A diverse mix of digital product content is critical to an ecommerce business. Brands who look to use every possible element, including enhanced content, to tell their products' stories will have a better online presence and a greater chance to convert customers.
Enhanced content is what it sounds like: product content with extra oomph. It’s a creative approach that marries SEO-rich copy with strong imagery and video to tell brand and product stories below the fold on the product page. When done strategically, enhanced content can be used to further optimize your product listings and highlight the very best parts of your products and brand.
Enhanced Content Can Add Context to Your Brand Story and Product Assortment
The difference between product content and enhanced content lies in the level of detail that can be communicated.
For example: Product content is a bare-minimum requirement for products to go live, and often just touches on the surface details of a product or brand.
Enhanced content takes consumers much deeper, allowing brands to highlight intricate details about a product, the product’s production process, the brand story or other information that can help convert the end consumer. And much like product content, the brand itself (or an extension of the brand like BrandJump) has the power to create their own awesome enhanced content.
Enhanced content is an important aspect of maximizing your chances for success on both a SKU and brand level. Enhanced content not only optimizes your product listings, but it allows you to highlight aspects of products and your brand that you otherwise wouldn’t be able to.
“Enhanced content gives brands the opportunity to create a consistent and elevated brand experience for the retail customer,” said Alysa Land, BrandJump Strategic Channel Manager. “A retail customer may not necessarily be familiar with the brand, so it is crucial to leverage these tools to educate the customer and instill brand confidence when there isn’t a sales rep in the room to speak directly with them.”
Enhanced content can look different depending on the retailer. For most brands, the two main retailers that offer enhanced content opportunities are Amazon (A+ content) and Wayfair (WayMore content). Even so, it never hurts to ask the rest of your retail partners about their enhanced content opportunities for now or in the future.
Use Enhanced Content to Optimize and Showcase the Best Parts of Your Products
Now that you understand the what and why behind enhanced content, it’s time to talk about what you’ll need to build out killer enhanced content modules. Here are a few things you’ll want to gather:
Optimized Copy
Search-engine optimized (SEO) copy is a must-have for any great enhanced content module and adds greater context to the product details you want to highlight to consumers.. Be sure to do your own SEO research before writing copy to know what keywords to target.
High-Quality Imagery
Exceptional imagery goes a long way in creating engaging and worthwhile enhanced content. When building out content modules, use imagery to help show what makes your products or brand special. Consider using different types of imagery like lifestyle shots or detailed close-ups to tell the full story.
Video
Video is not required to build out enhanced content, but it’s a great medium to further tell a story or provide extra details like describing a specific product’s assembly process or the origin of your brand.
In this enhanced content example on Wayfair, the brand is able to highlight product options, production details and the company’s charitable efforts.
Alongside the uses for enhanced content, there are some additional benefits:
Adds an eye-catching visual element: This type of visually-pleasing module can quickly capture the attention of scrolling shoppers.
Optimizes product listings: Enhanced content doesn’t just look good. It can help boost your on-page SEO by adding additional content around your target keywords.
Reduces bounce rate: According to Amazon, enhanced content can increase conversion rate by 3 to 10 percent. Wayfair’s WayMore Content vehicle goes so far as boosting conversions by 8% to 12% and can up the Add-to-Cart rate by 15% to 20%. With that impact, enhanced content should be viewed as a necessity more than a luxury.
How to Create Enhanced Content
When you’re ready to create enhanced content, focus your efforts on your highest-performing SKUs and products that are feature-heavy in order to have the biggest impact across your product line. You should also consider collections or products that have the same features or details, which will let you apply certain modules across many SKUs.
During the creation process, consider what questions you can answer through your enhanced content modules. Consider things like:
- What makes your brand different?
- What do you wish customers knew about your products?
- What makes your products different from others on the market?
Other things you could highlight within enhanced content modules are things like:
- How products are made
- How materials are sourced
- What inspiration lies behind the design
Using this methodology will help you create enhanced content modules that are a cohesive part of the product page.
Enhanced content is a strategic, creative and visually pleasing way to further optimize listings and highlight the best parts of your products and brand. Adding these additional assets should be viewed as a need-to-have versus a nice-to-have.
Consider enhanced content the striking visual element that help showcase your brand and products story and a finishing touch that helps boosts sales.
