Hi Everyone
I have been spending time on some IM projects and I have now decided to give my main product – selling stone fire surrounds an overhaul. I currently only sell the surrounds on ebay and I am now going to create a website.

I am having a new shopping cart site developed which will be of a standard format with a header at the top, navigation and opt-in down the side and thumbnail pictures of fire surrounds in the middle.

My question is do you think sites like this selling large physical products would benefit from sales copy? Or do you think people searching for stone fireplaces will be put off by it?

I am veering towards including an attention grabbing headline and short copy.

The benefits for the customer is that my surrounds are made from the same limestone as the biggest selling stone fire surround manufacturer in the UK, by stonemasons who have over 20 years making fire surrounds for the leading company, but I sell them for a almost a third of the price ie £500 - £600 ($1000 - $1200) instead of £1200 - £1800 ($2400 – $3600).

Does anyone have any real life experience of similar situations that have resulted in increased sells due to including copy on such sites.

Your thoughts will be greatly appreciated.

PS – I know I will have to get traffic to the site – but that’s for another day

If you were shopping for a stone fire surround and you came across 2 websites selling what appeared to be very similar products...

The first just has a picture

The other has the same picture as well as copy describing the surround, the benefits of owning one, it's unique story, where the stone was made, the guarantee.

Which would you choose?

Hi Kyle
Thanks for responding. I do have that information under the about Us section, that describes us, the type of stone, the history, the uniqueness of each fire surround and the 100% money back guarantee.

It is not on the front page though.

How you get your traffic has a lot to do with how you list the product.

But on the landing page, I would suggest short copy with the main points. You could add little 'read more' lines that would expand the copy and give more information. I'm not sure how, but I know it's possible through some kind of JAVA script.