The digital shelf has evolved to become a mainstay in online shopping and e-commerce. Recognizing consumers’ desires for more flexibility when they shop, retailers have increased their investment in this strategy. The surging digital shelf market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18%+ between 2022 and 2030.

Why such strong growth? Because e-commerce has evolved into more than a mere shopping channel. The digital shelf has become a critical component of online and in-store consumer packaged goods (CPG) growth, evolving to include components complementary to the information consumers access while shopping in-store, like:

• Customer ratings and reviews.
• Product images, descriptions and videos.
• Promotions and pricing information.
• Stock levels and available inventory.

A successful holistic product content strategy seamlessly functioning across all channels is helping to accelerate digital shelf growth. What’s the key to these retailers’ success? The right tools and resources.

Why product content matters — especially today

Several factors are driving consumers to product pages and increasing their reliance on product information. Inflation has encouraged nearly 75% of customers to modify their shopping behaviors. Nearly 50% of consumers use smartphones while shopping and over 50% have scanned QR codes to learn more about a product. They’re accessing and spending more time with product content because they’re:

• Watching their budgets (67%).
• Doing a gut check (56%).
• Checking out what others have to say (33%).
• Looking for more details (28%).

The average consumer views content across multiple channels, so brands must deliver consistent product content everywhere. Eighty-one percent of consumers expect the content they encounter will be similar — whether they’re reading it on a website, in an email, or seeing it on social media. Omnichannel shopping trends remain strong, with shoppers relying on multiple product detail pages (PDP) and e-commerce sites to help inform their major purchase decisions.

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Elevate your commerce content game

If you want to win the digital shelf race, these strategies will help up your commerce content game.

1. Make it easier to manage data — and improve customer experience (CX) — by knocking down silos and embracing a single source of truth.

Marketing teams may need to manage hundreds, if not thousands, of product pages across multiple retailer sites — a nearly insurmountable task without a good system. A central data management system saves resources and eliminates errors resulting from manual input. Adopting a single source of truth enables teams to maintain consistency by making updates once, with the system applying those changes instantly on all product data and across all channels.

2. Maximize your marketing teams’ time and energy, empowering them to deliver an exceptional CX thanks to the magic of collaborative, streamlined workflows.

Content management systems promote agility by storing content in one location. And these systems also help teams catch potential legal or compliance issues, improve communication, maximize output and communicate more effectively between teams.

3. Activate and accelerate your brand’s omnichannel engagement to attract, engage and retain shoppers.

Establishing a digital presence is one thing. Driving omnichannel engagement, however, is a whole other (effective) ball of wax. Developing a robust, multifaceted commerce experience strategy positions your brand to attract, engage (and keep) more shoppers across the most channels.

Start by choosing a data pool provider with a net wide enough to access the highest number of retailers — and, thus, consumers — as possible. This approach expands your reach when delivering product data and supply chain information to your partners, who share it with their shoppers.

4. Optimize SEO for equal e-commerce shopping opportunities.

While your product descriptions are ultimately written to catch customer attention, the content must also play nicely with search engine algorithms. If the content doesn’t align with those algorithms, you may lose rank on search engine results pages (SERPs). Learn how your customers talk about your products by doing keyword research.

Also verify you’ve optimized your website and ensured compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requirements — another area of opportunity for maximizing the value of SEO via accessible design like title tags, descriptive alt text and header structure.

5. Use alt-image text for product images.

Alt-image text describes a product’s appearance. Search engines need it to find images on your website and return relevant results. This text also helps bots crawl and rank your website higher in SERPs. And it’s important for complying with ADA  guidelines and delivering high-quality CX.

When writing effective alt-image text,

• Aim for 125 or fewer characters.
• Use specific, concise language to describe the image.
• Use this space to provide context — don’t try stuffing the alt-text with keywords.
• When describing more complex images like maps, diagrams or charts, use accessibility best practices.

6. Optimize PDPs, the holy grail of product information.

PDPs are critical for giving customers the information they need — and they’re one of the best places to maximize your SEO, too. Your goal should be to develop high-quality, reader-friendly content for your target audiences.

• Know your target audience and buyer personas and identify content gaps on PDPs.
• Examine existing content from every angle to determine whether it offers and communicates the information your customers expect. Write engaging descriptions that tell a full, detailed story, using language that creates a natural, conversational tone showing the product’s superiority to the competition and making a case for why it’s the best choice.
• Incorporate power words that sell, choosing descriptive words like “stunning” or “exceptional” over the blander “nice” (and less interesting) adjectives.
• Highlight the product’s benefits and features — how does it mitigate pain points, address a need, or bring joy.
• Choose formatting that makes content easy to scan and read — bullet points, short paragraphs, plenty of whitespace, and different size fonts all help.
• Add conversion-driving PDP content below the fold or in the image gallery.

An omnichannel content strategy maximizes the power of product content. It facilitates the development and delivery of consistent, on-brand content across channels — especially important as e-commerce has evolved from a mere channel to a robust shopping tool.