How Content is Redefining the Future of the E-commerce Industry

The e-commerce industry is witnessing tremendous growth, a process catalyzed by the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. As non-banking players emerge in the payments industry and unique vertical-specific start-ups come up, the Indian e-commerce ecosystem is expanding rapidly. The rise of mobile platforms, sophisticated social media analytics, personalization, shared economy models, and omnichannel services will further drive e-commerce’s growth in the foreseeable future. And in all this, the content will play a defining role. Good content will help e-commerce businesses define their brand and showcase their core values. 

The power of content was realized by enterprises across the globe in 2020 when businesses were forced to switch to the digital mode for survival. When the interaction was limited to virtual medium alone, enterprises heavily invested in content designing to attract a large audience base. Businesses across sectors have now realized that providing relevant and premium content that adds value is crucial to survive and differentiate themselves from competitors. It helps customers easily and effectively engage with a brand and improves their customer journey with the brand. All one needs to do is understand their customer’s requirements, curate content accordingly, and then market it.

Quality Content Matters

Customer is king for digital age e-retailers. As customer expectations keep evolving, e-retailers need to adopt innovative strategies to differentiate themselves, attract customers as well as build trust and loyalty. The established e-commerce players are adopting successful strategies like unique and eye-catchy content design, free delivery, product replacement warranty, etc. The mobile application and website of a brand are the frontend for a customer where they make a purchase decision. The metrics for analysis could be content appeal, search optimization, user-friendliness, personalization options, etc.

A seemingly regular-looking website design with dreary-looking images and even sadder text that provides the least information is not enough to increase the number of clicks or attract more visitors. A pleasant enough color scheme and layout would not work alone because today's buyer wants much more than that. The inferior content on a brand's website or its catalogs, informative graphics, banners, landing pages, etc. can be a major turn-off, emphasizing the reasons quality content is the backbone of the e-commerce industry. 

When a website contains compelling content or quality copy, it conveys its expertise in the field and increases the chances for users to return. Thus, stellar copy combined with a proper web design not only ensures the survival but also, the popularity of the brand.  

Facets of Good Content Design 

How content is being created and consumed by users is changing dramatically. User-generated content (UGC) has become more popular than any other marketing trend as a trustworthy and consistently effective component of modern content strategies. As customers demand more authenticity and personalized online experiences, brands are acknowledging this shift in consumer content attitudes to get content designing and marketing right. UGC benefits both brands and consumers. While it helps consumers get a better understanding of a product or service from other consumers, the brand benefits with expanded social reach, trust, and increased sales without requiring to create the content.

Moreover, a common challenge for the majority of e-commerce companies is that they find it hard to maintain a consistent message and experience for their customers. This makes it essential for the marketing team to work closely on crafting an overarching content strategy that hits the bull’s eye. 

Though written copy is a good place, to begin with, and often forms the foundation of a sound content design strategy, numerous other kinds of content can be used to communicate about a brand’s products more engagingly. These range from videos and images to podcasts and web live streams. Brands need to narrow down on the right type of multimedia content that is most likely to resonate with their customers. 

For those serious about achieving exponential growth for their e-commerce business, they must pay attention to building a strong landing page. Unlike a conventional website home page, a landing page is specifically focused on a single product or offer. Here, each element is sharply focused on a single call-to-action and is designed to lead to conversions. Therefore, e-commerce companies need to devote time to creating unique landing pages that will each feature specific marketing offers and products. This way people searching for a brand’s product online will be directed to a webpage that caters to their particular need at the moment.  When e-commerce brands are designing landing pages for their website, they need to eliminate any distractions, have a clear call-to-action prompt, and make it easy and convenient for customers to complete that call-to-action.   

Summing Up 

Overall, there are myriad ways to design content that is catchy, relevant, and fits well within the entire marketing mix of the company. Brands need agility in their content design strategies as well as in their ability to respond to short-term content opportunities quickly while still being able to carry out long-term plans. And in this endeavour, they need technology and tools that will support this much-needed flexibility and help measure company success.