Preparing 6,000 Product Descriptions for an Online Store, in Storytelling Format, in Just 8 Months — Lyreco Case
Who was this project for?
Lyreco is an international B2B company with almost 10,000 employees. The company"s inventory boasts over 11,000 products from a range of categories: catering, stationery, protective equipment, office electronics, consumables, household chemicals, and many more. The company processes around 6,500 orders daily.
We collaborated directly with their Swiss office. Our audience was made up of Swiss businesses, local schools, hospitals, administrative offices, laboratories, and other Swiss institutions.
Project goals
Before the project started, Lyreco"s vast store was offline. Their goals were to make the switch to digital and to improve customer experience. For this, they decided to launch an online store.
Top Lead Challenge
The initial task was to simply prepare English product descriptions for this online store.
However, during the project, it became clear that we had to take a more structured approach to the texts. The workload was much higher than we had anticipated, and the requirements for the texts was constantly changing, even at the approval stage. The simple task of writing texts had evolved, we needed to develop a management system for a huge team of copywriters to guarantee outstanding texts in a storytelling format.
Obstacles:
- 6,000 texts is a large amount
- All texts needed to be written in the same style
- Short deadlines
Project Timing
The project lasted 9.5 months. There was a trial stage that lasted for 1.5 months and the actual preparation of the texts lasted for 8 months, depending on what Lyreco approved.
What did the Top Lead team do
Before the project, Lyreco did not sell online at all. Therefore, their team did not have a final vision of what the product descriptions would look like. Working closely together, both our teams came to the conclusion that product descriptions should be in a storytelling format.
This style allows brands to attract the attention of potential customers, whilst effectively conveying the uses and advantages a product holds.
Don"t just sell products, narrate them: how to make a good storytelling product description
Preparing 1000 product descriptions in a month — 7 key steps
To prepare so many texts, in an unusual format, in such a short time, we built a system that ensured a clearly phased implementation of each task. We organized a team, consisting of a project manager, 11 writers, an editor and three native English speakers as proofreaders. At each different level, there would be a different :
- Writers write the product descriptions.
- Native speakers proofread and edit the texts.
- The editor manages the preparation of descriptions, controls the quality of the texts, and approves their final versions.
- The project manager manages the entire project and stays in contact with the client.
Guidelines
Since each writer is uniquely talented and writes in their own way, we developed guidelines for them. The guidelines demonstrated the typical style, the correct approaches to the work, and how to maintain a high level of quality of descriptions.
The guidelines illustrated the essence of the project, briefed Lyreco"s presentation, defined their customers, gave tips on how to search for product information, outlined textual requirements, and gave both examples of good and bad texts with any other information that writers need.
Workshop
A client"s involvement in the work process is very important. If the client wants to see good results, they must first envisage what they expect from a contractor. Lyreco had such vision. Their team had experience writing descriptions independently, and shared this expertise with Top Lead through a workshop.
What was achieved?
Lyreco's team did not reject a single description. Of the 6,000 texts sent by clients, only 20 texts (0.3%) needed any adjustment.
Feedback from Lyreco about our work was overwhelmingly positive:
Ready for more online sales? Implement our product descriptions for magical results.