Product eContent is vital for eCommerce success, but do your teams have the skills needed to Master Online Retailing and maximise eCommerce growth?
How important is customer experience (CX)?
You know that customer experience is important when PwC puts it on a level with ROI (return on investment) as a measure of a company’s success.[1]
PwC – one of the world’s Big Four accounting firms, alongside EY, Deloitte and KPMG – is not a business known for hyperbole. It believes in no-nonsense hard facts and figures.
So, when it proposes ‘return on experience’ – or ROX – as a new metric, every business in the world should sit up and take notice.[2]
Why is customer experience so important?
CX is so important, according to PwC, because ‘consumers today are so discerning and powerful’ and are the ‘strongest link in the global economic chain’.
Consumers have so many ways to shop online now; and can choose how and when they shop. They can do it from their desk at work or – even more conveniently – while relaxing at home via their mobile device or even by Voice through a smart speaker. Amazing.
But here’s the catch.
If the experience (and especially the mobile experience) you offer doesn’t meet a consumer’s expectations – if it’s too slow, for example, or the Product eContent doesn’t excite them – then they will be gone in a flash. Worse still, they will probably go and visit your competitor’s online store or Amazon product page. And you will have lost them. Quite possibly forever.
How can you make sure that doesn’t happen?
Brands must invest in Product eContent
PwC says that, in their perspective, most organisations need to invest far more in customer experience. We fully agree.
And Product eContent is an absolutely vital ingredient in any successful customer experience.
First, what do we mean by Product eContent?[3]
In short, it’s highly optimised content that facilitates and enhances the online customer experience. It’s content like high quality product images, exact product titles, well-written product descriptions, ratings & reviews, video and so much more (including, increasingly, virtual and augmented reality).
But let’s put it into context.
Brands have a real challenge to overcome when selling products online: how do you replicate the experience of shopping in a physical store in an eCommerce setting?
You can’t see, touch or feel an actual product when shopping online – so how do brands go about making it attractive to an online shopper?
Brands need to produce Product eContent that makes the online shopper engage with their product. To tell the product’s story. To understand why they should buy it. To entice them into buying it.
It’s content that helps create a more enjoyable and comprehensive shopping experience that not only helps shoppers overcome their barriers to purchase, but also has them coming back for more.
What can Product eContent do for your products and brand?
The evidence to support the importance of Product eContent is compelling.
77 percent of shoppers are known to be influenced by the quality of Product eContent. 46 percent of consumers say that the quality of visual and written content very significantly influences their shopping decisions.[4]
81 percent of consumers will also now research products online before going into a store and buying them[5]. So, this means that Product eContent – like videos or consumer-generated product reviews (it’s so important to encourage and facilitate these) – are going to play a key role in influencing offline sales, as well as online ones.
Product eContent is also an important contributor to your product’s discoverability and search strategy, both on Google and within an eCommerce platform like Amazon or Walmart.[6]
Ignore Product eContent at your peril
As we’ve regularly highlighted, it’s not just the customer’s online shopping experience that’s important. But, crucially, their mobile shopping experience.
And Product eContent is absolutely critical to positive mobile customer experiences. Particularly when you consider how quickly mobile shoppers will leave a site or product page if it doesn’t respond quickly or provide content that excites them.
This trend will only continue as the expectations of online shoppers grow and the potential for immersive customer experiences – powered by Product eContent – become a reality.
We would urge brands to invest in Product eContent now, or risk being left behind.
Do you need to upskill your teams to maximise eCommerce growth?
Product eContent is vital for eCommerce success, but do your teams have the skills needed to Master Online Retailing and maximise eCommerce growth?
The popularity of online shopping – already rapidly on the rise before COVID-19 – has understandably sky-rocketed during the global lockdown. Short-term consumer habits developed by huge numbers of new online shoppers during the crisis will solidify and become long-term. They will have realised how easy and convenient it is to shop this way – and they won’t turn back.
Can your organisation meet the growing expectations of online shoppers? Or will you be left behind?
We’ve launched our highly practical and action-focused ‘Mastering Online Retailing‘ Capability Building webinar series to make sure that your organisation and its teams are in a position to maximise eCommerce growth and thrive during the next decade.
‘Mastering Online Retailing‘ will enable your organisation to rapidly update its eCommerce capabilities, leverage proven tools for setting short & long-term strategies, and – ultimately – achieve online sales goals.
Contact us if you’d like to learn more about Mastering Online Retailing or any other of our H.O.W. Capability Building programs.
This article was written and created by the eBusiness Institute team.
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From ‘Big Data & AI’ to our ‘Mastering Online Retailing’ series, contact us to find out more about the wide range of highly practical H.O.W. online Capability Building courses that will give your company what it needs to create efficiencies, improve processes and maximise profit.
Sources
[1] https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/industries/consumer-markets/consumer-insights-survey.html
[2] https://www.strategy-business.com/article/ROX-How-to-get-started-with-the-new-experience-metric?gko=d8837
[3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2020/01/02/a-five-step-approach-to-creating-stellar-product-e-content/#5753e5cf1cea
[4] https://assets.kpmg/content/dam/kpmg/xx/pdf/2017/01/the-truth-about-online-consumers.pdf
[5] https://www.adweek.com/digital/81-shoppers-conduct-online-research-making-purchase-infographic/
[6] https://ebusinessinstitute.com/what-is-retail-search/
