Fashion returns run between 30% and 40% of all orders, according to Ebit|Nielsen. And in 20% to 25% of Brazilian e-commerce returns the reason logged is the same one: the product did not match its description. Which means a sizeable share of what brands spend on reverse logistics starts with a page somebody wrote in a hurry.
Even so, the product description is usually the last thing a brand writes. Someone copies the supplier spec sheet, adds a line about a "versatile, comfortable piece" and hits publish. Then the paid traffic budget goes to sending people to that same page.
There is a text on this that has circulated among copywriters since the 1980s: the Boron Letters, written by American adman Gary Halbert to his son from a federal prison. Half of it is advice about discipline, diet and morning runs, which you can skip. The other half is about writing to sell, and that part still holds. The twelve principles below come from there, applied to a fashion operation.
The part almost nobody does
Halbert split the work 75% research, 25% writing. Brands tend to invert that ratio, and the result reads generic because it was written with no information about the person buying.
1. Research before you write
Before rewriting a product page, read the reviews on that item, the Instagram comments and the customer service history. The words your customer uses to describe how a pair of trousers falls work better than anything you would invent alone, because they are the same words she types into search.
An exercise you can run today: pull the last twenty "does this run small?" or "does it look like the photo?" messages from your DMs. Each one is a paragraph missing from the description. And if the same question shows up ten times, it belongs above the fold, not in an accordion at the bottom of the page.
2. Find the starving crowd
Halbert's most quoted line says that in a burger-selling contest he would give up every advantage but one: a starving crowd. No writing technique makes up for talking to people who do not want to buy.
For a fashion brand that means dropping "women aged 25 to 45" and writing instead for the person who trains five times a week and needs a sports bra that stays put through burpees. The addressable audience shrinks a little. The fight for attention shrinks a lot.
3. Build a swipe file
Halbert had his son copy strong ads out by hand, word for word, to absorb the rhythm. The workable version today is a folder holding the newsletters, product pages and ads that made you stop scrolling. Look at the structure: where the objection lands, where the proof lands, how long it takes before price shows up.
Clarity before cleverness
4. Be clear, not clever
A pun in a headline usually delights the writer and confuses the reader. If someone has to read a line twice to work out the offer, the copy failed, however elegant it sounds. "Free shipping over R$199" outsells any wordplay about delivery.
5. Use everyday words
Halbert pushed hard on swapping formal vocabulary for common vocabulary. In fashion retail the equivalent vice is showroom jargon: "statement piece", "oversized silhouette with an urban edge", "timeless curation".
Nobody types that into your search bar. They type "midi dress for a daytime wedding", and that is the phrase that needs to appear in the product title, the description and the ad.
6. Short sentences, short paragraphs
The original advice is to use full stops often and no more than two commas per sentence. On a phone screen, where most fashion traffic lives, a six-line paragraph turns into a grey block nobody reads. Two or three sentences per paragraph is a sensible ceiling.
What makes someone stop and read
7. The headline carries everything else
Without a headline, the best content in the world goes unread. That holds for the email subject line, for the first slide of a carousel and for the product name in a listing. The counterweight Halbert insisted on is that clickbait charges interest: a promise the next page does not keep costs more than the click was worth.
8. Visual relief is part of the copy
Wide margins, white space, subheads, bullets and good images are part of what keeps someone reading. On a fashion product page that means a size chart visible without a click, a fit photo on a real body and fabric composition in bullets.
Worth noting that the information already exists in nearly every store. It sits buried in an accordion nobody opens, which in practice is the same as not having it.
9. Transition words hold the reader
"Well", "so", "because", "which means". Connectors create the feel of a conversation and pull the eye to the next line. Starting a sentence with "and" or "but" is allowed and it works.
10. Use parentheses
An aside in brackets (like this one) breaks the formal rhythm. Used sparingly, it makes the text sound like a person talking to you.
How to tell whether the copy is good
11. The best writing goes unnoticed
If your reader finishes the description thinking "that was well written", something went sideways. What you want is for her to finish it thinking "this is the one, which size do I order?".
12. Read it out loud
It is the cheapest edit there is and almost nobody runs it. Read the description aloud. Wherever you stumble, the writing is crooked. Fix it and read again, until the whole thing comes out clean.
Where to apply this in your store this week
Twelve principles at once do not turn into action. Here is a slice that fits one working week:
- Rewrite the descriptions for your twenty best sellers around the real questions your support team gets, with a visible size chart and fabric composition in bullets.
- Replace the subject lines on your automated emails with clear ones. Abandoned cart, welcome and post-purchase return the most.
- Check that the promise in your highest-spend creatives matches what the landing page delivers. A gap there burns budget and generates returns on top of it.
Measure before and after. Product page conversion rate, returns broken out by reason and the volume of repeat questions in your DMs will show the effect within weeks. With the average Brazilian e-commerce order value projected at R$564.96 for 2026, according to ABComm, recovering a point of conversion on traffic you already pay for is worth the work.
How WX3 handles this
Product copy tends to land in a no-man's-land. Marketing assumes e-commerce owns it, e-commerce assumes it arrived finished from the supplier, and nobody reviews it. It is a symptom of the fragmented model, with an agency on one side, a platform on the other and no coordination between them.
In the operations we run, copy comes in alongside the platform structure and the media plan, not after them. Whoever writes the description has access to returns data and support history, because that is what tells you which objection the page needs to answer.
None of this solves anything on its own and none of it replaces a good product. But it is the cheapest part of the operation and, in most brands that reach us, the most forgotten.
Where to start
The Boron Letters were written decades before online stores existed and they still describe what separates a product page that sells from one that only fills catalogue space. Almost all of it reduces to researching before you write and reading it aloud afterwards.
If you take one thing from here, start with the twenty items that sell most. It is the smallest slice of work you can actually measure.
Real brands are already using these strategies. See our success cases and the results they produced.