same content in article and meta description?

My site is ecommerce with hundreds of products.

the structure of each product page likes below:

overviews:
**** is great *** and blah blah

features:
...

Specifications:
....

every products have unique content but no meta description , I have 2 solutions here:

1. automated meta descripion: use fixed format like "Buy %product name as low as %price with free shipping"

2. just use the same content in overviews

I know write new description is good but I don't have time to do that, so which is better solution and do you have any suggestion? thanks

Tedchang8592,

If you don't have the time to make new descriptions, you can copy and paste something informative from your website copy that is relevant to the product/page. I would strongly suggest writing new descriptions. The meta description is your one marketing opportunity in SERP's to grab a searchers attention and get them to click on a link to your site. By copying and pasting content from the page, you run the risk of leaving out good keywords or simply crafting some compelling sales copy.

This post from SEOMoz talks about the importance of meta descriptions,

http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/meta-description

Hope that helps you,

Shawn

I've done it a few times with no real harm noticed but I always prefer now to reword it for the META

Use exactly meta description not help you to get ranking on SERP. In your case, as you said you don't have much time then at least you should use some spinning softwares for meta description its not a correct way but better than copy/paste.

SEO wise its fine to have identical descriptions and meta-descriptions. However, as one person said, meta description is your chance to stand out in the SERPs. So.. in the future, just make sure overviews are a good call to action sales pitch and describe your product well enough, and then use that in your meta description too.