On average, brands make 76% more product page edits during Q4. We know an ongoing investment in content optimization drives a measurable competitive advantage and increased market share, but is the holiday season the right time to be making sweeping changes to product pages? Depends. Here are a few places to focus your efforts, especially across your most critical SKUs.
1. Address Critical Errors and Product Page Performance Issues
Typos, incorrect specs, and image malfunctions are all examples of edits to be made in the holiday moment. With a PXM, making small edits like these are easy, even with catalogs containing thousands of products spread across multiple platforms.
If your brand has yet to get a PXM, group together as many of these smaller tweaks as possible to complete at the same time. Piecemeal requests risk additional errors, especially when retailers edit pages too frequently during such a frantic period.
2. Apply Changes Based on Performance Data
Your brand’s holiday strike team should have access to reports, numbers, and any retailer feedback. If they don’t, get them hooked up as soon as possible. Sales numbers and clicks should be analyzed every day, at a minimum of once a week.
The early data on KPIs such as search rank, clicks, conversion, abandoned sales, consumer questions, reviews, and returns can then be used to make changes on product pages that reflect the consumers’ behavior and needs.
3. Optimize Content to Improve SEO Rankings
To win the holiday season, your products need to be findable and rank high on all searches. We found (by analyzing half a million Amazon search results, no less) richer content propels product pages to the top of search results and “ongoing content optimization equals better sales rank.”
Over half the time, a listing with more bullets, more images, or more reviews will convert at a higher rate. If an important SKU is not getting the traffic expected, read The Sales Impact of Optimized Product Content, then analyze the product page to find out why.
As two examples: When e-cloth addressed major content gaps within listings on Amazon, the sales rank of 45 products improved an average of 49%. Similarly, after a review, ShurTech’s Amazon sales rank across 70 products improved an average of 15%.
4. Address Brand Compliance Concerns
If a third-party seller updates product pages with off-brand content, have the strike team address this right away—either by editing the content directly or dealing with the seller. We don’t need to tell you how misaligned, misinformed, and misused content can drive consumers away.
5. Keep Updated with New Retailer Requirements
Algorithms change. Requirements alter. With these adjustments, your product pages should follow. Most retailers roll out new technology ahead of the busiest shopping days, so let this act as a reminder to check the health of your product pages now.
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