In the past few months, I’ve been on the phone and flying to meetings all over the country talking to clients about some of the exciting changes happening here at content26, though they’ve been in the works for a whole lot longer than that. In this post, I’m officially and publically introducing our revamped Content Innovation Cycle, a framework that uses client and retailer analytics to keep content fresh and relevant. Whether you’re a client, a player in ecommerce, or a data nerd, you’ll recognize that the Content Innovation Cycle grew from an unanswered demand in the market.
Industry insiders recognize that content creation, SEO/keywords, and ecommerce analytics play off of and influence each other. We know our clients are trying to figure out this relationship and the Content Innovation Cycle is our blueprint for how to use that relationship to their advantage.
Personally, I’m excited about the ways introducing data to our process will create a more dynamic system for producing truly innovative content that is measurably effective.
To understand exactly what the new elements of our approach can do, here are the bare bones of content creation.
Our Past Approach to Content Creation
Content26 builds product page content when a new or revamped product is launched. From there, content26 facilitates the content delivery for the brand and/or retailer to publish.
As the launched product stays on the market, that original content usually needs updates. We’ve been providing enhanced content maintenance for some time, which is a method we use to keep content up-to-date and user-friendly without starting from scratch. Up to this point, enhanced content maintenance has been almost exclusively influenced by changes on the branding and client side.
The new Content Innovation Cycle is a departure from the “set it and forget it” approach to content creation. The new cycle tailors content based on analyzed information about search terms and keywords, product seasonality, campaigns, and other branding and client needs.
Our New Content Innovation Cycle
Without this approach, the only way you can hope to improve product page performance is to check boxes on a to-do list. Are you using best practices? How about bullets? A+ content? A variety of images that display product details?
These are important questions, but following a best practices list doesn’t compare to what content analytics can do for your content strategy.
Content is a critical, foundational piece of any ecommerce strategy, so making that content responsive is important. Adding content analytics allows us to make informed changes, and use the results from those changes to guide the construction or reconstruction of product content.
We will ultimately be analyzing all of the content on a detail page: titles, bullets, product descriptions, both enhanced content and the basic little short product descriptions. It’s a big block of information and how these elements are affected by and/or affect SEO or ecommerce analytics is an exciting new frontier. Our process is built to help our clients navigate these new waters and decide what to test first in what order so that we can continue to build the best content and customer experience possible.
Product page content is not linear, but cyclical. Companies need to begin thinking about this cyclical approach to stay competitive.
To show our clients the value of this framework, we’ll soon be providing a grade on their content based on our analytics, and that is before we ever query for keywords or specifically requested information.
The Takeaway
Innovative companies recognize how content fits into the bigger picture and that the product page, when done right, is perpetually relevant, accurate, and engaging for the customer.
Need to know more now? Get in touch.
Or just stay tuned. We’ll have further details on our new Content Innovation Cycle right here next month.
