Product content: the key to creating winning shopping experiences

Hav­ing the right prod­uct infor­ma­tion makes a mea­sur­able dif­fer­ence to online sales. For ven­dors sell­ing through online mar­ket­places like Ama­zon, the infor­ma­tion they pro­vide to con­sumers via their prod­uct pages is absolute­ly key because that’s how they can stand out from the crowd, dif­fer­en­ti­ate what they’re offer­ing and keep the con­sumer from leav­ing the page to check for any miss­ing details else­where. And it can also pre­vent cus­tomer dis­ap­point­ment through inac­cu­rate infor­ma­tion about the prod­uct itself or stock lev­els and reduce prod­uct return rates.

Accord­ing to Salsify’s research about best prac­tices for Ama­zon pages, A‑rated con­tent con­verts 3.4 times bet­ter than F‑rated con­tent and appears 9.7% high­er in organ­ic search results. But to get con­tent to that top lev­el, ven­dors need to have prop­er vis­i­bil­i­ty of the right infor­ma­tion about each indi­vid­ual prod­uct, and of how each page is per­form­ing, so they can update and opti­mise as need­ed.

Many brands have tra­di­tion­al­ly strug­gled with keep­ing this kind of infor­ma­tion accu­rate because they’ve been slow to move towards dig­i­tal com­merce. The role of main­tain­ing prod­uct infor­ma­tion may be siloed away from the team that gets that infor­ma­tion online, and often the mul­ti­ple dif­fer­ent teams involved strug­gle to coop­er­ate and col­lab­o­rate quick­ly enough to pro­vide the nec­es­sary infor­ma­tion and keep it up to date. They may be reliant on cum­ber­some sys­tems of Excel spread­sheets being man­u­al­ly updat­ed that makes get­ting new or updat­ed infor­ma­tion into all the dif­fer­ent places a major, time-con­sum­ing headache.

Even busi­ness­es that recog­nise the issues and move beyond spread­sheets may strug­gle if they don’t have the exper­tise to cre­ate and main­tain a prop­er prod­uct infor­ma­tion man­age­ment (PIM) sys­tem that doesn’t require con­tin­u­ous man­u­al inter­ven­tion, which is where Sal­si­fy comes in – offer­ing solu­tions that go beyond tra­di­tion­al PIM by cre­at­ing a cen­tralised sys­tem of record that man­ages all of the prod­uct con­tent need­ed to pow­er mul­ti­chan­nel, dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed com­merce expe­ri­ences. “We want you to be able to cen­tralise your con­tent, opti­mise that con­tent, syn­di­cate that con­tent and then con­tin­ue that loop, right, so that you’re con­tin­u­ous­ly send­ing real­ly good infor­ma­tion out to the dig­i­tal shelf,” says Salsify’s head of ana­lyst rela­tions, Alexan­dra Alves.

To meet evolv­ing con­sumer demands, busi­ness­es need to be pro­vid­ing more infor­ma­tion and con­tent about their prod­ucts than ever before. On Ama­zon, sell­ers have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to pub­lish a wealth of dif­fer­ent types of prod­uct infor­ma­tion to try to win over con­sumers. As well as basic prod­uct infor­ma­tion, ven­dors can include enhanced con­tent: videos, lifestyle images, com­par­i­son charts, or even sus­tain­abil­i­ty infor­ma­tion, which shop­pers can see once they dig into the prod­uct details below the dig­i­tal fold.

This so-called A+ con­tent acts as a retailer’s phys­i­cal pack­ag­ing might in telling the sto­ry of the prod­uct and the brand. Alves says: “We find that enhanced con­tent def­i­nite­ly dri­ves con­ver­sion, with increas­es of around 10% on aver­age. But it’s also just a way for brands to dif­fer­en­ti­ate them­selves. Where in a phys­i­cal store you might draw con­sumers in with the design of the pack­ag­ing, for con­sumers shop­ping online the prod­uct detail page is the brand’s pack­ag­ing now. Brands who have enhanced con­tent just do so much bet­ter across indus­tries and ver­ti­cals than brands who don’t.”

But as big as the oppor­tu­ni­ty that enhanced con­tent presents is, there’s a chal­lenge for busi­ness­es in terms of find­ing the resources and exper­tise to actu­al­ly get it from their PIM into their prod­uct pages on Ama­zon in the right for­mat and opti­mise it to dri­ve the most sales. This is where a plat­form like Sal­si­fy becomes indis­pens­able, with tem­plates and bulk cre­ation process­es that make it easy to get this kind of con­tent onto your prod­uct pages on Ama­zon and else­where.

Sal­si­fy offers more than just tech­nol­o­gy. Alves says Sal­si­fy is con­stant­ly in touch with Ama­zon and oth­er major retail­ers: “Our part­ner­ships team is talk­ing to them all the time about their best prac­tices, and what we should be telling our cus­tomers, so it’s a good way for brands to get infor­ma­tion they may not have been get­ting from the retail­er. We can act almost as a bro­ker of infor­ma­tion to con­tin­u­ous­ly opti­mise con­tent.”

Fine-tun­ing prod­uct infor­ma­tion has impli­ca­tions beyond the prod­uct page itself and has to reflect con­sumer behav­iour; 81% of search­es on Ama­zon are unbrand­ed. Even the way the product’s title is com­posed mat­ters. The con­sumer might not be look­ing for a spe­cif­ic brand, so that alone isn’t enough of a descrip­tor.

Sell­ers also have to pay atten­tion to how their prod­ucts are becom­ing vis­i­ble – or why they are not appear­ing in search – and adjust the infor­ma­tion they pro­vide accord­ing­ly. To do this, com­pa­nies have to delve deep­er than exam­in­ing week­ly reports. They need to be agile enough to spot issues and oppor­tu­ni­ties as quick­ly as the mar­ket­place itself moves.

Alves says: “You want to make sure your sys­tems are talk­ing to each oth­er because of how quick­ly the dig­i­tal shelf moves. On Ama­zon, if you search for ‘cof­fee,’ there’s a dif­fer­ent prod­uct at the top of that page every few min­utes. But it’s hard to know what the algo­rithm is going to do when you send your con­tent out into the wild. If some­thing changes or if you drop in rank, you want to make sure you know right away so you can take action.”

And the cus­tomer jour­ney is increas­ing­ly more com­pli­cat­ed than just going from a search page to a prod­uct page. Cus­tomers might browse a prod­uct page on their phone, then buy in store, or do some of their research by ask­ing Alexa about the prod­uct before they buy on Ama­zon. Prod­uct infor­ma­tion needs to be avail­able every­where the con­sumer wants to access it, so mak­ing sure you can quick­ly get it to every­where it needs to be rather than being locked behind Excel spread­sheets and man­u­al process­es is increas­ing­ly impor­tant.

Beyond gen­er­al infor­ma­tion about a prod­uct, ven­dors also need to con­sid­er the impact the sta­tus of their inven­to­ry could have on the prod­uct page. If the page is claim­ing a prod­uct can be deliv­ered by a cer­tain date when there’s been a delay, or say­ing some­thing is in stock that isn’t, the end result will be dis­ap­point­ed cus­tomers who take their busi­ness else­where. This is an area Sal­si­fy is expand­ing into, says Alves, because “hav­ing your inven­to­ry tied to your PIM increas­es your teams’ vis­i­bil­i­ty and promis­es a strong prod­uct expe­ri­ence at every touch­point.”

Prod­uct infor­ma­tion has come a long way from mak­ing sure the right prod­uct is on the right phys­i­cal shelf with the right price. Now, busi­ness­es con­stant­ly need to be think­ing about where their infor­ma­tion might be used and the new types of infor­ma­tion and con­tent, they might need to be pro­vid­ing to move cus­tomers through the shop­ping jour­ney.

Com­pa­nies sell­ing through online mar­ket­places face a par­tic­u­lar set of chal­lenges. They should con­sid­er whether it’s worth the time and resources to resolve these chal­lenges them­selves or whether it makes more sense to look at exist­ing solu­tions like those offered by Sal­si­fy that can stream­line the process and help them stand out on the dig­i­tal shelf.

To learn more about how prod­uct con­tent can help brands suc­ceed on Ama­zon, and to see an analy­sis of over 14,000 prod­uct detail pages across the UK, France and Ger­many, read Salsify’s Con­tent Advan­tage report.