What Is Rich Content and How It Increases Conversion Rates in the Online Store

Imagine you want to buy a TV. Which option are you more likely to buy? The one with one picture and a couple of dry lines of technical specifications, or the one with several bright pictures and a 3D picture which you can twist and examine the TV from all angles? Plus a video guide on how to connect and set it up, a detailed description, reviews, and a video review. The question is rhetorical. The more serious the upcoming purchase, the more we want to know about the product. For a qualitative presentation of a large amount of useful information, rich content is responsible.

What Is Rich Content

Rich content is a marketing tool that implies a comprehensive description of a product on the marketplace or on another platform to make users create a Hellspin login or order particular services.

Its purpose is to give potential customers a complete and accurate idea of the product, leaving no questions. To do this, touch content uses all kinds of media available on the site – from photos to augmented reality (AR).

Why We Need Rich Content

Rich content is useful for buyers, sellers, business owners and marketplaces.

Buyers need to get the most detailed information in an accessible form and hear the answers to their questions. In an offline store he can look at a product, touch it, imagine how he will use it. Sales consultants are always ready to answer questions.

It’s logical to assume that the buyer expects the same from online stores. The task of touch content is to meet these expectations.

It’s important for the marketplace seller to sell more goods and reduce the number of returns, which not only increase logistics costs, but also reduce the overall rating of goods.

Rich content can significantly reduce the percentage of returns. Thanks to it there are no surprises in the product for the buyer, which can spoil the whole impression of the purchase and cause a desire to return the goods.

For the owner of an online store, Rich content can help increase conversion rates, boost sales and build a loyal audience who will return to the store for their next purchase.

The marketplace also benefits from sellers placing touch content on product pages. It keeps users on the marketplace, and the more time the user spends on the marketplace, the higher the sales. The buyer gets used to coming to the marketplace knowing that he will get the most information about a product there and does not need to look elsewhere. They become regular visitors and customers. Moreover, marketplaces, just like sellers, benefit from more sales and fewer returns.

Types of Rich Content

Elements of Storytelling in the Description of Goods

The task of text description is to affect not only the mind of the consumer, but also his feelings. Emotional descriptions always evoke a greater response than dry facts.

But don’t confuse emotional description and empty advertising bragging with a lot of emoji and exclamation points.

Storytelling isn’t necessarily a long story about “the hero’s journey.” It’s more about paying attention to the little details and nuances that will help a potential customer experience emotion while imagining the use of a product.

When buying a product, especially a complex and expensive one, people are afraid of making a wrong choice and want to know everything about the product. Help them, save them from boring text that they don’t want to read. Tell them about the product in an interesting way.

Reviews

The vast majority of online shoppers are very attentive to reviews of products they are about to purchase.

The important role of reviews in marketing is understood by all marketplaces and online stores, and the opportunity to leave reviews is implemented on all major sites.

Most marketplaces not only consider the presence of a large number of positive reviews an important factor in ranking product cards but also try to motivate buyers to leave as detailed a review as possible.

Reviews, both text and video, are one of the most important formats for touch content. This is one case where you can never have too many reviews.

Infographics

Any information in touch content can be presented visually: in the form of diagrams, drawings, lists with explanations.

But more often than not marketplaces use as infographics additional captions on photos or videos of the product, which draw attention to important details.

Infographics help to clearly demonstrate to the consumer the features and benefits of a product.

Besides presenting information in an accessible graphical form, infographics help differentiate a product from competing offers. Photos of products with additional visual information overlay look more interesting than ordinary photos.

Photo 360⁰

Such a photo is a set of photos edited into a continuous slideshow, similar to a video.

Photo 360⁰ is often confused with 3D product models. But 3D models are created in a graphics editor, while photo 360⁰ consists only of images glued together.

For photos of small goods, a rotary table and a fixed camera are most often used. The table rotates, the static camera takes a series of pictures.

Large goods are photographed on the reverse principle – the goods are stationary and the camera moves around them on rails.

After stitching, the photos can be uploaded to the product card of the online store.

If it’s a marketplace, all the photos can be uploaded to a personal account, and the platform will mount them itself.

360⁰ photos look much more realistic than 3D models, and they are much cheaper to create.

Motion Videos

If you give customers the choice of reading a text description or watching a video, most will choose to watch the video.

To make the viewing experience as informative as possible, motion video is used – an animated video sequence that uses static photos with the addition of animation elements. Text and infographics are actively used as such elements.

As a rule, the duration of such videos does not exceed 30 seconds, this time is just enough to present the most important information about the product, without tiring the user.

Video Walkthroughs

Photos allow you to show the product, infographics will tell about its benefits and important properties. But in some product categories, primarily clothing, showing the product “in everyday life” works very well.

To arrange such a “field demonstration” helps so-called video walkthroughs, when models in the advertised clothes move along a catwalk or in domestic interiors. The buyer can clearly see how the clothes fit, how the fabric refracts under the light, how the clothes “behave”.

Model video walkthroughs create a whole charismatic image, which the buyer wants to try on together with the clothes.

360° video walk-throughs are a good way to show how clothes “live” on a person.

AR (Augmented Reality)

It would be an exaggeration to say that augmented reality technology has become a familiar marketing tool and is widely used in e-commerce.

However, from a technical point of view, AR remains a rather complicated technology and its use has not yet become commonplace. But the first swallows have already appeared.

Augmented reality is mainly used by large marketplaces.

How to Check the Effectiveness of Rich Content

The choice of a specific type of rich content largely depends on the seller’s correct understanding of the needs and interests of the target audience. Buyers of some products may find it more important to see them from different angles, others to learn how to properly exploit them.

It helps understand what exactly the target audience needs, thanks to preliminary market research of the target audience and competitors. And the effectiveness of individual types of touch content can be monitored using A/B tests and UX research.

A/B Testing

A/B testing allows you to measure the effectiveness of a marketing unit, in our case the types of touch content.

The most effective way to conduct A/B tests on merketplays is to use internal advertising tools on the sites themselves.

External analytics services will be less effective for such tests, since they cannot be connected to the site’s account and it’s impossible to get accurate information on which ad the visitor clicked on the product card.

UX Research

There’s no need to mindlessly use all available rich-content formats just because there’s an option.

UX research helps to understand what type of rich content is necessary to promote a specific product or group of products.

They are conducted both at the stage of launching sales of a new product and in the course of work, if any problems are found.

For example, analytics has shown that users often leave some of your products in the cart and do not proceed to the checkout stage.

It’s important to understand that this research isn’t an answer to the question if customers like your product. It’s an answer to the question of whether it can meet the user’s needs.

Methods of UX research of touch-content types:

• A reliable and proven way to communicate with users. Researcher asks, and the user answers.
• Different from interviews because you can quickly find out the opinion of a large number of users.
• UX testing. Observation of the user during his direct interaction with a product card.
• UX research helps to find out if the user understands the content of the product card, what mistakes he can make in his understanding of the content.

The researcher has an opportunity to find out what emotions the user experiences with each type of touch content in the product card, what he misses in the card.