Tips for writing item descriptions

Activity and tour descriptions are an important part of your online booking process. When customers are browsing your website, these descriptions play a big part in whether or not they decide to making a booking, as well as which activity they choose.

General tips for an effective description

• Be concise. Let your customers know what to expect, without overwhelming them with details. Ask yourself: would I feel comfortable booking this activity with the info provided?
• Organize your information into short, easy-to-read sections rather than long paragraphs. Use Markdown to add formatting, links, or bullet points to your description. Learn more about using Markdown in FareHarbor.
• Clearly indicate any restrictions. For example, if your activity is not good for children or people with certain health conditions, be sure to say so.
• Get the customer excited! Descriptions aren’t just for explaining logistics, they’re for selling your activities. Read your description from a customer’s point of view and ask yourself: would I want to book this activity?

What information to include

As an expert in your field, it can be easy to overlook simple details like the length of an activity or ticket prices. However, this information goes a long way when helping a customer decide what to book.

We always recommend including the following:

• Overview. Give a quick summary to catch your customer’s attention. Bullet points can help get your main highlights across in an easy-to-read way.
• Ticket types. Clearly state your ticket types (for example, Child (12 years and under)). It’s often helpful to clarify details like age cutoffs, what’s included/not included in each ticket, etc.
• Duration. How long should customers expect the activity to last? Numbers are usually easier to read at a glance than words (“1 hour 45 minutes” vs. “one hour and forty-five minutes”).
• Requirements. Be sure to include any age restrictions, warnings for people with health conditions, documents or equipment that customers are expected to bring, etc.

You may also want to consider adding any Frequently Asked Questions or important policies (note: we automatically include your cancellation policy on every book form and confirmation email).

Click Example below for a simple template you can copy and paste into your item description.

Example

# Overview

Write a short overview here. 

Bulleted list (optional):

* Bullet 1
* Bullet 2
* Bullet 3

# Duration

How long does your activity last? 

# Requirements

* Bullet 1
* Bullet 2
* Bullet 3

Internal-only content. Don't copy and paste to anyone.

Description Overview

• This should be a sales pitch. We want to immediately grab the attention of customers. Would you want to book this activity?
• Give a quick summary to catch your customers’ attention
• Include tour, activity, rental highlights!

Italics and Bold in Markdown

• These should be used sparingly and purposefully. Italics and bold have meaning for people who use screen readers & accessibility devices, thus, it’s not appropriate to make text italic or bold just for aesthetic reasons.
• Ex. Headers of description do not need to be big, blue, bold, and italicized.

Use of Spacers, Page Breaks, and Headers in Markdown

• Pipe or vertical bar “|” should no longer be used to create spacers between words/sentences. Bullet or bullet point “•” is to be used anywhere necessary (including customer type notes, headlines, etc) instead.

• Page breaks “***” or “—” should not be used to start or end a new section of the description. Instead, use markdown (#, ##, ###) on headers to emphasize the start/end of each section.

  Ex. “#” denotes the most important header (overview sentence), and “##” denotes information related to that header (duration, about sections).

ALL CAPS

• Avoid using all caps for item names, item descriptions, and item headlines.

Block Quotes (>)

• We recommend avoiding blockquotes in item descriptions to help avoid potential issues in the future.
• Ex. if we ever decide to switch to traditional blockquote styling, a lot of item descriptions will suddenly look very different.
• The styling will not be shown when previewing Markdown in FareHarbor, but it will show on the client’s website.