Research · October 2026

We checked 21,376 products on 108 Australian Shopify stores. Here is what we found.

Product pages are where an online store wins or loses its organic traffic. On 15 October 2026 we read the public product feed of 108 Australian Shopify brands and measured what Google and shoppers both judge: description length, duplicate copy, images and how products are labelled.

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In short

Across 21,376 products from 108 Australian Shopify stores, 26.8% had a product description under 50 words, 26.1% shared a word-for-word description with another product in the same store, and 7.9% had one image or none. The typical store wrote 73 words per product.

The six numbers

Thin descriptions

26.8%

of products have a description under 50 words. In 26 of the 108 stores, more than half the catalogue is under 50 words.

Duplicate copy

26.1%

of products share a word-for-word description with another product in the same store. 87 of 108 stores have at least one, and 60 have them on more than one product in ten.

Typical description

73 words

is the median store's typical product description. 14 stores write 150 words or more; 26 write under 50.

One image or none

7.9%

of products show a single image or no image at all. The typical store shows 6 images per product.

On sale on the day

13.7%

of products had a compare-at price above the selling price. 21 stores had more than a quarter of the catalogue discounted; 24 had nothing discounted.

No description at all

1.9%

of products, spread across 44 of the 108 stores. A further 6.3% of products have no product type and 5.8% have no tags.

By category

Category	Stores	Products	Under 50 words	Duplicate copy	On sale	One image or none	Median words
Fashion and footwear	41	9,617	30.1%	22.8%	12.8%	1.1%	64
Homewares and furniture	23	4,694	22.2%	23.6%	15.3%	13.5%	76
Beauty and personal care	17	1,813	31.2%	14.7%	23.8%	10.9%	73
Food, coffee and health	11	1,472	20.6%	22.8%	12.4%	21.8%	111
Accessories and lifestyle	10	2,280	36.2%	51.4%	3.3%	14.2%	64
Kids and pets	6	1,500	6.5%	33.7%	19.9%	6.5%	181

Accessories and lifestyle stores had the most duplicate copy (51.4% of products), mostly the same description repeated across colours. Kids and pets stores wrote the longest descriptions. Fashion stores almost always show several images, but three in ten products carry under 50 words.

What it means for an Australian Shopify store

Google ranks product pages on the words it can read. A product with 30 words has little to match against the long, specific searches that convert, such as a material, a size, a use or a style. Duplicate copy makes it worse: when ten products share one description, Google picks one to show and the other nine rarely appear. AI shopping answers work the same way, quoting the specific details a page gives them.

Five fixes, in order

1. Write the best sellers first. Take the 20 products that already earn the most impressions in Search Console and give each one a description that answers the buyer: what it is, who it suits, fit or size, materials, care, delivery. 2. Merge or rewrite colourways. One product with colour variants, or one unique opening paragraph per colour. 3. Add images where there is only one. Scale, detail and in-use shots. 4. Fill product type and tags. Collections, filters and on-site search depend on them. 5. Check the rendered page, not just the editor. Some themes pull extra text from tabs and metafields, which is fine as long as it is unique to the product.

We do this work for Australian stores on our Shopify SEO and ecommerce SEO engagements, and the two stores we can show numbers for are on the results page.

How we did it

Stores. We started with 159 well-known Australian online brands across homewares, fashion and footwear, beauty, food and coffee, accessories, and kids and pets. 108 of them run on Shopify with a readable public product feed, and those 108 are the study. They are not a random sample, and none of them are Sellevate clients. We do not name the stores.

Data. Each store's public Shopify product feed (the products.json file every Shopify store publishes), first page of up to 250 products, read on 15 October 2026. 62 stores have more than 250 products, so for them the figures describe a sample of the catalogue.

Measures. Description words: words in the product description after removing HTML. Duplicate copy: a description over 20 characters that is identical to another product's in the same store. Images: images attached to the product. On sale: any variant with a compare-at price above its price. Product type and tags: empty or not.

Limits. The feed is not the rendered page, so a theme that adds text from tabs or metafields can make a product look thinner here than on screen. We did not measure speed, checkout or prices. Percentages are rounded to one decimal place.

Data and licence. Download the CSV (one anonymised row per store). Free to use under CC BY 4.0 with a link to this page. Questions about the data: info@sellevate.com.au.

Proof you can check.

We publish two client results, both read from inside the client’s own admin with their permission. Both are online stores. The method is the one we run for service businesses: track every enquiry to the booked job first, fix the page that converts, then put the budget behind what works.

Shopify store and showroom · Motorcycle gear · Victoria

Tuff Gear

A$222Ktotal sales in the 12 months to August 2026, up 274% on the year before

733orders fulfilled, up 112%
12.3%returning customers, up 68%
2.5xonline store monthly sales since 2024

A store we run end to end: product pages and tracking first, then Google and Meta run against cost per order, then creative written for riders. The showroom sells through Shopify too, so this is the whole business.

Read the Tuff Gear case study

Shopify store · Party supplies · Melbourne

Koi Koi Inbox

+205%total sales, February to August 2026 (A$77K) against the seven months before

679orders, up 176%
A$24Kstraight from Facebook and Instagram
A$15Ka month since May, from about A$6.5K

A family business whose Meta ads we took over in February 2026. The account was rebuilt around the party packs parents actually search for, and growth came in steps as the winning ads got the budget.

Read the Koi Koi Inbox case study

Screenshots read from each store’s Shopify admin on 10 September 2026 and published with the owners’ permission. They are their numbers, not a promise about anyone else’s. How we publish results

From free audits we ran for service businesses, September 2026

What we usually find in the first hour

01A Book Now button that leads to a dead pageSitewide, on a practice paying for Google Ads every day.

02Ads counting clicks as customersConversion tags firing on button presses and phone taps, so Google learns to buy the wrong clicks.

03Phone numbers a mobile cannot dialA header number formatted so that tapping it does nothing, on a business that lives on calls.

04Proof the website hidesFive stars from hundreds of Google reviews, and none of it on the pages people land on.

Names left out, patterns real. Get the same check on your business, free

Questions

How long should a Shopify product description be?

There is no fixed number. In our study the typical Australian store wrote 73 words per product, and 26.8% of products had fewer than 50. Write enough to answer what a buyer asks before they pay: what it is, who it suits, size or fit, materials, care and delivery. For most products that lands well above 50 words.

Do duplicate product descriptions hurt SEO?

They make it harder for the right page to rank. When several products share word-for-word copy, Google has little to tell them apart and tends to show one and ignore the rest. In our study 26.1% of products shared a description with another product in the same store. Colourways are the usual cause: keep one product with colour variants, or give each colour its own opening paragraph.

How does my store compare?

Send us your website through the free audit form on this page. We run the same checks on your product feed, compare them with the 108 stores in this study and send the findings in writing.

Can I use this data?

Yes. The data is free to use under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Please link to this page as the source. The download has one anonymised row per store.

See how your store compares with the 108.

Send your website and we run the same checks on your product feed, then send the findings in writing within 24 hours. Free.

Book a free 10-minute call Get a free audit

info@sellevate.com.au 0493 290 352Geelong VIC

Free audit, in writing, within 24 hours

Where we do this

Ecommerce agency in MelbourneShopify and Amazon brands across Victoria PPC agency in MelbourneGoogle Ads, Shopping and Meta judged on cost per order PPC management in MelbourneSearch, Shopping and Performance Max against cost per order Ecommerce agency in SydneyNew South Wales stores, remote but senior Ecommerce agency in BrisbaneQueensland brands, same flat fee How the 90 days actually runWeek by week, what happens when Client results with the numbers left inTuff Gear and Koi Koi, read from their own admin