Engage: Step 4 in Closing the Loop

Did you know you only spend about 15 seconds paying attention to an online product page? Studies have shown that your customer will decide almost instantly whether to leave your site or continue to review your product information.

When every moment counts, creating engaging content is critical. So, to continue Syndigo’s Growth Loop series, we will look at Step 4—Engage—and how to leverage rich content to improve brand trust and drive more conversions.

The Impact of Engagement

In Step 3 of closing the commerce loop—Syndicate—we shared the importance of delivering your content to a large network of retailers in the format required by each partner.

But what happens once your data publishes to a retail site?

Gartner shares that “effectively syndicating product data to channels such as marketplaces, retailers and social networks is not the end of the process…Brands and manufacturers need to analyze the quality of product content, ensure it matches the content they maintain internally, and continually optimize the content over time to effectively sell products online and increase revenue.”[i]

The primary way to optimize your product page is through Enhanced Content, including rich media.

Syndigo is one of the largest providers of Enhanced Content, supporting 5.8 million product pages across more than 1,000 retailer sites. Shoppers view pages with Syndigo content 358 million times per month. This breadth of product management gives us unique insight into the impact of engagement.

Some of the results we’ve documented include:

• 390% increase in conversion rate when shoppers engage with rich media content.
• 39% average lift in add-to-cart rates for products with Enhanced Content.
• A notable reduction in returns by many top retailers.

So, how can you ensure your content makes an impact? Let’s unpack how to procure Enhanced Content, along with three important considerations for improving engagement.

Defining Enhanced Content—And How to Get It

The role of Core product content is to inform the user. Details like weight, measurements, and color are all necessary. But how do you bring the product to life?

That’s the goal of Enhanced Content. Product pages should be full of 360-degree product photos, lifestyle images, demonstration videos, comparison charts, nutrition information, and user-generated content like influencer reviews and testimonials.

This type of Enhanced Content helps you tell the product story, make an emotional connection with buyers, and answer key questions like:

• How will my product help the customer?
• What makes it a better choice over the competitor?
• What add-ons or other options might also fit my customer’s needs?

Obtaining Enhanced Content doesn’t have to break the bank. You likely already have some, and you can explore what content already exists and how to repurpose it. For example, existing advertisements, training videos, lifestyle images, or brochures can often be reformatted and leveraged on your product pages. Following Syndigo’s tips for improving Enhanced Content can help.

Three Considerations for Better Engagement

 Procuring this Enhanced Content is just the beginning. There are a few more elements to help ensure your content makes the biggest impact on customer engagement.

First, does your content support transparency?

 More than ever, shoppers demand detailed information. They want to avoid certain ingredients, follow a specific diet, or know that the product is free from harmful chemicals or risks. When brands are transparent with customers around these details, it builds brand trust and loyalty.

Syndigo helps clients create and manage transparent content, including:

• Nutritional Fact Panels: Publish FDA-approved nutritional fact panels for each item, tray, case, or pallet of products.
• Ingredients: Allow customers to search for products with or without specific ingredients and provide ingredient aliases (e.g., fructose means sugar).
• Allergen and Diet Claims: Provide visibility into diet claims (like organic or GMO) on packaging and labels.
• SmartLabel: Use industry-recognized QR codes that allow customers to view details that go beyond the traditional label.

Next, are you engaging shoppers in the right context?

 In today’s commerce environment, context is everything. It is critical to evaluate which Enhanced Content works best for digital vs. in-store customer experiences.

For online content, rich media is typically found “in-line” or below the fold on the product detail page. However, with 50% of all web traffic coming from mobile devices, many customers don’t scroll down far enough to see this content.[ii]

Syndigo helps clients overcome this issue with features like the Engaging Hero, which brings conversion-winning content to the most viewed, top-of-the-page area of a PDP to captivate shoppers who don’t wish to scroll.

When it comes to in-store shopping, many retailers want to expand in-store mechanisms to give shoppers access to Enhanced Content. Examples include QR codes, such as SmartLabel, that provide the shopper with access to additional content, or augmented reality (AR) features that allow users to view a piece of furniture virtually in their home. Syndigo assists retailers with physical store and shelf layout planning by feeding data to in-store planogram platforms.

Finally, how are you measuring the success of your Enhanced Content?

The goal of Enhanced Content is to drive better engagement. So, how do you know if it’s working?

Syndigo’s Content Experience Hub (CXH) integrates analytics and insights—providing reports on product page performance to help you see, in real time, which content works best (by product or category).

When content doesn’t drive engagement or conversions, you can optimize it within the same platform, helping product managers adjust quickly to new market trends or customer preferences.

This point leads us to the last step in closing the commerce loop—Optimize. In our final blog of the series, we’ll discuss how to optimize your data to grow your commerce business.

If you’d like to take a deeper dive into planning your enhanced page content, download our Enhanced Content 101 guide.

1. https://www.gartner.com/doc/reprints?__hstc=157289509.8b1d4e7dd564d4e1a36217d510fc08d3.1613761061277.1633729351672.1634064917787.276&__hssc=157289509.2.1634064917787&__hsfp=4088795216&id=1-273IK7UE&ct=210804&st=sb&submissionGuid=6fc62c3e-caed-410d-b7a1-f1be59b806f9
2. https://www.statista.com/statistics/277125/share-of-website-traffic-coming-from-mobile-devices/