It’s 2020, but cart abandonment still tops the list of challenges that plague online retailers. With even B2B customer expectations being driven by the experiences those customers get online in their lives, there is a degree of convergence emerging in the B2B and B2C online world in some key areas like Customer Experience. And with the average cart abandonment rate hitting 69.57%, it has become critical for organizations to take steps to create a customer experience that prevents that. In the B2B world, the lack of relevant, consistent, and accurate product content is a major contributor to the high rate of cart abandonment. Therefore, enhancing the shopping experience of your buyers with enriched content should be your top priority.
Why product content matters
In the world of online shopping, product content is the difference between making a sale andlosing customers to competitors. If you limit product content just to price and a plain-Jane description of your products, you’re offering no help to your customers to progress in their purchase journey! If you want shoppers to buy products from your website, you need to invest in product content that is impactful, engaging, informative and that delivers meaningful value.
It takes rich product videos, detailed product descriptions, multiple, high-quality product images, illustrations, and detailed user guides to educate customers and motivate them to make a purchase. Giving them more than what they can get from the competition means allowing them to find the right products, learn exactly what they need to about that product, and enable them to make a purchase decision. That’s how to stand apart from the competition.
In that context, updated and consistent product content:
- Improves product discovery across search engines through unique, keyword-enriched data.
- Builds customer trust, increases their confidence in your products, and helps them in making the right purchasing decisions.
- Aids customers in understanding the usage and value of listed products while improving conversion rates.
- Extends the same shopping experience to customers across the world while maintaining brand consistency.
What is enriched product content
If you’re listing products online, you need a lot more than basic product information to stand out from the crowd. If your product content is limited to price and description, it can be difficult to get customers enthusiastic about the product you’re selling – the material you’re providing them just isn’t engaging enough. Therefore, you need to post relevant and engaging content for each of your products. The product content must provide customers an authentic and value-added feel for the goods they’re purchasing.
Enriched product content is a great way to attract customers to your site and keep them there; by creating a dynamic product catalog, you can not only engage your customers but convert their search into a sale.
Bringing customers all the way to the checkout page is a tedious task and requires a lot of effort and persuasion. Enriched product content is the best way to ensure your customers go through with the purchase. Through constant enrichment of your product content across all facets of your business – from invoicing and inventory management to brochures and product descriptions, you can optimize your product catalog while constantly meeting quality goals.
How you can enrich your product content
If you’re looking to engage your customers in fulfilling ways (and surpass your sales targets), you need to constantly work towards enriching your product content. Here are some tips:
- Contextualize product content. Since e-commerce is all about context, it is important you showcase the products in the right context and showcase how they will add value to customers. Part of this challenge is about how to provide exactly the right information to the customer at exactly the right time. It is important not to overwhelm the buyer with irrelevant details. It is also key to know exactly what product content can trigger the move to the next buying stage.
- Focus on building creative and innovative product titles and descriptions; well-written product metadata can not only attract your customer base but also help you stay on top of search engine results.
- Understand the drivers behind cart abandonment; ensure customer doubts are clarified in time and provide sufficient reasons for them to buy the product.
- Ensure you categorize products in the right way to enjoy high levels of conversion; incorrect categorization can confuse customers while reducing the visibility of your products in search results.
- Choose appropriate tags and keywords while developing product taxonomies and fix every loophole that causes products (or buyers) to slip through the net.
- Make sure your product content is developed such that it provides you with several cross-selling and up-selling opportunities at every step of the sales cycle. Not only should you be able to suggest related products but you should also be able to draw the attention of your buyers to these suggestions to boost sales.
Enhance the shopping experience
In contrast to the brick-and-mortar shopping experience where there are salespeople to guide customers at every step of the sales cycle, in e-commerce, such personalized assistance can only be provided by your product content.
While basic product descriptions can provide superficial information about your products, enriched product content will delight your customers by helping them make the buying decision they want to make. As shopper behavior undergoes an overhaul, enriched product content can help in informing customers about the right products for their needs, guiding them through the buying process, providing answers to their queries, as well as motivating them to make a purchase. It is only through the right combination of search-optimized product names and descriptions, high-resolution images, videos, rich media, and reviews, that you can enhance the overall shopping experience of your buyers and boost your conversion and the customer experience.