The Six Elements of Product Information Excellence

ECommerce has accelerated faster than anyone could have predicted. According to McKinsey, in 2020, US e-commerce penetration saw 10 years’ growth in just 3 months. Globally, billions of buyers are researching, exploring, and purchasing goods and services online. Even when offline purchases are made, buyers are researching businesses and their products online before they visit them.  

Consumers spent over $861 billion online with U.S. merchants in 2020, up over 44% YoY – the highest increase in over 2 decades. (source: DigitalCommerce360) In the world of B2B, the outlook is similar – although somewhat uneven among sectors. Overall B2B eCommerce sales are expected to outgrow B2C eCommerce sales and a recent Nasdaq article indicated that by 2040, 95% of purchases will likely be facilitated by eCommerce. 

The rubber meets the eCommerce road at a brand’s Product Information Content. How a company displays its products and services online is the most critical aspect of success. Buyers aren’t going back to the old way of buying and many of them believe they make purchase decisions based on a company’s online information. Product Information Excellence is now required for brands to compete.

What is Product Information Excellence? 

It is the optimization of digital content for eCommerce across markets and marketplaces within an integrated marketing system, and the result is a complete alignment of your online go-to-market strategy with the digital customer experience – everywhere.

In 2020, I wrote about the failure that Staples Canada experienced with their Product Information Content (PIC). The copy in their listing did not clearly specify that the price for the hand sanitizer was for a case, not for one unit. Shoppers thought that Staples Canada was price gouging, and they were outraged. The hashtag #BoycottStaples was trending. Staples Canada was on top of it, quickly corrected the content, and made a statement of clarification. If Staples Canada had not acted as quickly, their brand could have suffered far greater damage than it actually did.

Impact on a company’s brand is just one element of Product Information Excellence. As I wrote in that post, how a company clearly and consistently communicates its Product Information Content through copy, imagery, video, style, and voice is how customers develop perceptions of the brand, and how they form expectations of the promise of that brand. It is important. But there is much more to a complete strategy.

1 – Optimized Product Information Content 

Copy and visual content should be optimized for search, completeness, quality and maintenance. Most companies understand the value of SEO and the importance of having the right search terms indexed to be found. There are many tools readily available for companies to help them optimize their content for search. Formatting titles, bullets and description copy should be in a consistent style and tone. 

Visuals, imagery and video are critical in the path to purchase. Google’s 2019 Research Review reports that 50% of online shoppers say images helped them decide what to buy and 53% said that images inspired them to purchase.  Utilizing every opportunity to show your product or service from every angle, in use, and in context is important to conversion.

Video is rapidly becoming more critical. In 2019, video was shown to increase conversion rates with 62% of consumers saying they watch product reviews before making a purchase. If you don’t have a video strategy, you are already behind.

Ask yourself if the Product Information Content on your site and in your product listings is interactive and educational. Is the potential customer learning something important about your product that builds authority and credibility for your brand which in turn influences conversion?

Finally, the Product Information Content creation and maintenance must be a closed-loop system. Content degrades and requires updates over time. How will you monitor, audit, correct and evolve your information content over time? There are many tools that help brands create and maintain content (think PIMs and DAMs) and monitor information (eCommerce analytics platforms) to ensure it is current and correct.  The PIC system is also critical because mature, closed-loop processes that incorporate automation significantly decrease time to market – and that accelerates time to revenue. It’s all interconnected.

2 – Customized Product Information Content 

The Product Information Content needs to be optimized for unique channel and marketplace requirements and customized for unique buyers’ journeys.  It is reported that 73% of people prefer to do business with brands that personalize the shopping experience.

If you are selling products or services internationally, are you communicating in the ways that those customers expect? It’s not just translation. It’s cultural, and it’s local vernacular. It’s also local context. How is your product used in different markets and how is the competition different? With different players around the world, there’s a good chance that your competitive differentiators aren’t the same in every market and country. Your Product Information Content should be differentiated. If you want to see this in action, simply look at a product on Amazon.com and on Amazon Japan. Huge difference.

Are you selling through different online sales channels? You could be selling on your own eCommerce site, on partner sites (distributor or reseller), or on a marketplace site (like Amazon, eBay, Etsy, or others). Where you transact is a separate and very critical strategy decision on its own. (Where do your customers shop? How do they prefer to buy? How does your eCommerce business support your offline/traditional sales?) Wherever you choose to go to market, each of these has its own unique Product Information Content requirements, search rules, and opportunities to communicate with customers. All of these should be considered and your Product Information Content should be customized for each. 

If you are a distributor or a reseller, how is the experience that you are providing to customers optimized for every brand that is counting on you? How are you attracting and keeping those buyers on your site? This is another subject that I will cover in a separate article.

4 – Product Information Content is a Sales Accelerator

 If your Product Information Content is optimized (Element #1), you’re off to a good start. It means that customers are finding your products, and that you are doing a good job of communicating the key benefits and features in a way that matters to them. If you’ve got a great product that your target market wants, if you have unique customer benefit, and if you’re priced competitively, your Product Information Content should be helping to drive good conversion rates. (This isn’t about putting lipstick on a pig. Your PIC can only help drive sales if the product hits the mark.) 

A mature marketing organization will look at the Product Information Content beyond the listing itself. A sales leadership team is probably thinking about basic eCommerce sales acceleration strategies – 

• Sell more units per transaction
• Upsell to a higher value/priced product
• Increase portfolio penetration
• Generate repeat purchases from existing customers

The question for marketers, however, is this – How is your Product Information Content helping to drive these four goals? If a customer ends up on your site or viewing your product listing, how are you optimizing the content so that it’s clear that buying two is better than buying one? Can the customer see the full line of products, enticing them toward a higher priced choice? If the customer finds value in the product they are viewing, are there other products in your portfolio that they would also be likely to purchase? How is the Product Information Content driving these customer journeys? And finally, how engaging is the experience with your PIC and the overall purchase itself so that customers are encouraged to buy from you again?  The opportunities for engaging and interactive PIC on modern eCommerce sites and marketplaces allow companies to provide rich information and experiences that can help accelerate a much broader sales strategy.

 5 – The Product Information Content is Building Loyalty and Repeat Purchases 

Now that your Product Information Content is optimized online, customized for your sales channels, includes good, consistent brand presentation, and you’re leveraging it to accelerate sales – it’s time to think about how you repeat those sales.

Your Product Information Content should be engaging with and connecting to your customers, and in some cases, even building community and loyalty.  

While that sounds like a tall order for a product listing, there are various degrees depending on how complex the product or sale may be. First, let’s remember why this matters. It costs upwards of 5-6x as much to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one, and loyal customers are worth up to 10x as much after they make their first purchase.

When you’re building your strategy, consider these factors:

•  Is your Product Information Content enabling a valuable and seamless path to purchase?
•  What did the customer learn in their journey? It could be as simple as learning that your product comes in different shapes or sizes, or has a benefit they hadn’t thought of before. It could be as complex as learning that your product supports a new technology or is backward compatible and therefore solves a problem they didn’t know they had. This “learning” aspect of the customer journey starts with your Product Information Content. It gets them to read, scroll and watch more. The more time the customers spend, the more investment they make in your product and in the relationship with your brand.  When this happens, the engagement is meaningful.
•  How does your Product Information Content continue beyond the purchase? Is there information in the box once it’s delivered? Is there follow-up online engagement (email, website, eCommerce store)? User-generated content (UGC) and reviews are part of your Product information Content. How are you responding to questions and comments? Each interaction is an investment in the customer relationship and when it’s meaningful, it builds loyalty.

6 Integrated Product Information Content Marketing   

Now, this is where it all comes together. Mature organizations that are firing on all cylinders know that marketing works best when activities across the stack are integrated and working as a system.  As an example – a TV spot can prompt a Google search that leads to a click-through on a display ad that, ultimately, ends in a sale.  This is particularly true in eCommerce because online selling is influenced in so many ways. In the example above, the customer may have seen a tweet, an online ad, a mobile ad, or received a marketing email that caused them to pay attention to the TV spot in the first place. They may have read a review or downloaded a whitepaper that influenced their journey that eventually led them to your Product Information Content. 

How customers get to your site or your page is often not a straight line. In the case of search, it used to be simply about keywords – have the right search terms and your product will come first. Customers will click and boom – sale! Not so much anymore because everyone has access to the same information and tools. It’s not proprietary. Thousands of companies can be using the same terms for similar products. How is a search platform like Google or Amazon or YouTube to decide? Algorithms are different and relevancy matters. Search algorithms look at many factors, including the words of your query, relevance and usability of pages, expertise of sources, and your location and settings. They are even looking at the “freshness” of your content – how new is it? They are attempting to deliver the best results for the meaning of the inquiry. It’s not about you. It’s about the customer.

Product Information Excellence is an integrated concept. It is not a silo. It has to have hooks across the entire marketing function, integrating with Content Marketing (think relevancy, expertise and freshness), Advertising, Digital Marketing (think Social, Influencer, YouTube and video strategy), Channel Marketing (are you on a partner marketplace or site?), Brand Marketing (Element #3), and even Corporate Communications (think of adding that industry award logo onto your product page). Don’t forget about your offline business and your sales teams. Chances are your sales team is using your Product Information Content themselves. Integrating across the business is how marketing wins.

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Product Information Excellence isn’t easy and there is a lot of continuous disruption in the industry. Most companies are still trying to perfect Element #1. The common mistake, however, is that they think that after optimizing their Product Information Content, they are done.  The eCommerce industry is changing so fast, that keeping up is critical. Google’s algorithm changes (BERT), Amazon’s dominance (59% of Millennials will head to Amazon before any other website) and YouTube’s position as a top 3 search platform (#2 or #3 depending on who is reporting) mean that a thoughtful, integrated strategy, focused on the customer journey is required to compete and win. 

Where to start?

It will take another article to outline a more detailed path. But for now, companies can start with Element #1 and work through the list. Evaluating current Product Information Content quality, processes, and systems, looking at your competitors’ PIC (how do you compare?), and diving into your sales and conversion data (which products are converting best?) are all great places to start.