CONTENT FOR COMMERCE

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Backed by 12 years’ content experience, Andy designs and implements strategies for Salmon client websites, including Audi UK, DFS and other high profile ecommerce brands – in addition to earlier content assignments with hibu, CNBC and Waterstones.

As Salmon’s digital content lead, Andy spendshis days grappling with a key challenge of ourdigital age: maximising user experience andmeeting commercial objectives.

Andy YoungDigital Content Lead, Salmon Ltd.

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When it comes to commerce, the world has gone digital. Today’s consumer is always-on; whether they’re on their phone while on the go, at home or at work, they’re connected 24/7 to friends, brands and information providers. This is a consumer revolution and it’s driving a need for change. Brands who want to attract customers, sell to them and keep them loyal, must evolve. Every product or service that a consumer needs or desires is available online, with plenty of choice, because the Internet is the busiest marketplace we’ve ever known.

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We’re Salmon. We help brands change the game

through ecommerce websites, by supporting the

delivery of exceptional digital experiences. We

start by working together to understand their

consumers. Once we know who and where the

customers are, what they need and like, we can truly

engage them with high quality, relevant content.

It was Bill Gates who proclaimed “content is king”

back in 1996. Twenty years on, his words have

proved both prescient and wholly accurate.

If content is king, then context is queen. Creating

great content is the beginning but without a

distribution infrastructure, it’s a non sequitur.

Done right, content has the power to bring users

to your site, inform and entertain them once

they’re there, support them in their purchasing,

inspire them to buy more and bring them back

next time. If a brand hits the right note at every

step, it will see customer numbers grow, average

spend increase and an improvement in digital

reputation that won’t skyrocket overnight but will

grow organically and be unshakable.

Over the next pages we present a selection of key

content trends in today’s ecommerce landscape

and offer some thoughts on what businesses

should be thinking about.

SPEAKING TO YOuR CuSTOMERS IN A DIGITAL-FIRST WORLD

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“Customers no longer expect a purely transactional experience in their online shopping. Content that is tightly aligned with their product and lifestyle needs can play a supporting role throughout the ecommerce journey.”

MAKING YOuR CONTENT ShOPPAbLE

From Delivering Digital Experiences, Econsultancy and Adobe (2015)

To date, the tendency for ecommerce brands

has been to keep their transactional experiences

separate from their content, in part at least to

prevent one from detracting from the other. At

Salmon, we’ve been sure for some time that the

opposite is true.

If done well, merging content with commerce will

enhance both. The two combined promote brand-

enriching experiences while generating increased

revenue. We call this “relational content”. When it

comes to its application, it’s important that brands

consult user research and analytics to ensure the

right content is surfaced to customers at the right

time in their journey to purchase. After all, effective

selling hinges on an engagement with a customer

to build affinity.

If you’re selling practical items at a low price point,

like a disposable pen for example, you probably

don’t need long-form editorial about its designer

to help drive the buying decision but a few user

reviews might be handy. If you’re selling something

more aspirational and lifestyle orientated, your

customer is much more likely to engage with

information about designers or producers. If

content takes their attention, your user will stay

on the site, engage with your brand and have a

genuinely enjoyable digital experience among

your product range. Again though, data is key, so

do the user research, test it, and if the results say

yes, implement it.

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Salmon designed and developed a truly

pioneering solution to blend transactional and

experiential content for an online wine retailer.

By merging a database of wine products with a

database of content items, including reviews,

producer information and tasting notes, we were

able to surface both product and inspirational

content at the same time, in a simple and highly

effective way. Our analytics proved that users

were drawn toward other products or content

related to products directly because of this mix

of the two experiences. Armed with a scalable

platform to enter other markets, the site offers

customers a unique, personalised and enjoyable

shopping experience that enhances the product

offer by 500 lines.

The global online fashion destination ASOS uses

contextual content to maximise the desirability of

products. Charlie Barker’s blog adds personality

and aspirational pull to the shopping experience.

Her credible voice conveys why the products

are so great and what they represent, which

essentially turns browsers into buyers. She talks

about how and where she wears items, and most

importantly what with. This creates all sorts of

cross-sell opportunities and a general lifestyle sell

that is irresistible to the right customer.

It’s not just a pioneering few who understand the

importance of these experiences. In the Delivering

Digital Experiences 2015 briefing by Econsultancy

and Adobe, 83% of retailers surveyed cited

“Improving user engagement” as their most

important goal for next year.

In a 2015 study of ecommerce websites conducted

by Episerver, an online travel booking service was

reviewed. The brand was producing very high

quality content in the form of two blogs. One

provided inspirational, destination-based content

and the other focused on practical things to do

and places to stay at specific destinations. Their

website sold flights to destinations and bookings

for hotels and restaurants, but there was no link

between the two experiences.

This is a perfect example of how content could

be used throughout a customer journey, i.e.

to bring a user to a site through search, inspire

them to purchase, give them helpful options for

additional purchases and leave them feeling that

the experience was one they’d like to repeat and

recommend.

Whatever your ecommerce brand, users want

snackable, inspirational, useful and sharable

content. If you do it well, you’ll achieve customer

loyalty that will transcend any price margin

between you and the bigger Internet players that

you can’t quite close.

“Yes, it’s about selling product but more about inspiring consumers. Content helps build trust with readers and customers”.

Mario Muttenthaler, Director of Sales & Marketing, Mr Porter

Contextual content enhances the appeal of ASOS’ items

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In a digital-first world, there’s an increasing need

for businesses to be able to deliver content across

devices, channels and at multiple touch-points in

a user journey - not least because customers who

engage across multiple channels tend to spend

more. This need will increase and organisations

that embrace it and prepare themselves will

fare best in the coming years. Today, digital

experience is a brand experience so it must be

consistent and engaging.

Once you’ve created or commissioned high quality

content that’s aligned with your business goals and

ENhANCING CuSTOMER EXPERIENCE AT EVERY OPPORTuNITY

user needs, you’re going to want to make the most

of the return on your astute investment. Making

sure content is visible on your site and working in

harmony with your transactional experience is a

great start, and further than many online retailers

go. However, your content is your brand’s fuel

and you have many more channels through which

to express its value and meaning. Mobile sites,

email campaigns, social media, digital advertising

and even print, all provide opportunities for your

content to be further brought to life through re-

use, reshaping or streamlining in the way that’s

right for your users and business.

Brands need to deliver content across multiple devices, channels and journey touch-points

© 2016 Salmon Ltd.

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Customer journeys in modern commerce will

often have touch-points through all channels, so

providing a consistent experience at each stage

is paramount. The perfect scenario is for your

customers to consume your content through

devices, media and communication channels,

becoming increasingly warm to your brand and

likely to purchase as they progress.

In a recent global survey conducted by PWC, it was

found that 28% of consumers value being able to

shop whenever they want as the most important

requirement from a retailer, and depending on

the region, up to 44% engage with retail brands

on social media.

Whilst consistency is key, design can be a key

differentiator – allied to a deep understanding

of shopper needs and nuances of each channel.

Retailers should be asking where are the

consumers and what do they want to do? A

mobile user probably needs an edited version

of the experience they would find on a desktop,

but could they be out and about, near a store and

looking to buy?

Consider a brand like Uber and why they’re

successful in terms of exploiting a channel and

brand building. Their rapid success has not only

been down to price, but also convenience. The

whole experience is about finding a ride via your

phone and not using cash. This is a response to

a consumer trend; people who live in cities don’t

carry cash anymore, they have contactless cards,

such as Apple Pay, and they don’t want to stand on

the street waiting to hail a taxi. From an awareness

of the changes in technology and customer

behaviour, a truly pioneering product was born,

and its value is conveyed to the world through

beautiful, useful and compelling brand content.

Championing new levels of user convenience,

pre-eminent disrupter uber is forging ahead

of traditional taxi services.

ENhANCING CuSTOMER EXPERIENCE AT EVERY OPPORTuNITY

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GETTING PERSONAL WITh ONLINE CONSuMERSVisitors to a website arrive with a broad variety

of needs; to browse, read, buy or carry on where

they left off last time. And, until recently, we’ve had

to deliver a one-size-fits-all experience.

Salmon sees content personalisation as the

big impact trend in ecommerce - set to boost

conversion rates, user experience and loyalty.

Econsultancy and Adobe agree, reporting that

52% of digital marketers consider the ability to

personalise web content to be fundamental to

their online strategy.

For brands, the time to act is now.

User research and analytics help you create and

deliver the most relevant content for your users.

Personalisation takes that relevance to a more

granular level, promoting a next generation level

of targeting. When an ‘unknown shopper’ enters

a site and behaves like a ‘known persona’ (i.e.

a predetermined profile of a set of users based

on certain behaviours), they can be served with

relevant information for their user type. Repeat

customers can also be identified and based on

their viewing habits, the content format can be

adjusted, e.g. rendered more visual, more copy-

based or more analytical.

All this means that a brand can speak with

resonance to a wider group of customers

beyond those that naturally find themselves

drawn to the broader stroke messaging. Some

of the variables that are already being used

to determine user states are location, device,

keyword used to find the site, number of times

visited and customer history.

Salmon foresees websites becoming bespoke

experiences that will evolve in content terms

dramatically over the coming years.

BedBathStore, a New York based online retailer

of bed and bath products, experimented with

targeting banners and content dependent on their

users’ onsite behaviour. Their conversion rates

increased by 10% as result of this simple change

which equated to thousands of dollars of revenue.

52% of digital marketers consider the ability to personalise web content to be fundamental to their online strategy.

From Delivering Digital Experiences, Econsultancy and Adobe (2015)

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According to a 2015 blog by Search Metrics, some major businesses have lost up to 50% visibility due to algorithm change like these.

With every algorithm update, Google increasingly

values ‘quality content’. This evolution has reached

a point that time spent on-page is now affecting

search-ranking position. This means that engaging

your user with appropriate content is not only

essential to develop their loyalty and to driving

sales, but also to attract more users. Salmon takes

great delight in this development in the modern

content landscape because the precarious

balance of writing for humans while also hitting

keyword targets is almost a consideration of the

past.

WRITE FOR YOuR READERS, NOT FOR RObOTS

The days of buying links to boost your search

ranking are long gone. Jamming your on-page

content with keywords is also gone. The age of

creating quality content to organically optimise

your visibility to Google is here, and that’s

fantastic news. Technology’s evolution is directly

driving the need for websites to serve content that

is going to engage the user, which means there’s

a need to improve the quality of the copy we read,

the images we look at and the videos we watch. If

you think about it, that’s a pretty special thing.

The latest algorithms won’t only reward you for

your quality though-they’ll also penalise you

for “thin content”, so brands should think about

some housekeeping. Thin content could be

found on any pages that don’t closely match your

audience’s interests and needs, that don’t exist to

serve a specific purpose, or that contain duplicate

content. Any reason to clear out the old and

replace it with the sparkling new sounds good to

us. It’s an unavoidable characteristic of evolution,

the natural selection of the Internet perhaps. As

Lucy Reeves from Lovehoney told Econsultancy:

“search visibility isn’t a driver, but rather a result of

good content”.

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Striking the right balance is one of the biggest

content challenges that brands face today. The

transactional elements of content need to feel

natural, even helpful, and not distracting or

invasive. Brands need to judge the right time, and

channel, to push for the sale and when to push the

content.

Multichannel content and its personalisation are

not new phenomena but many brands are still

not using them effectively to enrich the shopper

journey. But get this right and it’s a potential game-

changer.

As for SEO, recent developments favour your

quality, relevant content. Move with this SEO shift

and you’ll build consumer loyalty and sales and

lead more users your way. In short, take notice of

the new Google algorithms.

What heartens us is the clear indication that

retailers are getting serious about content strategy.

They’re moving away from spontaneous and ad

hoc, making their strategy continuous and flexible.

More importantly, they’re reaping the rewards

by continually evolving their content, remaining

current and relevant to their customers.

By continually evolving content, retailers can remain relevant to their customers

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©2016 Salmon Ltd. All rights reserved. All company and product names, brands and symbols mentioned herein are brand names and/or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

For more information,email: info@salmon.comor visit: www.salmon.com

AbOuT SALMON

Salmon is a global digital commerce consultancy

– the largest in WPP’s network of companies. We

define and deliver market-changing solutions and

customer journeys for the world’s leading brands.

Established in 1989, with operations in London, New

York, Sydney and Beijing, Salmon clients include

AkzoNobel, Argos, Audi UK, DFS, Halfords, Premier

Farnell, Sainsbury’s and Selfridges.