Creating enhanced content for the products you sell on Amazon is a great idea. A full 60% of shoppers begin their product research on Amazon, so it makes sense to focus on bolstering your content specifically for that channel. Additionally, Amazon has become a de facto search engine for many online shoppers; so much so that Google considers Amazon more of a competitor than actual search engines like Bing or Yahoo.
But even though Amazon is the channel you should probably address first, you shouldn’t stop there. Amazon isn’t the only place people are looking to buy your products, and creating quality multichannel content is vital to converting sales everywhere your products are sold online.
Why Multichannel is Important
Regardless of whether they end up buying online or offline, the vast majority of shoppers use the Internet to research products before they buy them. Creating consistent content across all of your retail channels is imperative to eliminating shopper confusion and offering a better buying experience for your customers.
Focusing on multichannel content also helps to create consistent brand messaging, which in turn helps generate trust with customers. 61% of online shoppers need to see detailed product descriptions on a product page to even consider making a purchase. If the content is confusing, lacking essential information, or the customer is unsure if the product they’re looking at is exactly what they were looking for, they’re probably going to leave the page.
Focusing on multichannel content also lets you cater your content to fit the specific requirements and strengths of each retail channel. Have you invested in rich media? Are your products best explained not just with words, but also with videos that show the product in action?
Amazon’s A+ modules don’t allow for rich media, and won’t embed video, but enhanced content created for Walmart and NewEgg allow you to embed videos front and center at the top of your enhanced content. Learning how to maximize your content to fit the requirements of each retail channel will result in better looking, more effective pages.
Creating unique content across multiple channels can also help your standings in search engine results pages, especially if it is replacing duplicate content. As search engine architect Marianne Sweeny detailed in an interview with us in 2014, “The search engines are becoming more content-centric because good content equals good user experience. Old, thin, stale, duplicated content is not quality content, and users signal their displeasure by leaving the page having taken no action, not allowing the page to load, or returning to the results for another selection.”
Finding the retail channels most important to your brand and populating them with informative, unique content will help them rank higher in search results, driving page views to the pages you want and increasing sales.
How to Start Creating Multichannel Content
Do a Content Audit – First and foremost, it’s important to look at the content you already have so you can create a plan.
Create Intelligent Content – If you audit your internal content and find it lacking, it’s wise to consider creating intelligent content as your baseline moving forward. Intelligent Content is search engine optimized so your customers can find it easily, reusable so it can be changed easily as your products do, easy to modify so you can create retailer-specific product descriptions with minimal effort, and adaptive so it’s easy to read on all kinds of devices. If you can begin the process of creating multichannel content with well-written, informative content, it’s much easier to adapt that content for multiple channels while keeping brand messaging and product information consistent.
Prioritize Retailers – Next, you need to know which online retailers are the most important to your sales, so you can cater your strategy to the channels where people are actively searching for and buying your products. Coming up with a multichannel plan early on will help streamline the process of content creation, and is significantly more cost-effective than addressing each retail channel as its own individual project. On the channels where you do the most sales, it’s definitely a good idea to invest in enhanced content, as it has been shown to significantly increase page views and sales.
Ideally, you should create enhanced content for all of your products, but that may not be feasible for companies with large SKU counts. If your budget only allows you to create enhanced content for a fraction of your products, a good rule of thumb for which products to choose is the “80/20 Rule.” Find the 20% of your products that generate 80% of your total sales and make sure they have the best product pages you can create on your most important retail channels.
Perfect Your Basic Content – But even on the sites where sales are low and enhanced content may seem unnecessary, it’s important to have high-quality basic content that offers messaging and product information that is consistent with your larger retail channels. A baseline of well-written, informative basic content across all retail channels builds trust and helps prevent consumer dissonance. From the bigwigs like Amazon and Walmart to the lowest retailer on the totem pole, you should aim to have excellent basic content everywhere your products are sold online.
Get Retailer Expertise – There’s a lot to know about design, copy, and upload requirements on Amazon, Walmart, Costco, Staples, and the other leading online retailers. Each one has their own set of rules for creating and hosting enhanced content, and maneuvering thought the ins and outs can be a frustrating endeavor. With millions of pages created on the top online retailers for many of the world’s most iconic brands, content26 can help you plan and implement a multichannel strategy to maximize your presence across all your most important channels.
The Takeaway:
Amazon is a good place to start, but don’t stop there. Create quality multichannel content to reach the most customers and increase sales.
