Hugo Galvao de Franca Filho frequently observes that growing pet businesses with extensive catalogs often resort to a shortcut: they copy the supplier’s product description directly onto their store page, saving the time it would take to create original content and quickly moving on to the next item. With hundreds of products to list, this approach seems like a practical way to expedite the process. However, it is also one of the costliest habits that a pet e-commerce catalog can adopt.
Why the shortcut feels reasonable
Manufacturer descriptions are usually accurate, already written and available the moment a product gets added to the catalog. For a business trying to list dozens or hundreds of items quickly, rewriting each one from scratch looks like unnecessary effort spent on text that already exists and already says what needs to be said.
Hugo Galvao points out that this reasoning holds up right until the description actually needs to do its job, which is convincing a specific customer, browsing a specific search result, to choose this seller over the next one showing the exact same product.
What actually happens to a page built this way
Search engines treat a description copied from a manufacturer, or reused by dozens of other retailers selling the same item, as duplicate content. It does not necessarily get penalized outright, but it also does nothing to help the page rank, since the original source, usually the manufacturer’s own site, tends to get priority whenever that exact text shows up in a search. A product page relying entirely on that borrowed text is effectively invisible to the customers searching for it, competing on a track where every other retailer using the same description starts from the same disadvantage.
There is a second cost that matters just as much and gets overlooked more often. Product descriptions consistently outrank both photos and customer reviews as the single factor that most influences a buyer’s decision on an e-commerce page. A generic, identical-to-everyone-else description throws away exactly the tool most likely to tip an undecided shopper toward a purchase, at the precise moment that shopper is comparing this listing against several others selling the same item.
Why this costs more in the pet category specifically
A pet owner reading a product page is often looking for something a manufacturer’s generic copy was never written to answer: whether this specific food suits an older dog’s joints, whether a supplement addresses the exact issue a vet mentioned, or how a specific formula compares to what the pet already eats. Manufacturer text, written to describe the product in general terms for every retailer that might use it, rarely speaks to that specific concern.
A seller willing to write a description that actually answers those real questions, in language that reflects genuine familiarity with the product and the pets it serves, wins the moment a generic paragraph loses. As revealed by Hugo Galvao de Franca Filho, that gap between generic and specific tends to be wider in categories where the buying decision carries real emotional weight, which describes most pet purchases.
What the fix actually requires
None of this demands rewriting an entire catalog overnight. It means treating original product descriptions as a genuine priority for the items that matter most, the bestsellers and the ones competing directly against several other sellers on a marketplace, rather than an afterthought handled with a copy-paste shortcut.
To Hugo Galvao de Franca Filho, a description that answers a real customer question, in the seller’s own words, does double duty: it gives search engines something worth ranking, and it gives an undecided buyer the specific reason to choose this listing that a manufacturer’s generic paragraph was never built to provide.
