Consumer Website Marketing With Content: The Case Of Amazon
Amazon is widely recognized as the most successful ecommerce
site in history. Much discussion has been devoted to the role of
Amazon's affiliate program, website usability, website
personalization, and capital investments. But little attention
has been paid to the vital role content plays on the Amazon
site, and how big an advantage Amazon has over its competitors
thanks to content.
How Does Amazon Use Content?
Unlike most ecommerce sites, Amazon doesn't stop at a simple
product image and a blurb.
* Amazon includes just about every bit of text the manufacturer
or publisher of the item provided. For books, this is the
publisher's description and selected quotations of reviews.
* Then there are the famous user reviews. A lot of sites give
visitors an opportunity to cast a review, but few sites accord
their reviews the pride of place that Amazon does, with the
result that there is rarely a product or book on Amazon that
doesn't have at least a few reviews.
* Finally, there are the original reviews Amazon's in-house
writers create. Even with a wealth of content it does not have
to pay a writer for, Amazon still sees the value in
professionally crafted words.
What Advantages Does Web Content Bring Amazon?
* Eyeballs. A visitor who is reading something is much more
likely to stick around the site. And as every web marketer
knows, the longer the visit, the better the chance of them
buying something. Meanwhile, you're much more likely to turn to
Amazon in the future when you're in the early stages of
shopping. After all, Amazon is one of the few ecommerce sites
that actually provides the information you need to make a
decision.
* Mindshare. Were you ever sitting on the fence about buying
something, until you read something on Amazon that sold you? You
probably didn't realize it at the time--we all like to think our
decisions are ours alone and not the product of careful
marketing--but carefully placed content was working its magic on
your decision-making.
* Trust. An oft-overlooked dimension of content on ecommerce is
sites is how it can built trust enough in visitors to make them
feel comfortable pulling out their credit cards. The ultimate
trust issue in ecommerce is that the product isn't really what
the visitor wants, that when it finally arrives it won't be
quite what you had in mind. Detailed information about the item
goes a long way to assuaging those fears.
* Search engine traffic. Certainly there have been numerous
times when you've searched on a product or book name and Amazon
was one of the first results. How often do you see Overstock-com
or BarnesandNoble-com appear? How could they? They don't have
anywhere near as much text for a search engine to base its
listing on.
* Reduced advertising expenditures. Overstock-com has launched a
relatively massive (for the web world) television advertising
campaign along with a significant web advertising campaign. It's
even followed through on the campaign with a lot of truly great
bargains. Yet Amazon-com is still number-one in ecommerce and
has not felt the need to make a big splash on offline media in
quite a while. When you have the search engine traffic and
mindshare that website content brings, even the biggest
advertising budgets will have a hard time unseating you.
In short, Amazon may have the most sophisticated and carefully
fine-tuned ecommerce operation in existence, but it still
appreciates one of the most time-honored methods of selling
something: words. If your business doesn't have the advertising
budget of Overstock-com or the brand recognition of Barnes and
Noble, that's an encouraging fact indeed.
About the author:
Joel Walsh, who has no affiliation with Amazon.com, writes on
web content and business marketing. Contact Joel to discuss your
business web content
copywriting: http://www.joelwalsh.com
Written By: Joel Walsh