How High-quality Content Can Make an E-commerce Business?

Over the years, the quote by Bill Gates “content is king” has become a mantra in the business landscape. Today, all kinds of businesses acknowledge the importance of great content – to generate more leads, acquire and retain customers, build a strong reputation, and increase brand awareness and recall.

According to Hubspot’s Inbound Marketing Trends report, content creation is cited as the top priority for many marketing teams. Additionally, almost half of them expect their content marketing budgets to increase in 2022, and 47% of content marketers focus more on creating content that reflects their brand values.

For businesses, including e-commerce, great content is the key to improved conversions, higher sales, and brand success. This blog explores these benefits in detail. But first, let’s take a look at what “great” content means in e-commerce.

The Meaning Of “Great” Content

Great content has four characteristics – they are consistent, informative, high-quality, and engaging. Companies that are successful represent their brand consistently across all communication channels and customer touchpoints through content. Consistent content helps a brand carry a unique voice and an identifiable style which makes a customer recognize a brand stand out. 

In addition, effective e-commerce content is compelling and fulfilling for customers. It communicates the brand’s value and promise so buyers know exactly what they get when they shop with this particular brand. It also helps them find what they need without having to jump through hoops.

For example, detailed product descriptions and photos show customers whether the product will meet their requirements or if they should continue to look for more. How-to videos help them understand how a product works or how they should use it to gain maximum value from it. Social media content will allow them to recognize the product’s value proposition and engage with the brand with questions, comments, or complaints.

Great content is also findable, readable, and understandable. It enables shoppers to feel connected to the brand. It strikes an emotional chord with them and attracts their attention, fosters their interest, builds a relationship with them, and allows the company to garner their loyalty.

Now, let’s explore how great content can benefit your e-commerce brand.

Increased Conversions

“Sticky” e-commerce element such as content drives more conversions and sales. Whether this content is on your website, display ads, emails, or social media, it provides the information new customers need to assess your products and make purchase decisions. 

Content that’s compelling, regularly updated and includes relevant calls to action (CTA) is valuable from a conversion perspective. Hence, how-to articles, blogs, and visual content like infographics, videos, and photos perform better to boost your customer acquisition numbers.

Great content also creates positive experiences and compels customers to re-visit your brand for future purchases. It encourages them to trust your recommendations and act on them. It helps in building relationships to go beyond one-off transactions, thus improving customer retention and repeat buys.

More Upsells and Cross-sells

For an e-commerce brand, upsells and cross-sells can push the revenue up by several levels. Quality content plays a vital role in the process. Content that buyers find valuable encourages them to explore your suggestions and discover the latent need for a product. In the end, informative content helps in nudging the customers to make instant additional purchases and thereby upsell/cross-sell accessories or related products.

With great content, you can re-convert past customers and increase the order size. Compelling paid campaigns and ads can increase customer lifetime value and average order value. Further, offers with quality and personalized content make buyers feel special and increase the chances of purchasing more. Quality content in abandoned shopping cart emails is also valuable since it can bring disengaged customers back, and (gently) direct them towards completing the purchase.

Greater Brand Awareness and Loyalty

Consider two e-commerce brands offering similar products, operating in the same markets, and serving the same customer base. What separates brand A from brand B when almost everything about them is the same? How can buyers differentiate between them and decide which brand they would prefer to buy from and support? The answer is simple – content.

Quality content helps to position your e-commerce brand the way you want to position it – “the brand with the cheapest goods,” “the brand with the best customer service,” “the brand with the most unique offers,” etc. Customers feel more connected to building a long-term relationship with your company. And if your content grabs their attention and speaks to them as individuals rather than as numbers, they recognize your brand as the one which “gets” them. They also prefer it over others and advocate your brand within their network.

Conclusion

So now you know the benefits of high-quality content for your e-commerce brand. Fortunately, you don’t need a huge budget or a large team of content experts to create content that’s impressive, compelling, and trustworthy. Start small – say, with product descriptions – and work your way up to optimize all your content and leverage it for customer acquisition, engagement, and brand-building.

Not sure how to get started? Need support to create a content strategy? The Ergode team can help. Contact us, and we will guide you to build a content strategy and show you how you can leverage it to take your e-commerce brand into the circle of success. 

 

 

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