What makes a good product listing?

A listing is good when a customer can decide to buy without messaging you first. That is the whole test.

What has to be in it

• Clear photos of the actual product, shot the way that makes people order
• Main ingredients
• Allergens, every one of them
• Taste profile and texture
• Sizes or weights, with the price for each
• Add-ons, if you offer any
• Shelf life and how to store it
• How much notice you need

Why it matters more than it sounds

Think about the customer who is deciding at eleven at night whether to order a cake for tomorrow. If your listing does not say whether it has egg in it, they do not message you. They buy from the seller whose listing does say.

Every question your listing answers is an order you do not lose, and a message you do not have to reply to.

Write what is true, not what sells

Do not describe a cake as "melt in the mouth" if it is dense, or call something homemade-style if it is not what you make. A customer who gets something different from the listing complains, and complaints are reviewed for patterns.

Accuracy is also a food safety matter. Allergens left off a listing are treated as the most serious kind of product recall. See Handling allergens.

A small thing that helps

Write the description the way you would describe it to someone standing in your kitchen. "Soft, not too sweet, the way my mother made it for Onam" does more work than three adjectives from a thesaurus.