Combining Content and Commerce

Note: This post originally appeared on the blog at Amplience.com (however the images were lost using a migration)

It’s great to see more and more eCommerce sites producing great inspirational content, with beautifully photographed and sculptured digital displays driving interest in the current seasonal wares or the focus of the latest campaigns:

Updating and curating such displays in their physical stores has long been an ongoing labour of love for the store staff, necessitating the movement and management of physical objects throughout their store space. If a display of say picnic hampers is suddenly very popular, do they move more of that stock near to the display area near the main store entrance, or hope that customers are interested enough to then walk to the relevant department in order to learn about and source the object of their desire…?

One of the joys of online retailing is that we can restructure our product layouts, and virtually move our stock around within the online store, without having to roll our sleeves up or tripping over packing cases…. and yet many eCommerce sites tend to take a similarly linear and laborious approach to online shopping journeys.

They still often inspire someone with a promotional display, and then ask them to go to the relevant department (category page) to then find the item in order to learn more about it (Product Details Page), and then hopefully add the item to basket. If they have been sufficiently inspired by another item in that initial display, they may then go in search of those other items, and add further items to their basket (increasing average order value).

Each additional journey introduces friction, distraction, and potential fatigue – which is perhaps why in-store cafes are often so popular in physical shops, but is a big risk to your conversion funnel in online interactions.

Sweaty Betty has had beautiful inspirational content for some time, as per this screen capture from a few years ago:

However this still required the virtual navigation and traversal of their content category pages, and product detail pages. Each step of which takes you a click away from that carefully curated inspiring content.

Introducing curated commerce elements directly into this promotional and inspiration content can unleash some extremely interesting potential into the equation. Introducing hotspots on various points-of-interest, means that right at the moment-of-interest, a customer can enquire about more details for each product. It’s like having a clairvoyant but non-intrusive shop assistant instantly appear with the product insights exactly when needed:

Taking the additional step to then incorporate a popup or quickview with all of the additional product details, sizing options, alternate views, spin, video and reviews engenders the confidence in the customer to then take that all important step to adding it to the basket or wish list, most importantly without having to leave the current page.

When this is closed, they are instantly right back where started, and therefore much more likely to be drawn into exploring further items that you have carefully selected, and within that same context that initially inspired them.

The eCommerce results are pretty inspiring too:

In twelve months of building interactive campaigns on the Amplience Adaptive Media Platform, Sweaty Betty increased its online revenues by a third.

After rolling out the platform and content-lead approach to the USA, Sweaty Betty’s American online revenues grew by 185%.

.. and (in possibly related news) huge congratulations to Sweaty Betty in winning Multi-Channel Retailer of the Year 2013! :

http://www.sweatybetty.com/sweaty-betty-wins-multi-channel-retailer-of-the-year-2013!-blog1184/

Other related items:

http://amplience.com/2014/06/sweaty-betty-wins-retail-week-digital-excellence-award-after-huge-online-revenue-growth-2/