Published December 21, 2022/James/, ,

This guide outlines how you can automatically generate accurate and compelling product descriptions for your WooCommerce products the Zapier automation service and OpenAI.

The good news is that this solution requires no custom code or programming – it can be used by anyone.

Update 24 Jan 2023: we have built a free WordPress plugin to make this easier – see here for details.

Why Are Product Descriptions Important?

If you’re running an e-commerce store on WooCommerce, you know how important it is to have well-written product descriptions that accurately convey the features and benefits of your products to potential customers. Not only do these descriptions help customers make informed purchasing decisions, but they also play a crucial role in your store’s search engine optimization (SEO) efforts.

Why OpenAI?

OpenAI makes it very cost-effective for businesses and online stores to access cutting-edge AI.

Using OpenAI can help eCommerce store owners save time, money, and resources while also providing access to advanced technologies and improving their operations.

Here are just a few of the benefits of using OpenAI to help you with your product descriptions:

  1. Save time: Generating product descriptions with OpenAI is much faster than writing them manually. This allows you to focus on other important tasks, such as marketing and customer service.
  2. Improved accuracy: OpenAI uses advanced natural language processing algorithms to accurately capture the key features and benefits of your products. This ensures that your descriptions are accurate, informative, and compelling.
  3. Enhanced SEO: Well-written product descriptions can help improve your store’s search engine rankings. This can help drive more traffic to your store and increase sales.
  4. Improved conversion rates:  Your customers will be more likely to buy your products if they have compelling and relevant descriptions.

Requirements and Costs

To follow along with this guide, you will need the following:

  • A WooCommerce store.
  • An OpenAI account. New OpenAI accounts include $18 in free credits.
  • A Zapier account. New Zapier accounts have a 14-day free trial.
  • The WooCommerce Zapier extension, which has a 30-day money-back guarantee.

This means that you can be up and running with very little up-front costs, so there’s little to lose by giving it a try.

The Set Up

  1. Click here to create a new Zap using our pre-built Zap template.
  2. If you already have a Zapier account, click the Try this Zap button.
    If you don’t have a Zapier account, click the Sign up and try this Zap button then complete the signup process.
  3. In the Zap Editor, you will see a Zap that contains four steps:
    Zap Overview
  4. Click on the first Step. In the Choose account section, connect Zapier to your WooCommerce store.
    You will need the WooCommerce Zapier extension, which allows you to connect your WooCommerce store to Zapier.
    Please see here for detailed instructions: authenticating Zapier with your WooCommerce store.
  5. In the Set up trigger section, choose the Product Updated trigger rule. This ensures that the Zap will trigger whenever a WooCommerce product is created or updated.
  6. In the Test trigger section, click the Test trigger button, which will retrieve an existing product from your WooCommerce store.
  7. In Step 2 of the Zap, ensure the following Filter criteria is configured:
    Zap Filter Criteria
  8. Click Continue to test the Filter.
  9. In Step 3 of the Zap, authenticate the Zap with your OpenAI account. To do so, you will need to go to your OpenAI API Keys page and create a new key.
    Paste this new API key into the authentication dialog box and save.
  10. Click Continue.
  11. In the Set up action section, ensure it is configured as follows:
    Zap Step 3 Configuration
    Feel free to amend the Prompt step to suit your individual needs. For example, you may wish to adjust the tone or ask for a longer or shorter description.
  12. Click Continue, then Test the step to see what kind of Description will be generated by OpenAI.
  13. In Step 4 of the Zap, in the Choose account section, choose the authentication from step 4 above.
  14. Click Continue,
  15. In the Set up action section, ensure it is configured as follows:
    Zap Step 4 Configuration
  16. Click Continue, then Test the step, which will update your WooCommerce product with the sample description from step 12.
  17. Publish your Zap, which will turn it on. Congratulations!

The Workflow

Once your Zap is turned on, any time you save a product in WooCommerce without a Description, it will be added for you using OpenAI:

  1. In WooCommerce, create a new product (or edit an existing product). Fill in all product information except for a Description.
  2. Save the product (as either a draft or published product).
  3. Wait 10-60 seconds, then refresh the Edit Product screen.
  4. The product should now contain a detailed Description, written by OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 model (text-davinci-003).
  5. You can then tweak or fine-tune the description to suit your needs.
  6. If you don’t like the generated description, remove it from the product and save the product. Then repeat steps 3-5 above, and a new description will be added.

Generating Product Descriptions in Bulk

Do you have many existing WooCommerce products without a description?

The good news is that you can also run the above Zap in bulk against multiple WooCommerce products using Zapier Transfer:

  1. Go to https://zapier.com/app/zaps and find the Zap you published, then click the three dots then choose Transfer existing data.
  2. Click on the Description column to sort it with blank descriptions first. Tick all of those products without a description, then click Next.
  3. Click Send data to trigger the Zap for each of your selected products.
  4. Click View progress to see the progress.
  5. Enjoy your new product descriptions.

This workflow should work for dozens or even thousands of existing WooCommerce products.

Interested in a Simpler Solution?

Whilst the above manually created Zap achieves a good result, unfortunately, the setup process leaves a lot to be desired.

We think there should be a much simpler way to easily auto-generate your product descriptions using OpenAI so we have built a brand new WordPress plugin to do just that.

You can find it in the WordPress plugin directory:

CopyCraft Logo
CopyCraft: WooCommerce Product Description Generator Using OpenAI GPT-3

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