The rise of storytelling content and brand experiences have made engagement metrics key indicators of a brand’s success, but for many retailers the final indicator has been, and always will be, conversion. The volume of revenue generated by a campaign or collection is always on the mind of digital marketers. As retailers move away from the standard grid and toward rich digital experiences, the question for many is: how do I make my content profitable and engaging? How do I increase conversion rates while effectively interacting with my shoppers? In this blog post, we’ll review three ways to make sure your content generates revenue for your ecommerce site.
1. Make it easy to buy
Your digital experience can be beautifully designed and effortlessly interactive, but without instant shoppability it’s a purchasing dead-end. There is nothing more frustrating for an online shopper than discovering products they love through a guided-selling experience, but then finding no way to quickly make the purchase, instead being forced to search through endless category pages on their own. The solution to this common problem lies in integrated quickviews. They enable your rich and visual content to translate to increased revenue. Shoppers simply click on a product to activate an ecommerce-enabled lightbox and can then add the item directly to the shopping cart. Because the consumers never leave the experience, they can continue to interact, explore, and shop. From buying guides to quizzes, quickviews are an easy way to add shoppability to any experience.
2. Inspire Customers to Make a Purchase
Standard product grids don’t offer shoppers a real reason to buy
. They don’t inspire customers the way rich digital experiences like buying guides or tutorial videos do. To encourage conversion, your content needs to make shoppers excited about the products, and the possibilities they provide. A great example of an inspirational experience is
Ethan Allen’s shop-the-room collection. Shoppers can see the brand’s furniture and homeware products in an actual fully-designed room, and can imagine how they would style the room themselves. They can see exactly how that rug would look with this couch, and can imagine how they would put their own personal touch on the room. The experience is rich, visual, and inspiring – shoppers have no reason
not to buy.
3. Establish Opportunities for Future Purchases
If a shopper isn’t quite ready to make a purchase, they might be ready to make a different sort of commitment. When shoppers subscribe to a brand’s email marketing service, or follow them on social media, they are converting in a different way. They are becoming loyal to that brand, expressing a willingness to buy in the future. To retain these long-term customers, retailers need to design their ecommerce sites to make subscription easy. The less time it takes to find the subscription form and enter information, the better, especially for mobile users. Keeping this form at the top of the webpage makes subscription easy and fast. And don’t forget, when communicating with these shoppers through email or social media, be sure to reward them for their subscription with rich, fun, and interactive landing pages.