Insights · Digital Products
We read digital and downloadable product listings with one question in mind: could an AI shopping assistant confidently tell a buyer what they'd receive, and whether they could use it?
Every physical product has a second source of truth. A buyer can pick it up, read the back of the box, look at the photographs, check the dimensions against a tape measure. A digital product has none of that. There is no packaging, no weight, no photograph that reveals anything the seller didn't choose to reveal.
A digital product is exactly what its listing says it is. Nothing else about it can be inspected before paying.
That makes three ordinary facts unusually load-bearing. Format — the file types, how many files, and what software opens them — decides whether the buyer can use the thing at all. Delivery — instant download, emailed link, account access, and how long that access lasts — decides whether they get it when they expect to. Licence — personal or commercial use, how many seats or businesses, whether resale is permitted — decides whether they are allowed to do the thing they bought it for.
Each of those is genuinely part of the product rather than a term attached to it, and each is invisible until stated. An assistant asked “can I use this for client work?” is not making a judgement call — it is looking for a sentence. Where the sentence isn't there, it cannot answer, and a listing it cannot answer from is a listing it does not put forward.
Why this happens
Licence terms and delivery details have somewhere else to live — a licence page, an FAQ, a terms document, or the file that arrives after checkout. Those are sensible places to keep them, and none of them is the place a buyer or an assistant is reading. An assistant weighing a product reads that product's page; a licence explained two clicks away is, for that purpose, unpublished.
There's a second thing worth naming. It is natural to describe the outcome — “transform your finances,” “get your business plan sorted” — because the outcome is what the buyer wants. But the outcome is not the deliverable. A buyer has to know they're receiving a 24-page editable document, not just that they'll feel organised afterwards, and so does the assistant deciding whether to recommend it.
What to do about it
List the exact file formats and how many files. “.docx and .odt, plus a print-ready PDF” tells a buyer in one line whether this will work for them.
Say what software opens it, and any version requirement. It's the single most common pre-purchase question in this category.
State the licence in plain words on the product page. Personal or commercial, how many businesses or seats, whether resale is permitted — not only in a linked terms document.
Describe how and when it's delivered — instant download, emailed link, account access — and how long the buyer keeps access to it.
Quantify the deliverable. Pages, minutes, number of presets, number of lessons. A size is what turns an outcome promise into a product.
Say whether updates are included, and for how long. It's a real difference between two otherwise identical products, and buyers compare on it.
Squiggle reads your entire Shopify catalogue and shows you which products describe an outcome where a buyer needed a format, a delivery method or a licence — and what to add first.
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Squiggle's category guidance is informed by ongoing analysis of publicly available ecommerce product information. Illustrative examples explain common product-understanding principles and do not represent findings from any one merchant or the entire category. No individual store is named. This is guidance on product information, not legal advice about licensing, consumer law or refund obligations. Public catalogue data only — no account access, sales data, or private information was used.