Sergii Shvets

Expanding your ecommerce operations into Europe can be a great opportunity. The region comprises 50 member countries, giving you access to over 540 million potential customers and a market on track to exceed $880 billion by 2028.

However, navigating the intricacies of the diverse European markets —each with unique languages, cultures, and consumer preferences — can be challenging. You need an effective localization strategy for the new markets you are entering, and product information management (PIM) can help.

A PIM is a centralized platform that organizes, enriches, and translates product data so that it resonates with the local market you’re targeting. The PIM market is estimated to grow to $17 billion by 2026, highlighting its crucial role in online business.

This article will explore the advantages of using a PIM for localization and provide best practices for a successful ecommerce expansion in Europe.

Understanding Localization Challenges for Ecommerce in Europe

Whether you run a small fashion store, sell handcrafted items, or operate a big retail operation, you’ll face these localization challenges while navigating the intricacies of the European market:

1. Europe’s Multilingual Landscape: With its rich tapestry of languages, each European market may have its own preferred language or dialect. Effectively managing content across multiple languages requires precise translation and cultural adaptation to resonate with diverse audiences.
2. Navigating Cultural Nuances: Cultural differences within European regions significantly impact consumer behavior and expectations. Adapting product messaging, imagery, and user experience to align with cultural nuances is essential for connecting with local audiences.
3. Meeting Regulatory Standards: Europe enforces stringent data protection and consumer rights regulations, including GDPR. Complying with these rules across different countries complicates ecommerce operations. Balancing legal frameworks while delivering a seamless user experience demands careful consideration.
4. Payment and Currency Dynamics: There are over 30 different currencies in Europe and a myriad of payment preferences. Effective price localization — implementing a payment system that caters to local preferences and ensures accurate currency conversions — can accelerate your business growth by 30%.
5. Tailoring Products to Local Markets: Products may require adaptation to meet different markets’ specific needs and preferences. This involves translating product information and considering factors like sizing, labeling, and packaging to align with local standards and expectations.

Benefits of PIM in Localization

As you can see, localization can be a big challenge when expanding into a diverse business landscape like Europe. However, using a reliable PIM tool can help. Let’s see how.

Centralized Data Management

PIM systems are a central hub for organizing and storing all product-related data, ensuring product details, specifications, and attribute consistency across an ecommerce platform. This unified approach prevents discrepancies, streamlines operations, reduces errors, and provides a reliable source of truth for data management — particularly crucial for expansion into a market as diverse as Europe.

Multilingual Content Creation

Given Europe’s linguistic diversity, PIM systems provide multilingual support, making it easy to create and manage product information in multiple languages and supporting the translation and adaptation of product descriptions and marketing materials to meet local audiences’ cultural and language preferences.

It also boasts version control features, simplifying the task of handling multiple versions of catalogs, specifications, and pricing — a requirement for localizing product information — thereby enhancing communication of product value, especially in international sales.

Maintaining Consistency Across Markets

PIM systems help to preserve consistency across diverse markets by centralizing product information, branding elements, and marketing content. This centralized approach ensures a uniform brand presentation across different European regions, regardless of the specific market or language.

Adapting To Cultural Nuances

PIM systems offer features that enable businesses to tailor product information to specific cultural requirements, ensuring relevance and resonance with target audiences in each market. This may involve customizing imagery and promotional material to align with cultural preferences in European markets.

Enhanced Customer Experience

PIM systems are vital in enhancing the customer experience. By centralizing product information, businesses can efficiently manage multilingual content, maintain a consistent brand message, and adapt to cultural nuances. This results in a personalized and user-friendly experience for customers, ensuring they can access accurate information in their preferred language.

PIM systems also help with cross-border selling. They handle currency conversions and customize recommendations and content based on customer data. All of these advantages together foster a positive customer experience, leading to increased conversions and long-term brand loyalty.

Case Studies or Real-Life Examples

So, how exactly does this work? Here are some real-world examples of how a good PIM can help businesses with localization when expanding into European markets.

Sizing and Measurement

A U.S.-based fashion ecommerce platform is expanding to Europe. To align with European standards, measurements will have to change to the metric system used in Europe. For instance, a dress labeled as size 2 in the U.S.A. would be size 34 in most European regions, and a chest measurement of 36-38 inches in the USA corresponds to 91-96 cm in Europe.

Getting all these differences down can be challenging, but a good PIM system will allow the fashion store to showcase product sizes according to local standards, preventing potential returns.

Language and Translation

A beauty and cosmetics ecommerce brand expanding into European markets has to translate and adapt product descriptions to fit each country’s language and colloquial terms. Research indicates that 76% of people prefer shopping in their native language, and 60% rarely or never buy from an English-only website.

To address this efficiently, the brand can use PIM to manage product descriptions. This enables them to translate and tailor content seamlessly for French, German, and Spanish. The goal is to resonate with local audiences, ultimately enhancing customer engagement.

Best Practices and Implementation Tips for PIMs in Localization

So, how can ecommerce businesses effectively implement PIM for localization? Here are some actionable insights, best practices, and tips to consider:

1. Plan Ahead: Initiate your PIM implementation well before launching in Europe. Early planning reduces the risk of rushed decisions, ensuring smoother integration into diverse markets.
2. Be Culturally Sensitive: Respect the cultural nuances of each European market. Customize your PIM strategy for language, local preferences, and cultural sensitivities. This ensures positive resonance with diverse audiences.
3. Consider the Whole Customer Journey: Extend the PIM application beyond product details. Localize marketing content, customer support, and post-purchase communications. A holistic approach provides a seamless and culturally relevant experience, from exploration to post-purchase engagement.
4. Implement PIM Everywhere: Ensure consistent messaging and data accuracy across all channels —  website, mobile app, social media, etc. This guarantees coherent and synchronized localized content, reinforcing brand integrity and customer trust.
5. Evaluate and Improve: Continuously assess the effectiveness of your PIM localization strategy. Analyze data on customer engagement, conversion rates, and market-specific performance. Use insights to refine your approach, adapting to evolving market trends and consumer behaviors.
6. Train Your Team: Equip your team with skills to maximize PIM capabilities. Conduct thorough training on localization, data management, and cultural considerations. A well-trained team enhances the efficiency and effectiveness of your PIM implementation.

To thrive in the diverse European e-commerce market, adopting Product Information Management (PIM) is crucial. The varied languages, cultures, and regulations require a centralized approach for accurate and consistent product information. PIM ensures data precision and simplifies localization, providing a seamless shopping experience.

About the Author:

Sergii Shvets is the CEO and co-founder of Gepard PIM, an ecommerce data transformation company that connects retailers with manufacturers and content providers. He is also the director of technology at Icecat, a product catalog technology provider.

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Kathleen Lewarchick

Some digital technologies arrive with fanfare while others enter quietly and become ubiquitous over time. Voice technology is one example of the latter. It gained momentum when developers and users began expanding their views of sound as part of multi-sensory engagement.

Voice activation was popularized by Google. They provided a “speech-to-text option” as part of their search functionality. And voice activation went from a quiet bleeding-edge technology (think OnStar) to a crescendo of widescale adoption as people began to use (and like) Google Assistant, Siri, Alexa, and others.

Making headway in B2B and B2C markets

It was only a matter of time before voice activation would become a powerful tool in commerce. Voice commerce, or v-commerce, is making headway in both B2C and B2B markets. Its technology twin, artificial intelligence (AI), complements and accelerates this trend.

There are obvious benefits, especially for those who are visually impaired or have diminished motor skills. There are also inherent risks, such as authentication and security. However, more and more voice commerce examples are appearing in the B2B market because of ease and simplicity.

One example is hands-free ordering. A facilities manager might be replacing dirty equipment during scheduled maintenance when he or she recognizes a missing piece. One option is to pause work, clean hands and record the part for an order later. The alternative is voice commerce on the job, where the manager pauses for a voice-activated ordering assist, and then quickly gets back to the maintenance job.

Here’s an example of a voice-commerce shopping experience where the buyer:

● Audibly requests items to be placed in a cart, as pictured here:

● Places the order directly through the integrated order management system.

● And receives system confirmation through voice (and visual) outputs, as shown here:

While there’s no guarantee that the part is in inventory, voice commerce enables the order to be placed hands-free at the direct moment of need.  Not only does this save time, but it may eliminate order errors if the order process is fully automated.

Essential to B2B business growth

Voice commerce, or v-commerce, is no longer on the horizon. Competitively advantaged companies are using it today to help customers save time and effort. And more users enjoy hands-free technology. It is likely that B2B use cases will only grow given the tight labor market and calls for improved productivity. Getting started on the journey of voice commerce is essential to maintaining your B2B business growth.

Kathleen Leigh Lewarchick is the VP of Marketing for Xngage LLC, a B2B digital commerce services company with more than 60 clients across the industrial trades. She is the former PURELL® Hand Sanitizer Brand Director, has co-created automated replenishment products with Amazon Business, and created telehealth solutions for a company that she later helped sell to CVS Health. 

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Munro’s Safety Apparel is one workwear distributor that has moved beyond that challenge.

Munro’s Safety Apparel is a supplier of customized industrial clothing and footwear from major brands for corporate customers who order such special treatments as customized embroidery, emblems, reflective trims and flame-resistant fabric.

In business for nearly a century, the family-owned and -operated company launched a safety apparel division in 1976, focusing on the workwear needs of the petrochemical industry’s refineries and chemical plants. It has faced a longtime challenge in maintaining product specifications and custom catalogs for each corporate customer.

Now, Munro’s Safety is developing customized commerce sites for individual client companies, Destiny Martin, ecommerce manager, said during a recent webinar presentation.

Building a unique web  experience for each customer

“Our goal with the ecommerce platform is to build unique website experiences for our customers that are defined by their uniform program,” she said.

Each customer website typically has from four to six buyer profile types, each with its own list of products they’re authorized to purchase. Under a prior ecommerce platform, Munro’s Safety says it spent extensive manual labor to manage about 40 unique customer online stores.

The company has since migrated its ecommerce technology to the Znode API-first, headless commerce platform from Amla Commerce Inc. Munro’s Safety says the new platform enables it to build a catalog for an online store within hours instead of one to two weeks under the prior platform.

The company adds that Znode’s built-in product information management system, or PIM, has made it easier to publish up-to-date and accurate product information to all customer websites.

(This article is part of a longer report on B2B ecommerce strategies, Standing Out in the B2B Crowd, which is available as a free download.)

Paul Demery is a Digital Commerce 360 contributing editor covering B2B digital commerce technology and strategy. paul@digitalcommerce360.com.

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Naragon asserts that companies have focused in large part on customer experience and customer journey mapping but that “there hasn’t been the same awareness from CEOs that, my gosh, we should also have a strategy with a chief product officer and technology to support really articulating our product story consistently wherever our products are being showcased.”

She adds, “There’s nothing more frustrating for a CEO to go searching for a product of their own company and to see incomplete, inaccurate information and bad images.”

To address such concerns, Akeneo has taken several steps in 2023 to expand its suite of product data management technology offerings, including:

• Its September acquisition of Unifai, an AI platform designed for the automated collection, cleansing, categorization and enrichment of product data.
• The March launch of Akeneo Activation for Retail, which connects product data from Akeneo PIM to product detail pages of retailers and marketplaces worldwide.
• Extending the availability of Akeneo PIM by making it available through the online marketplaces SAP Store and Google Cloud Marketplace.

Akeneo says it now has more than 850 customers worldwide, including North America-based companies CarParts.com, Arc’Teryx, DSW, Nautica, Belvins, TaylorMade and Chico’s.

Akeneo also expanded its management team this year. In addition to Naragon, who joined the company in January to head strategy and marketing, others include:

• Andy Tyra, chief product officer, who is a former executive of Amazon Fresh and the Amazon Web Services.
• Nadine Pichelot, chief financial officer, a veteran technology industry executive most recently with Anaplan.
• Sabrina Jaksa, chief people officer.
• Tim Kohn, technology and product advisor, who formerly was vice president of technology and product at Amazon.com Inc.

Akeneo also appointed former director of product strategy Camille Fant as head of corporate social responsibility. Along with overseeing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, Fant will spearhead Akeneo’s plan to reduce its carbon footprint per customer by 30% within the next year.

Paul Demery is a Digital Commerce 360 contributing editor covering B2B digital commerce technology and strategy. paul@digitalcommerce360.com.

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Finding new leads has proven to be a challenge, with low lead volume identified as a primary pain point. There are a lot of different factors that could be contributing to the new-lead drought that goes beyond tightened budgets. B2B marketers are contending with a new world of buyers who are much more digitally focused than even a few years ago. They act more like B2C consumers and want content and experiences that engage them.

It’s a tough situation for marketers to address with limited resources. Yet, despite a constrained budget, B2B marketers have opportunities in 2024 to adjust their approach and improve acquisition rates.

Rethink Top of Funnel Tactics

If B2B buyers are starting to act more like B2C consumers, then B2B marketers need to follow suit, which means trying new early funnel tactics. Everything from YouTube to Instagram should be on the table for testing in 2024. I often hear from B2B marketers that social media other than LinkedIn isn’t a good fit for their brand, but that’s often not proven out in an actual test. B2B buyers are people, and they definitely go to social media!

These social channels will become more prominent in the B2B buyer journey as younger generations get buying power at work. GenZ adults like YouTube the best and watch ads on the platform. They use the platform to look for information and to learn, not just to be entertained.

While making special creative for different social platforms used to be timely and costly,

the industry no longer has an excuse. Generative AI like Midjourney can repurpose creative that already exists into formats that fit each platform’s specifications in mere minutes. These platforms are also built to help advertisers with a library of templates, tips, and reports to help with testing.

Simplify Non-Brand Search

What better way to find new customers than for them to find you? Non-branded search can be a valuable way to drive self-guided buyers to content on the site without hard selling. And there are a lot of buyers who are doing more research online than ever before.

With Google’s push to more automated campaign types like Performance Max, I’ve seen less investment in pure non-brand search. Performance Max and automated campaigns like it go after the lowest-hanging fruit. People searching for a specific brand or product name might have already converted anyway, while non-branded search represents an audience that might be net-new.

If this isn’t in the cards, B2B marketers can at least move budget to non-branded search to see how it affects the new-acquisition funnel. Chances are it will make a noticeable, positive difference.

Make It Easier to Convert

There are many unnoticed hurdles in every B2B purchase process. The website might be confusing, there might not be the right product information to download, or there could be a lack of all-important peer reviews. A B2B marketer’s job in 2024 is to remove as many hurdles as possible from the purchase process.

Marketers should put themselves in the shoes of a new customer and scrutinize their website. The goal is to make sure that the site makes it easy to research and purchase, with as few steps as possible along the way.

For example, the more concise a form is, the more leads a marketer will generate. Similarly, if site search doesn’t display the right information, prospects will leave and look for the information elsewhere. Now that more buyers are self-service, the checkout experience makes a difference. According to Shopify, changing from a multipage to a single-page checkout increases conversion rate by 22%.

Forrester Research notes that recommendations from peers are also an important part of the journey. If there are no case studies, customer stories or access to peers, it could turn prospects off.

Some B2B marketers are getting creative with the peer aspect of the buying cycle, creating communities and forums where prospects can ask questions and hear more about different use cases. This interactive strategy not only helps them with their understanding of a B2B company’s solution, but it also creates a positive connection to the brand!

Time to Start the Detective Work

Simply spending more to get more leads is not an option for most marketers in the current economic landscape, but it is still important to test new initiatives. Before starting any of these new tactics, it’s a good idea for B2B marketers to look at 2023 data and see where their best new acquisitions came from and what they did. Then, look at where there was the biggest drop-off in different parts of the journey. This data will highlight opportunities to find more good leads and to address issues that might have turned prospects away.

Marketers will get the best uplift if they can dive deep into the data as they test new tactics. Knowing not just the topline volume but also the type of leads and their value  will help determine where to focus efforts.

About the author:

Andrea Duffy-Cabana is the Senior Director of Paid Media at Anteriad, where she helps B2B marketers maximize the value of their paid media strategies. 

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What’s in the November 2023 edition of Strategy Insights?

Most of the time, that’s through images. In a Digital Commerce 360 and Bizrate Insights survey of 999 online shoppers in October 2023, 52% of online shoppers say multiple product images are important to delivering a well-designed and functional online experience. That’s second only to detailed product descriptions, with 58% of shoppers citing this. The infographic “What consumers love, and don’t love, about online shopping” visualizes all of the results from this survey. It includes:

• Online shoppers’ largest frustrations with online shopping
• How they shop on mobile
• Customer service woes
• Personalization preferences

While images and descriptions are table stakes, a robust online customer experience goes well beyond this.   

For example, the amount of retailers using video has grown tremendously, which the article “Lights, camera, conversion: How some retailers use videos to entice shoppers to buy” showcases. Featured in the article is The Home Depot Inc., which publishes several videos on a single product page, each catering to its different shopper personas, says Michael Newsome, the home improvement chain’s senior director of category experience.  

Enhancing the customer experience

Another way retailers work to enhance the customer experience is through blog and editorial content. This area of the website works to give shoppers more information about the products they are buying or the brand they are shopping from. It can help increase conversion, and retailers say it can boost their SEO value. The article “Retail blogs can deliver sales but only with a strategic plan” details the wins and pitfalls of operating an on-site blog.   

Many retailers also work to enhance the customer experience with free loyalty programs. They give shoppers perks and is a lucrative way to entice acquired shoppers to spend even more with a brand. The article “Successful loyalty programs give consumers an incentive to spend more” features three exclusive interviews with executives from major retail chains Chico’s, Michaels and Sephora. They share insights on how they drive their millions of loyalty program members to spend even more.   

And lastly, all this would all be moot if the retailer’s site doesn’t load quickly. Shoppers, especially on mobile, will abandon the site and their purchase. The article “Retailers are building mobile websites to meet consumer demand for interactive features” details how merchants build robust mobile sites without dragging down the speed.    

 The November Strategy Insights “How Retailers Create the Best Customer Experience” contains these feature-length articles. Download the free PDF here. 

April Berthene 
Editor, Strategy Insights   

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The bridesmaid dress retailer revamped its blog in Q2 2023 with a strategy, plan and one goal in mind: to have Azazie.com show up higher in search engine results, says marketing manager Keily Hernandez. 

Azazie has had a blog on its site since 2019, with search engine optimization as one of its goals as well as using it to promote giveaways and promotions without significant financial investment. But SEO wasn’t the primary focus, and the merchant didn’t have a team dedicated to managing it. As a result, Azazie did not rank highly in search results for its targeted keywords, Hernandez says. 

Now, Azazie updates the blog one to two times a week. Each month, Azazie picks a keyword to focus on, such as “bridesmaid” or “bridal gown,” and focuses all its marketing content, including social media posts, influencer content, content across the website and its blog, on that keyword.  

“We have everything point back to us as the leader of that keyword,” Hernandez says.  

This focused and integrated effort has led to a 24% increase in sales revenue attributed to organic search (which includes blog content) from April until September 2023, compared with that same period in 2022, Hernandez says. And the content is resonating with shoppers, as sales from shoppers who viewed Azazie’s blog content increased 50% from January through September 2023, compared with the year-ago period.  

Azazie is among the roughly half or so retailers that offer a blog or editorial content on their site, according to Gartner data. A Gartner analysis of 300 U.S. retailers (75 luxury retailers, 105 multi-brand retailers and 120 monobrands) in March 2023 finds that 47% of retailers have a blog or editorial content on their site, such as articles related to the products they sell, content about that category’s trends, company history or policies.  

Merchants cite several reasons why investing in editorial content can help their bottom lines, including more traffic from search engines, higher conversion rates and low return rates. But execution is key, as retailers will not see any return on their investments if they are not thoughtful and thorough with their strategies. And investments can be significant, as merchants may have to invest in internal employees to generate the content or hire outside agencies. 

Only 6% of online shoppers say blog content is an important feature for a well-designed and functional online shopping experience, according to a Digital Commerce 360 and Bizrate Insights survey of 999 online shoppers in October 2023. But shoppers put a higher value on similar content, which retailers could publish on a blog, such as how-to guides, at 19%, and an About Us page, at 12%. 

Data from research firm Forrester Research Inc. also finds that only a small subset of consumers consult a blog before a purchase. 3% of U.S. online adults who purchased clothing or footwear (online or in person), and 5% who purchased furniture or home improvement products in the past six months visited the retailer’s blog in the past month, according to data fielded between November 2022-March 2023. 

Yet, only 17% of shoppers say online retailers have met or exceeded their expectations with providing detailed product information such as origin story, history, business policies and sustainability. And only 12% said online retailers have met or exceeded their expectations with additional content such as how-to guides and blogs.  

Retail blogs boost SEO value, organic search traffic

While shoppers may not rely on blog content to make a purchase, retailers and analysts still believe it can be an important component in the online shopping journey. In fact, shoppers may not realize that a blog post was how they landed on that retailer’s site to begin with. If brands write their blogs and editorial content with search engine optimization in mind, it can have a large impact on bringing in organic traffic, says Brad Jashinsky, director analyst at Gartner.  

And organic traffic is important for Azazie. The wedding apparel retailer says about 10% of its site traffic and sales come from organic search, which includes shoppers finding its site from the blog articles. 

“I would think and I would hope that every company and every brand in every industry has a blog,” Hernandez says. “It’s kind of like the low-hanging fruit of organic content.” 

Chip Malt, CEO and co-founder of cookware brand Made In, says that roughly 25% of its site traffic comes from organic search, which includes shoppers who come to Made In’s robust blog. On average per month, its blog receives 2 million page views, and each reader views about six pages in the blog, Malt says. This shows good engagement, Malt says. On average, this is about 20% of the site’s overall page views, he says.  

What’s more, when Made In sends content-focused emails, the click-through rates are three times higher than its selling-focused emails, Malt says. Similarly, its content-focused ads on Google produce click-through rates at four to 10 times higher than selling-focused ads, he says. 

Education through content has been a part of cookware brand Made In’s strategy since Day 1, Malt says. Made In launched a blog six months prior to launching products on its cookware site and the fourth employee the brand hired was a part-time content contributor, he says.  

“Education is a part of the brand’s story,” Malt says.  

Made In sells high-end cookware that’s designed for cooking enthusiasts and is popular among professional chefs. For example, its 10-inch blue carbon steel frying pan is $109, and the brand’s average order value is $330, according to Digital Commerce 360 estimates. The blog helps to explain the value of its cookware.  

Today, the brand has 10 full-time employees on its content team, it publishes roughly 50 blogs per month and the blog ranks for 56,000 keywords within Google Search, Malt says. About 50% of these keywords are in the top 20 search terms on Google, with 25% of those on the first page of search results, he says.  

One of the top navigation tabs on MadeinCookware.com is “Learn,” where the brand publishes its founding story, recipes, care for its products and cooking techniques. As Made In has expanded its product lines to include bakeware and wine glasses, it also has added content to support these products as well.  

“If we are offering this line of cookware, we also want to keep up the pace of content. …. It’s something we wanted to do for our community,” Malt says.  

Retail blog content connects to shoppers post-purchase 

This large breadth of content distinguishes the brand from its competitors, such as All-Clad, Malt says. 

“Long term, we believe if you are shown All-Clad or Made In, and you walk out the door and you are on your own, and you went with Made In, you have all this helpful content behind you. And that makes the consumer go with us overall, because they see us as a value-add,” Malt says.  

All-Clad has a blog on its site with recipes and other product content. All-Clad did not provide a comment as of press time.  

Top online floral merchant 1-800-Flowers.com Inc. also invests in editorial content as a way to engage with shoppers, says chief marketing officer Jason John.  

It operates six blogs across its 17 brands, which include a variety of giftable products such as cookies and chocolates as well as flowers. The goal is to deepen the relationship with shoppers, so they don’t just view the e-retailer’s ecommerce sites as shopping destinations, John says. It updates each blog multiple times per month.  

“It takes us beyond one transaction and helps solidify us as a part of the customer relationship,” John says.   

1800Flowers.com addresses themes within each brand’s product assortment and customer base to appeal to shoppers. For example, topics that have resonated with consumers are about how to write sympathy cards, including pet sympathy cards, for its 1800Flowers.com blog, and articles about hosting holiday dinners for its food and gifting brand HarryandDavid.com.  

Results from retail blogs 

Web visits to its blog have increased 70% year over year, John says. Even more telling is that shoppers who view a brand’s blog content convert at a 3%-5% higher rate than shoppers who don’t. This speaks to the quality of its blogs, John says.  

“You need a North Star with content,” John says. “A lot of companies, you can tell they are putting out content to put out content, and they are putting out content for a commerce outcome. We don’t believe there is authenticity in that type of content.”  

While conversion metrics are a clear performance indicator, Made In says privacy regulations can make it difficult to track a direct conversion to a blog post, because many shoppers don’t accept cookies and may visit the site several times before deciding to make a purchase. The path to purchase becomes more muddled especially with products that are high-ticket and more considered, like Made In’s relatively pricey skillets and knife sets. Instead, Malt describes its investment in content as a “brand tax that we absorb,” meaning a cost of doing business for higher-end products.   

Besides increasing site traffic, results from investing in a blog shows up in other ways, Malt says, such as aiding in the customer journey, helping its customer service team and low return rates. If shoppers are more informed about the products they buy from reading the blog, they are more likely to purchase the right product for their needs and not return it. He points to its stainless-steel products, which have a less than 2% return rate, without sharing more. 

Roughly a third of the visits to Made In’s blog come from shoppers already on the website, and the rest from outside the site, such as search results, emails and ads. If Made In was only doing the blog for SEO purposes or completely focused on that as the goal, Malt would expect 99% of the traffic to come from outside sources. But that’s not Made In’s primary goal.  

The fact that a third is internal traffic shows that the content is providing value to shoppers as they consider the brand’s products. Instead of having an article only live in the blog section, Made In peppers relevant content throughout the site to aid in the shopper journey, Malt says. For example, on the search results page, it may surface a post about the difference between nonstick and stainless-steel cookware.  

“We believe content should be intertwined in the customer journey and are happy to have internal traffic get there,” Malt says. 

Using blog content in multiple ways is smart, Gartner’s Jashinsky says.  

“If you are going the extra mile to make great content, you need to make sure it’s discoverable, across social, across search, and product pages and search pages,” Jashinsky says.  

How retailers know what to feature in blog content

Made In surveys its shoppers via email and uses that feedback to inform its content strategy. Based on 20,000 comments, Made In determined it needed more blogs about how to care for its products post-purchase, and now publishes such articles regularly.  

“The nice part of being a direct brand is that people tell you exactly what they think,” Malt says. 

Made In’s editorial team plans the focus of its blog posts for each month. Each of the brand’s departments, such as its product, customer service and marketing teams, give input on their teams’ current priorities. For example, the product team may say that it is launching a bird beak’s paring knife that month and request at least two articles featuring the product. The customer service team might say it’s had an influx of shoppers calling in about how to season their carbon skillet and propose a video blog and step-by-step instructions on how to do this.  

“Customer service acts as a very direct line to our actual customer. So our customer service team has direct input into the content calendar,” Malt says. 

The customer service team’s input gets particularly high priority when planning the blog’s editorial calendar, as the articles they suggest can help them assist customers much faster, Malt says. For example, with the “how to season the carbon skillet?” question, instead of taking 10 minutes to write out tailored instructions for each shopper, agents can direct shoppers to a video or blog that addresses their need.  

“It’s an efficiency play,” Malt says. While Malt doesn’t have a direct KPI figure to tie to its retail blog, he knows speeding up solving customer service issues keeps agents and shoppers satisfied.  

Azazie also taps its customer service team for input on what it should include in its blogs.  

“If they have a question about a trend, we can respond and create a content strategy to that, that tying into what’s trending, and what we are also offering,” Hernandez says. 

For example, a common question shoppers call in about is sizing for a bridesmaid dress while pregnant. Azazie has a blog that provides examples and tips on this topic, but it was first published in 2016. So, the content team refreshed the blog with examples of Azazie’s current maternity dresses and relevant links to its products. The customer service team refers to this blog while helping shoppers and directs shoppers to read it.   

Azazie also looks to any interactions it’s gotten on social media and trends in the bridal industry to inform its content strategy.  

The blog is under the purview of its digital marketing team, and Azazie also employs an SEO consultant to help determine its content and execution. Overall, the blogs that gain the most traffic and lead to the most sales are the ones that are integrated into its overall marketing strategy and are tied to press releases and influencers, she says.  

“It’s a lot of moving pieces and work, in order to put a campaign behind a keyword, but those are the most successful, the ones with a content strategy,” Hernandez says.  

Involving multiple departments in content creation will serve retailers well, Gartner’s Jashinsky says. Retailers would also be wise to track which types of content shoppers click on, and use that information to personalize product recommendations and for ad targeting. This is a way to gather first-party data directly from the consumer, which is especially valuable now that cookies that track shopper behavior across the web are increasingly being phased out, and can greatly benefit retailers in the long term, he says.  

If retailers do decide to make a focused effort on improving SEO through blog content or guided selling tools like a quiz to match shoppers with suitable products, they should expect it could take a year or two to see results, not months, Jashinsky says.  

“We always tell clients, this is not something you can get up and running in a week or month,” Jashinsky says. “This takes many months to get up and running, and takes a year or two to start to see significant payout. So you really need to make sure you have a long-term strategy and you are ensuring you reallocate this content as many places as possible to make sure that investment pays off.” 

For something like a quiz that guides shoppers through a series of questions and links to relevant product pages, retailers should expect to pay thousands to tens of thousands of dollars to a vendor to build it, Jashinsky says. But to do an editorial program at scale — which may take a team of writers to publish content daily and collaborate with different teams, plus the technology to plug into personalization software — that could take hundreds of thousands of dollars to millions, he says. 

For Made In, these marketing costs show up as the salaries for 10 employees dedicated to digital content instead of spending these dollars on ads. Similarly, the cost of the blog for Azazie shows up in its marketing staff resources. 1-800-Flowers also has an editorial staff that “fluctuates” depending on the time of year, John says without revealing more. 

Retailers that do strategically invest in content often see an increase in traffic from organic search, and small increases in basket size and conversion rates for shoppers that engage with this content, Jashinsky says. This, of course, varies by how well the content strategy is executed and product category.  

“Whether you are selling online or in-store, it is a pretty cost-effective way to increase SEO and increase conversion rates, and typically almost every retailer is already creating content and already has a lot of these pieces in other parts of ecosystem,” he says.  

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The OpenAI consortium released its generative AI bot ChatGPT for public use during Q4 2022, and it quickly became the hottest topic around. Months later, everyone in the online retail industry is still buzzing about generative AI, but how many businesses are actually using the technology today? And how many would want to talk to us about it?

Turns out, quite a few.

While many merchants we talked to are still just piloting and exploring how best to use the burgeoning technology, many brands have live generative AI programs up today. This Strategy Insights, “6 ways retailers are using AI right now and how generative AI will change ecommerce,” showcases examples of many large retail brands (and a few smaller ones) and how they are using generative AI right now.

Below is just a sampling of examples you’ll find in the rest of this report. Download the entire Strategy Insights here.

1.) Stitch Fix taps generative AI to write  ad headlines and product descriptions

Apparel retailer Stitch Fix uses generative AI to write headlines for Facebook and Instagram ads. In the past, it would take about two weeks to develop a creative campaign and draft copy. But now, human copywriters can evaluate a headline created by the generative AI system in less than one minute — and they approve the machine-created content 77% of the time, Stitch Fix says.

2.) Babylist uses generative AI to write email subject lines

Baby products marketplace and registry says its marketers are expected to use generative AI to help create ideas, content and copy, says Lee Anne Grant, chief growth officer. Babylist finds that ChatGPT-generated subject lines increased open rates for marketing email in half of their tests. It concluded that ChatGPT is a “great resource for when the team needs subject line inspiration or help writing one,” Grant says.

3.) J’evar uses generative AI to create product models

Online-only jewelry merchant J’evar has its product designers use generative AI to speed up how it creates custom jewelry pieces. Instead of going through dozens of product mockups over the course of weeks, genAI can help its designers produce product samples in minutes, says J’evar founder and CEO Amish Shah.

4.) Newegg uses generative AI to summarize customer reviews

Online electronics retailer Newegg built a generative AI tool in house that creates one product summary for a product based on all of the published customer reviews. This review is published at the top of all the reviews. Reviews are an important feature for Newegg, as 20% of Newegg.com shoppers read reviews, and these shoppers spend 40% more money on the site than non-review reading shoppers, says Andrew Choi, director of brand and website experience for Newegg.

5.) UrbanStems creates images with genAI

Online flower merchant UrbanStems is using generative AI in multiple ways, including having it create images of potential products it wants to sell. For example, the brand can tell its generative AI software to create an image of a 10-stem red and white arrangement of peonies in a glass vase and white background — and send that image to its merchandising team to create the product in real life. This helps the brand quickly experiment with new designs, without having to purchase flowers and conduct a photo shoot just for a design mock up, says Katie Hudson, content director for UrbanStems.

6.) EBay enables its marketplace sellers to use genAI to write product descriptions

Marketplace giant eBay built a tool based on Open AI’s ChatGPT that creates a product description based on data sellers provide about a product’s category, condition, color, brand and more. Roughly 20% of sellers shown the generative AI tool use it, and of those, 90% accept at least part of the description, says Xiaodi Zhang, vice president of seller experience at eBay.  

Download the free Digital Commerce 360 October Strategy Insights, “6 ways retailers are using AI right now and how generative AI will change ecommerce” here.

—April Berthene, Editor, Strategy Insights

Additional reporting from Digital Commerce 360 editors Don Davis, Gretchen Salois and Abbas Haleem.

The post 6 ways retailers are using generative AI right now appeared first on Digital Commerce 360.