Why product content optimization is critical for conversions and how AI helps
When conversion rates fall short, eCommerce teams tend to blame traffic. They zero in on driving more impressions, clicks and reach, even though the root cause of poor conversions is the product page itself.
Low-quality images, generic copy, inconsistent descriptions, missing specs: these are the true enemies of customer trust.
On marketplaces, where shoppers compare dozens of similar products in seconds, weak product content optimization can stop conversions cold. In fact, 87% of consumers say accurate, rich and complete product content is very important when deciding what to buy, according to Salsify.
As we move into the era of agentic commerce, brands get discovered by showing up everywhere shoppers browse, including general marketplaces, specialized marketplaces, social commerce and, increasingly, AI-powered shopping agents.
But expansion comes at a cost. Sellers scaling to more marketplaces get bogged down by manual content workflows and the hidden costs of poor product content optimization, including slower time-to-market, underperforming listings and high return rates.
Here are the three key areas where traditional content workflows fall short, and how artificial intelligence (AI) fills in the gaps to deliver high-quality product content that converts.
Content gaps and consistency failure
The hidden cost problem
Product content failures are not obvious at first. They show up as soft metrics like slightly lower conversion rates, a gradual drop in marketplace ranking or a slow uptick in returns. But those small declines add up.
Research shows that almost half of shoppers will abandon a purchase if product information is missing or inconsistent, turning seemingly minor content errors into major revenue losses over time.
Manual content workflows are usually at the heart of these failures. Product attributes are filled in sporadically, or not at all. Descriptions vary by channel, and specifications that exist in one marketplace are missing in another. As catalogs grow, so do the content gaps.
The result is a fractured customer experience. A shopper may see one set of product specifications on Amazon, a different description on a brand’s own site, and incomplete information on a specialized marketplace. These deviations fill customers with doubt at the moment of purchase, making them less likely to buy.
Inconsistency also drives up operational costs. Content teams spend hours cleaning up spreadsheets and reacting to marketplace rejections.
But even with that manual effort, large portions of a catalog remain uneven, hurting visibility, slowing down product launches and limiting sales.
The AI-powered content gap solution
AI fundamentally changes how product content is created and updated.
Instead of relying on people doing manual entry, AI models automatically detect missing product attributes, clean up and reorganize product data and generate descriptions and specifications, all using a single, trusted source of product information.
This process creates comprehensive listings that are ready for marketplaces and look the same everywhere a product appears.
Using AI, many sellers reduce time-to-market from weeks to hours, see fewer listing rejections due to incorrect data and make sure their catalog has all the product details shoppers expect.
Instead of constantly fixing content after the fact, consistency and accuracy is built in from the start.
Lack of optimization for SEO, GEO and buyer intent
The hidden cost problem
Even when product content is complete, it may fail to convert because it’s not written for anyone in particular.
Traditional product descriptions focus on features rather than buyer intent. They ignore long-tail search behavior and the language that actual customers use when they’re ready to buy something. On marketplaces, this hurts both visibility and conversion.
The truth is, discovery is no longer limited to marketplace search bars or traditional search engine optimization (SEO).
Large language models and AI shopping agents increasingly surface products based on generative engine optimization (GEO), which assesses how well content answers specific, contextual queries. Generic copy actively limits growth in agentic commerce, and product content that isn’t optimized for AI-based discovery risks becoming invisible to users.
The AI-powered product content optimization solution
Content optimization using AI models allows sellers to move beyond static, one-size-fits-all product descriptions.
By analyzing search behavior, category performance and buyer intent signals, AI generates content that fits how consumers actually search for products and make decisions.
Using relevant keywords, descriptions are written for SEO and GEO to resonate with both human shoppers and AI-powered discovery engines.
Thankfully for sellers, this all happens at scale. Instead of rewriting thousands of listings manually, content teams can apply the same optimization logic across an entire catalog, and content evolves automatically as search behavior changes.
Inability to scale localization and personalization
The hidden cost problem
The promise of global marketplaces is that your brand gets to reach a huge international customer base. But without localized content, that reach rarely converts.
Sellers often treat global customers as an afterthought, relying on basic translation or, worse, English-only listings. This can hurt performance in a variety of ways: Units of measurement are wrong for the region, cultural references are misunderstood and the tone is disconnected from how local buyers shop and make purchase decisions.
Personalization also takes a hit. Technical buyers, lifestyle shoppers and everyday consumers all see the same generic product description, even though each group responds to very different messaging.
Manually localizing and personalizing content is slow and costly, which is why most brands simply don’t do it at scale. As a result, brands miss golden opportunities to convert high-potential customers in international markets.
The AI-powered localization solution
AI makes localization and personalization faster and more scalable. Starting from a single master description, AI models can translate and adapt content for each region, changing units of measurement, terminology, regional slang and tone to fit local expectations.
Beyond translation, AI allows for dynamic variations in tone, allowing the same product to be positioned differently depending on audience and channel. For B2B buyers, the focus is on technical details. For consumer marketplaces, the copy is geared toward lifestyle storytelling.
Before AI, this level of adaptability was not practical. But with AI models, sellers can localize and personalize content at scale, reaching international customers more precisely and boosting conversion rates without adding extra work for content teams.
The future of product content is AI-driven
Poor product content optimization is one of the most underestimated challenges in eCommerce. It weakens conversions, increases returns and undermines customer trust, often before anyone even notices.
But AI changes that equation.
By filling in content gaps, optimizing for search and discovery and tailoring listings for different global regions, AI turns product content from a bottleneck into a growth engine. In today’s multichannel, AI-driven world of eCommerce, automated, high-quality content is essential for survival.
This is where Mirakl Catalog Transformer can make a difference. As part of the Mirakl Connect platform, it uses purpose-built AI to adapt your catalog for each channel by extracting details from product images and attributes to fill gaps in your listings. Products go live faster with accurate, channel-compliant information without manual reformatting.
One thing’s for sure: the future of product content optimization is not manual. It’s automated and built to scale. Brands that adopt this AI-powered approach will be more visible, more trusted and better positioned to grow across all channels.
Ready to turn your product catalog into a high-converting, AI-powered engine? Talk to an expert about how Mirakl Connect’s Catalog Transformer ensures that the right information is on every listing, tailored for each marketplace.
