Product Description Grader

Six checks, each with fixed points, added up and shown as a score out of 100. There is no model: the same text always gets the same grade, and every check shows what it counted. The thresholds are Tilly’s rules of thumb for text that sells on a product page, not a formula for conversion.

• Length, 20 points. 100 to 350 words gets full marks: enough to answer what it is, who it is for, what it is made of and how it fits or works.
• Readability, 20 points. Flesch reading ease of 60 or more (plain English) gets full marks.
• Benefits and features, 20 points. Counts words about what the buyer gets (you, keeps, without, easy) against words about the product (made of, cotton, size, ml). Full marks when benefits are 40% to 80% of the two.
• Specifics, 15 points. Three or more numbers: sizes, weights, quantities, times.
• Scannability, 15 points. Bullets and short paragraphs, so a skimmer gets the key facts.
• Empty adjectives, 10 points. Three points off for each "premium", "high quality", "amazing" or "perfect".

Flesch reading ease = 206.835 − 1.015 × (words ÷ sentences) − 84.6 × (syllables ÷ words). Higher is easier. 60 to 70 is plain English; below 30 reads like a legal or academic text. Syllables are counted by the usual vowel-group rule, which is off by one on some words, the accepted error of any readability tool without a dictionary. Bullet lines count as sentences. source, checked 25 September 2026

"Our candle is made with premium soy wax and high quality fragrance oils. It is the perfect gift for any occasion and will make your home smell amazing." scores 64 (Needs work). It is easy to read, but at 28 words it is too short, it has no numbers, and it loses all 10 points for "premium", "high quality", "perfect" and "amazing".

A 68-word version that opens with what the candle does for the room, then lists 220 g of wax, about 50 hours of burn time, a cotton wick and an 8 cm jar as four bullets, scores 84 (Good). It still loses points for length, and because it is now mostly a spec list: after each fact, say what it means for the person lighting it.

• Copying the manufacturer’s text. It is the same on every shop that stocks the product, and it answers the questions a buyer asks a supplier, not the ones a customer asks.
• Adjectives instead of facts. "Premium cotton" says nothing; "240 gsm organic cotton" says something a buyer can check.
• Burying size, materials and care. These are the questions returns come from. Put them where a skimmer will see them.
• One long paragraph. Most people read product pages on a phone, where a wall of text is a wall.
• Writing for everyone. A gift buyer and a buyer for themselves want different first lines. Know which one this product is for.

It reads the words only. It cannot see your photos, price, reviews or page layout, and it does not know your customers, so it cannot tell whether you answered the question that actually stops them buying. The free store audit finds which products have thin descriptions, and the conversion agent checks whole product pages against your customer personas. For the search result that brings people to the page, use the meta description generator.