Unlocking the Power of Every Pixel: Transforming Digital Product Experiences
The coming decade of e-commerce will require retailers and brands to obsessively and continually revise, refine and optimize — and revise again — every aspect of the digital experience for consumers.
This often chaotic landscape is already becoming the new normal for the digital age, moving and evolving at unprecedented speeds to meet consumer and market demands.
In this article, I'll explore why you must make every pixel count and provide tested tips for transforming digital product experiences to ensure that every element of the buying journey is optimized to meet shoppers at every interconnected touchpoint across the digital shelf.
How to Build Exceptional Digital Product Experiences
Retail product pages serve every part of the buyer journey, from supporting product discovery, consideration and conversion to building brand loyalty. To meet these shopper demands, you must make every pixel count. You can achieve this by optimizing every part of the product page to match a stage in the journey. For example, ensure that your product titles support discoverability with specificity like “Bluetooth over-the-ear headphones” vs. “headphones.” You should also use images to provide the differentiating details, like product size and use cases, that shoppers find helpful at the consideration phase.
1. Eliminate bad product content.
Pages lacking product information or only offering low-quality images have a negative impact on sales and brand perception and can also lead to product returns. Many shoppers have abandoned a purchase due to this bad product content or inconsistent product data between retailers. Bad data costs the U.S. economy around $3.1 trillion each year, according to a recent study by IBM.
Shoppers are more likely to purchase products from unfamiliar brands — or even those with bad reputations — than those with missing information. Retailers and brands must ensure that product information is accurate, complete and engaging.
2. Use enhanced content to improve conversion.
Engaging multimedia elements like extensive image galleries, videos, feature tours, comparison charts and other content helps boost shopper engagement and sales. Many retailers are still in the process of improving their websites to allow brands to provide this enhanced content directly to tell an engaging product story and make the most of every pixel.
When implemented, the results pay off. For example, Petco saw steady quarter-over-quarter sales growth after adding enhanced content directly from suppliers to its e-commerce site.
Deliver the Best Product Experiences
The line between bustling brick-and-mortar stores and immersive virtual storefronts is blurring. Engaging, personalized and seamless product experiences are necessary to win the digital shelf.
By unlocking the power of every pixel, brands and retailers can deliver winning digital product experiences.
Julie Marobella is the executive vice president of product at Salsify, a unified product experience management platform.
Julie Marobella is the executive vice president (EVP) of product at Salsify. Marobella joined Salsify with over 15 years of experience driving product strategy, sales growth, and market expansion at high-growth software companies. Previously, she held product leadership positions at Barkly and Acquia.
