What Brands Need to Deliver a Successful Online Experience

In our 2021 study commissioned with Forrester Consulting*, industry leaders shared the challenges they faced with eCommerce content. A great majority noted that integrating their data sources were the largest concern, followed by the difficulties in measuring the effectiveness of product content to deliver on their objectives.

Here is a highlight of what business leaders struggle with as they look to manage and measure their eCommerce performance.

Value Starts with the Customer Experience

We’ve seen from past posts that brands value an end-to-end platform to manage their information. But what specific benefits do they hope to gain from having such a solution? Clearly customer experience is still at the top of the list. With limited exception, the way that a content system is built and implemented needs to support the customer experience more than any other need.

The study showed that when asked about the benefits that suppliers hoped to see by implementing a modern product content solution, an improved customer experience ranked higher than profitability, customer retention, or higher conversions. The drive to improve customer experience has always been a challenge, and based on the importance given to it by marketers today, there is a strong recognition that delivering an engaging experience for shoppers online will help to boost overall growth.

Importance Across Regions

While customer experience was a consistently high measure regardless of region, there were a few different areas of influence when comparing regions. For example, survey respondents in Latin America rated increased profitability as the biggest benefit (68% rated it as a benefit), with higher conversions (61%) rated just one point lower than customer experience. Organizationally speaking, respondents in Latin America also ranked higher conversions/sales as being more important organizationally than survey takers in Europe or North America did.

In Europe, having a faster time to market ranked as a top concern more frequently than in other regions, although overall, customer experience still was the top benefit. Europe also ranked conversions less frequently than their North America or Latin America counterparts.

Overall, study respondents had high expectations that implementing these types of tools would impact their top and bottom lines, while also strengthening their relationships with their shoppers. By adopting such solutions, these organizations will be enabled to deliver on important business priorities, including driving growth through content that brings an improved customer experience.