American Founding Father and legendary aphorist Ben Franklin was known to be somewhat of a social butterfly, despite his famous saying about the tendency of houseguests to overstay their welcome: “Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.”
While Franklin wasn’t around to witness the development of 21st-century ecommerce, the sharp writer would probably observe that there’s a certain shelf life when it comes to your company’s product content too (though likely a little longer than just three days).
Without careful, regularly scheduled efforts toward ecommerce content optimization, it’s easy for your product pages to become stale, irrelevant, or outdated — in other words? Stink.
This post covers the basic fundamentals of ecommerce content optimization: what it is, why it’s important, and the best ways to get started.
What Is Ecommerce Content Optimization?
Ecommerce content optimization is an ongoing process in which a company regularly reviews its full library of content to ensure it remains:
- Relevant to customers;
- Consistent with brand messaging; and
- Primed to meet contemporary search engine optimization (SEO) and enhanced content best practices.
(Luckily, it’s pretty much exactly what it sounds like.)
The goal is simple: ensuring that your content remains timely and relevant, and maximizes your brand’s ability to convert the shoppers who interact with it. Customers notice very quickly when brands appear “asleep at the wheel.” If your competitors are rigorously optimizing their content year after year, they’ll likely notice that too.
3 Reasons Why Quality Ecommerce Content Is Important
Great ecommerce content (and ecommerce content optimization) is important for various reasons, as it can easily help you gain an edge over the competition.
1. Quality Ecommerce Content Improves Visibility and Traffic
Quality ecommerce content can often serve as a brand’s primary driver of traffic to its website and product pages. A focus on following search engine optimization (SEO) best practices, as well as providing content that consistently offers value to your shoppers, will invariably lead to an increase in site traffic and brand visibility.
2. Quality Ecommerce Content Leads to Better Retention
Creating content that provides relevance, value, and utility will not only go a long way in building trust and credibility with your audience, but ensuring the chance they return for additional purchases in the future.
Make sure that your messaging addresses common customer pain points, provides users with a fun incentive to explore your brand’s offerings, and confers the trustworthiness customers look for when making a purchase online.
3. Quality Ecommerce Content Results in Higher Conversions, Sales, and Average Order Value (AOV)
Perhaps the most important reason of all: increased sales. When content is optimized, consumers can quickly find the information they need to make the correct purchase for their needs — or, through the power of personalization, receive customized product recommendations based on their browsing or purchase history.
How To Start Ecommerce Content Optimizations
The benefits of ecommerce content optimization are simple enough to wrap one’s mind around. But what’s the best way to start a regular cycle of content optimization for your own brand?
Conduct a Preliminary Content Audit
The first step to any ecommerce content optimization campaign will involve cataloging each and every public-facing piece of content your brand employs — from your homepage copy to all of your product page descriptions.
Once you quantify and identify what kinds of content are out there, you can now turn to a qualitative analysis. For a preliminary content audit, ask yourself:
- What are some of your content goals for the next year?
- Which pieces of content are helping you reach your ecommerce goals?
- Are any pieces holding you back?
- How can you lean on your wins and minimize your losses?
With this bird’s eye view of your content library, it will be easier to identify your strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities — and proceed accordingly.
Identify the Search Phrases and Keywords Your Customers Use
Another great initial step involves a thorough SEO analysis — discovering how customers are finding your sites and products, as well as incorporating any missed opportunities into your existing content.
Analyzing your traffic, as well as your competitors, will give you a clear sense of your customers’ search journeys. There are also a number of third-party keyword research tools, such as SEMrush, that can help you identify relevant keywords to artfully emphasize in your content.
Consider Enhanced Content
As consumers’ standards and expectations continue to rise, many shoppers come to expect multimedia or other forms of enhanced content on your product pages and other touchpoints through the marketing funnel.
Beyond the engaging nature of media like high-res photography and video, these content assets can go a long way in building trust and addressing pain points among your customers.
Photographs powered by 360-degree capabilities can help customers better understand the ins and outs of your product, while other content like lifestyle photos can demonstrate the product in action.
Even minor offerings — like a link to a PDF of the product’s user manual — can be essential in building trust and addressing any customer concerns that might act as a barrier to purchase.
Put Customer Feedback Front and Center
It’s crucial for brands to not only read customer feedback, but actively respond, engage with, and tout those interactions on your site. Put that social proof to use!
Customers not only like to see that other shoppers are generally pleased to do business with you, but that, in the event your brand falls short, you’ll take the time to make a bad situation right.
Timely responses that delight your customers — even the angry ones — will demonstrate to shoppers that your brand is trustworthy and worth doing business with.
How To Correct Ecommerce Content Mistakes
Think of managing your content library like a community garden: You can always plant your seeds and let them do their thing, but your crops will never really thrive without constant tinkering, testing, and self-improvement.
With ecommerce product page optimization and regular maintenance of your content, your customers will thank you for it.
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