How do I write category page copy?

The person on your category page has already decided what kind of thing they want. They have not decided which one. Everything you write should serve that gap.

That rules out most of what usually appears on category pages. Paragraphs describing what the product category is, which the visitor already knows. Brand statements about quality and craftsmanship, which every store makes. Keyword-heavy sentences restating the category name in different orders. None of it helps anyone choose, and search engines have become good at recognising text written for them rather than for a reader.

What does help is comparative and specific. What are the two or three ways products in this range genuinely differ, and which sort of buyer should pick each one. What is the mistake people make when they buy in this category for the first time. What should someone measure, check or know before ordering. What do your customers ask before buying, and what do they say afterwards when it went wrong.

Write the version you would say out loud to a customer standing in front of you. That is almost always better than the version written to fill a text box, and it is the version an assistant can quote when someone asks which type to buy.

Put two or three sentences above the product grid and the rest below it. This resolves the tension between shoppers, who came to see products, and the page needing enough text to be worth ranking.

The short introduction confirms the visitor is in the right place and adds one useful fact. Something like what the range covers, the span of sizes or prices, and how quickly it ships. It should not be a paragraph, and it certainly should not be four.

The detail below the grid is where the real work happens, and it can be long because the people who reach it are actively reading rather than browsing. Structure it with subheadings so someone can jump to the part they need: how to choose, the differences between the main options, what to check before ordering, and the questions that come up repeatedly.

On a phone this matters even more, because a long block above the grid can push the first product below two full screens. Check on an actual phone rather than a narrow browser window.

One more placement point. If your platform truncates the category description in the template, fix the template rather than shortening the copy.

The material that makes category copy worth reading is already in your business, and it is faster to collect than to invent.

Start with support. Whoever answers customer emails and messages knows the five questions that come up before every purchase in this category, and they can list them in ten minutes. Those questions, answered plainly, are the strongest part of any category page.

Then returns. The reasons products in this category come back tell you exactly what people get wrong when choosing, and writing that into the page prevents both the return and the disappointment.

Then reviews on your own products, which contain the words customers use for the things you have named differently. Category copy written in your internal vocabulary misses the searches, and reviews are the cheapest source of the real vocabulary.

Then your own search data. What people type into your site search on that category page tells you what they expected to find and did not.

Finally, your own staff opinions. If someone in the business would recommend one product over another for a particular kind of buyer, that recommendation belongs on the page. It is the single thing a store can say that a marketplace listing cannot.

Write until the choice is explained and then stop. There is no correct word count, and padding to reach one produces exactly the sort of text that helps nobody.

On keywords, use the words your customers use, in the places they belong: the page title, the heading, the first sentence, and naturally through the body. What you should not do is repeat the category name in every paragraph, list variations of it in a block at the bottom, or write sentences that are grammatically awkward because a phrase had to be included.

The specific failures worth naming. Copy that could be moved to a competitor's site without changing a word, which means it says nothing about you. Copy generated in bulk across dozens of categories from a template, which is obvious to a reader within two sentences. Copy that repeats what the product cards already say. Copy hidden behind a read more link that opens by default for nobody.

And copy that is never updated. A category page describing last year's range, with delivery times that changed and products that are gone, is worse than no copy, because it is confidently wrong. Put a review date on the important ones.

A repeatable structure keeps quality consistent across many categories, as long as the content inside it comes from the category rather than from a template.

A workable outline: a short orientation above the grid. Below it, a section on how to choose, which is the comparison a buyer needs. A section on the main options and who each suits. A section on what to check before ordering, which is where sizing, compatibility, ingredients or measurements go. A short set of questions and answers taken from real support enquiries. And a link to the two or three related categories a shopper might move to.

The structure repeats. The content must not. If two of your category pages have interchangeable paragraphs with the category name swapped, they will compete with each other and neither will be useful.

Prioritise rather than doing all of them. Take your top ten categories by traffic or revenue, write those properly, and see what happens over the following months before working down the list. Ten good category pages are worth far more than sixty written quickly, and the ten will teach you what to put in the rest.