Getly
A Getly listing has two description fields: the long one that fills the product page, and a short one — a single line. On 14 September 2026, 535 of 5,672 live listings have left the short one empty.
Under ten percent, so this is not a majority problem. It is worth writing about anyway, because the field is small enough that skipping it looks harmless and it is the sentence doing the most travelling.
Where the short description goes
It is not a summary for the product page. It is the text that leaves the product page.
It appears under your product in category grids and browse listings, where a buyer is scanning a dozen covers and reading one line under each. It is used as the meta description in search results. It shows up in link previews when the URL is shared. And it feeds the product feeds we generate for shopping engines.
The long description is read by someone who has already clicked. The short one is read by everyone deciding whether to.
What happens when it is missing
Nothing breaks. The long description gets truncated to fill the gap, which means the first 160 characters of your product page become your search snippet whether or not they were written for that job.
In practice those opening characters are often a greeting, a heading, or an HTML fragment that reads oddly out of context. The listing ends up represented by a sentence nobody chose.
Writing one that works
One sentence. What it is, who it is for, and the number that matters.
"40 print-ready coloring pages for classrooms, US Letter and A4." That is 62 characters and contains a format, a count, an audience and a paper size. Compare it with "A beautiful collection of coloring pages" — same length, no information.
The test is simple: if the sentence would fit under any other product in the same category, it is not describing yours.
The related numbers
The long description is not the problem — its median length across live listings is 1,158 characters, and the bottom tenth still manages 262. Sellers write. They write at length, on the page, where it is optional, and skip the one line that appears everywhere else.
The same pattern shows up across every optional field. The median listing carries 9 tags, but 715 listings have none. Half have exactly one image. The fields that block publication are all filled; the ones that merely help are filled by people who thought about it.
Five minutes, once
If you have listings without a short description, open them and add one. It is one sentence, it does not require re-reading the product, and it replaces a snippet somebody else's software chose for you with one you wrote.
Do it for your best-selling product first. That is the one whose search snippet is being seen most often, and the one where a better line changes the most decisions.
Where to check yours
Open one of your products in the dashboard and look at the short description field. If it is empty, open the category page the product sits in and read the line under it — that is the opening of your long description, cut off mid-thought. It is exactly what someone deciding whether to click is reading.
The same line travels into link previews. Paste your product URL into any messenger and see what appears under the title.
