. But this time, select “Provide a list of claims…” amongst the listed options. 

Audit claims

For reference, look at the image below to find the kind of results it comes back with. All you’ll need to do at this step is approve or reject the claims mentioned. If you reject any, Describely will produce new descriptions sans wrong product claims. 

Approve or reject claims

P.S.: You can use Describely’s content auditing tool to proofread your content, catch grammatical errors, find inconsistencies in your statements, and bulk edit product descriptions, too.  

e. Do SEO research for you

Lastly, Describely can help you with SEO research to ensure your content performs well in search, taking an additional burden off your plate.

To do your SEO research in Describely, you’ll need to go to “SEO Tools” in your product catalog, and look up a search query for which it can come back with high-ranking keywords. 

You can choose to either use the keywords recommended by Describely’s SEO tool, or you can provide your own list of keywords. 

While we’re on the topic, Describely can help with other SEO tasks too, such as creating meta data and following SEO best practices. Learn more about how Describely’s SEO functionality: How Describely helps you create SEO-friendly product descriptions that adheres to E-A-T.

SEO tools dashboard

Self Serve vs. Concierge: What experts recommend 

Before we wrap up this piece, we wanted to cover an important point: How does one realize when to use the AI tool themselves vs. when to use an AI-assisted human writing service?

We asked this question to our in-house eCommerce experts, and they recommended the following scenarios for using Self Serve vs. Concierge service. (In this case, the former acts as an AI product description generator, whereas the latter is an AI-assisted human writing service.)

Self Serve is best for you if you have an in-house content team that’s on track with their tasks but needs an AI tool to speed up the writing/editing process here and there. This tool can also help them gather inspiration, manage writing workflow better, and audit copies before they ship them off to an editor for final proofreading. 

Concierge, on the other hand, is best for you if your content team is seriously strapped on deadlines (such as when the holiday season is zeroing in). Alternatively, if you have just launched your eCommerce store and want to go-to-market immediately with publish-ready descriptions, then that’s another use case where Concierge can be helpful. 

If you’re stuck on which solution is best for your organization, we’d recommend connecting with our eCommerce experts to get their insights and find a tailored solution for your business. 

They’ll first understand your project scope, requirements, and resources, and then provide you with an answer as to which Describely service is ideal for you. 

Ready to chat? Book a call with our in-house eCommerce experts today