The buying path is changing a lot, with more products being purchased online than at any time in retail history. According to eMarketer, nearly 150 million consumers worldwide became first-time shoppers online in 2020. More than a third have purchased items they have never purchased online before, and 32% have purchased products from retailers they had never purchased from before. Going forward, more than half of UK consumers surveyed plan to shop even more online in the future.
Unsurprisingly, the accelerated transition to online shopping is driving new consumer expectations. Consumers expect rich, descriptive product information to inform their purchases. Ecommerce sites around the world strive to outdo themselves with the best possible user experience.
The content of the brand and the product is everywhere at the heart of this experience. The accuracy and relevance of your product page data will not only improve your branding and conversion rate, but will also help you stand out from the ever-growing list of competitors online.
It is essential to meet the requirements of each product list. Ideally, ads should always stay up to date and best represent your brand and products to customers. However, at ChannelAdvisor, we often hear from brands online who find managing the content of product pages to be a challenge on a large scale.
Monitoring your product pages across all channels and tailoring them to make them as engaging as possible means staying on top of the following hygiene factors.
Product content hygiene factors to track across all e-commerce channels
Product Title:
With a direct impact on search performance, click-through rate and conversion, product titles have a strong impact. Simply put, there is almost nothing quite as important as an optimized title. Stay away from short titles, keep them informative, include your brand name as the first word, and include category aliases and important features. You can also consider adding your SKU to help customers easily differentiate the products. Keep in mind that each site has different guidelines when it comes to product page titles, so make sure you are compliant on all levels.
Pictures:
You need to use the right ecommerce images to attract traffic, visually answer questions, and convert buyers into buyers. High-quality images are a big part of the optimized content on product pages, and choosing the right ones can make all the difference. Include a variety of product images and when describing a key feature or selling point, accompany that text with a relevant image.
Description:
A product description is like a digital seller. Would you be confident buying from someone who didn’t explain the product well? Make your descriptions informative and keyword rich. Make scanning easier by using captions, short paragraphs, boldface, and other HTML formatting options that will make it easy for consumers to understand the main benefits of your product at a glance. If your customers regularly compliment you on a particular feature of a product, highlight them in comparison charts or descriptions. Likewise, the customer question and answer section can be a great place to gather information for an FAQ module.
Ratings and Reviews:
Showing reviews and comments from other customers becomes a vital part of how buyers rate your products. A lack of detailed ratings or reviews could be a challenge, especially for new listings. Without ratings or reviews, the product may not have enough references to help the buyer make a decision. Additionally, low ratings can have an impact. Encouraging positive reviews where you can and responding to negative reviews can help reassure potential customers. Reviews are an aspect of a page’s SEO ranking that can be overlooked, but you can include keywords and links in your responses to improve your visibility.
KPIs that benefit when your content is constantly optimized
High quality product content plays a vital role in the buying process. While it’s difficult to objectively assess the quality of a product’s content, it’s easier to measure its impact on critical business KPIs. Here are six KPIs that can generally be improved by higher quality product content:
- Conversion rate: Optimized and informative product content (images, text, reviews, etc.) help shoppers make up their minds and positively impact conversion rates on product pages.
- SEO and Google Shopping: Headlines and keyword-rich descriptions tend to be taken more into account by algorithms, increase your performance in organic searches, and present your Google Shopping list in front of more eyes.
- Digital presence on the shelves: Site search engines rely in part on the content of the product page to index your page. Optimized content is more likely to position your products on the first page of on-site results.
- Brand commitment: Enhanced page content and other types of branded content (blog posts, social media) allow you to go beyond sales and build a lasting relationship with your customers.
- Brand awareness : Leverage your media and awareness investments by showcasing campaign content on product pages to maximize awareness and become the go-to brand in your category.
- Lower return rates: Highly descriptive product content helps consumers understand exactly what they are buying and avoid a bad experience. This can drastically reduce costly returns.
Product page content can have a huge effect on sales, returns, engagement, etc., so optimal online merchandising is crucial for brands to gain an edge. Product page monitoring maximizes a brand’s control over content across multiple pages and retailers. It’s not about defining and forgetting, but a regular process to make sure your brand looks its best in the competitive world of ecommerce.
