How to prioritize the creation of rich product content for your brand’s assortment, to maximize limited e-commerce resources.
Brands with large product portfolios face many challenges when it comes to creating, managing, maintaining and distributing rich content. Without compelling content, including user generated content such as ratings & reviews, it’s nearly impossible to be successful in e‑commerce. Content is the lifeblood of the online buying process, enabling consumers to find your products, understand the benefits and choose their preferred option.
My colleague Bartosz outlined nine steps to help brands create, manage, maintain and distribute high quality product content in his recent blog post. Today I want to address the thorny issue of prioritization and making optimum use of your limited resources. Or in the context of content creation; how to balance your efforts with other e-commerce essentials such as ratings & reviews.
Limited Resources
Whether we like it or not, none of us has unlimited resources. If we did, we could develop an endless supply of rich product content and digital assets targeted to individual consumers, and at the same time, work with retailers and product champions to drive consumer sentiment towards near-perfect rating & review scores.
For brands with large portfolios, prioritization is crucial. Developing content for thousands of products in several languages, optimized for hundreds of retailers, takes a lot of time and resources. Thankfully, as in all things e-commerce-related, there is data available to help brands take a scientific approach to making the difficult choices.
Category Radar
When it comes to content, not all categories are created equal – high-price, high consideration items such as TVs or white goods need landing page content that works harder than might be the case for a household product such as toilet bleach. eStoreMedia has developed a 6-factor analytical methodology to help brands set content priorities, regardless of category. The approach involves grading for each factor, weighting scores and mapping the results on a radar chart to provide brands with a greater understanding of their products’ content needs.
Content Prioritization Factors
- Price / Cash-Outlay
Is it a significant spend? The higher the price the more time consumers will spend researching and considering their options.
- Risk
What’s the risk of buying the wrong product (e.g. baby food)? Are there any ancillary costs associated with the purchase?
- Product Familiarity
How well does the shopper already know the product, or is the shopper new to the product market or category? Low product familiarity generates a high score for content need.
- Repurchase Frequency
How often is an online shopper likely to purchase this or similar products? (Low purchase frequency, high score).
- Category Involvement
How likely is a shopper to be interested in learning more about the product category,( e.g. cars versus canned goods)?
- Category Complexity
Are the products in the category significantly different (meeting different needs) or are they more generic in form, like commodities?
Example: Canned Fizzy Drink vs Capsule Coffee Maker
We chose very different products to illustrate the point – a can of soda and a capsule coffee maker. From the chart above, it is clear the two product categories behave differently, and in consequence have very different content needs.
In order to meet the needs of more complex product categories, with higher prices, which also coincide with greater shopper involvement and risk, brands need to be prepared to invest more in rich content production, as well as driving ratings & review scores. For others like fizzy drinks, the volume of created content may be less important, but ratings & reviews can still offer one product and advantage over another.
Find out more about how to plan and run your e-commerce strategy; download theHow to Design your e‑Commerce Strategy eBook.
