How to create, manage, maintain and distribute high quality product content for the online channel.
I don’t need to tell you that the growth in online commerce has significantly increased the importance of content. Effectively, in the e-commerce channel your products don’t exist without clear, complete and convincing content.
Offline, you may be able to leave your content in the hands of your packaging and design teams. However online, content has a much wider role to play. It is central to product discovery (driving online store search results), shopper reassurance and conversion (in place of physical product), and brand awareness (web search results, first moment of truth).
Rich product page content
e-Commerce content is as much about e-marketing as it is about online sales value. Rich product page content can deliver information, and engage an audience in a way that in the recent past could only be achieved by investing in TV advertising.
Your product landing page content in a given online retailer reaches far beyond the individual retailer, affecting sales and brand equity in other online properties as well as physical brick and mortar stores. As such, a well-developed content plan needs to be a central plank of your overall e-commerce success strategy.
We could write an entire eBook on the development, maintenance and distribution of product content for the e-commerce channel. However, to get you started here’s nine essential ‘check list’ questions to ask yourself to kick-start the creation of your brand’s e-commerce channel content plan:
- Does the content clearly communicate my products' USPs, and differentiate them from competitors?
- Is it complete - does the content answer all the questions a consumer might have?
- Is is fully aligned with wider brand messages, benefits & visuals?
- Does it effectively and efficiently deliver benefit messages for time-pressed consumers?
- Is it adaptable to different online retailers' technical capabilities, styles and shoppers?
- How can I develop the content as the product matures?
- Will it deliver high-ranking search results in online store search, and wider web search?
- How am I going to create, manage, host, approve, change and distribute my e-channel content efficiently?
- How will I manage localization and translation for multiple markets?
Find out more about how to plan and run your e-commerce strategy; download theHow to Design your e‑Commerce Strategy eBook.
