3 Product Page Data Enhancements to Win More Traffic

Product Page Data Enhancements

The eCommerce market is expected to surpass $52 trillion by 2027. That’s nearly 4 times as large as its 2021 value.

More customers mean more competitors. While eBay and then Amazon long dominated the eCommerce scene, the pandemic created a shift. With more time spent at home, consumers had more time to shop around.

Because of that, smaller eCommerce sites have more opportunities to make their mark. How can an online marketplace stand out amongst the growing competition?

The first step is retaining customers. The number one way to do that is product page enhancements.

That’s right, it’s not all about SEO! There’s no point ranking highly on a search engine if customers abandon or don’t even fill their carts. For long-lasting success, your product pages have to convert browsers through to purchase.

Then your site traffic and search engine rankings will organically increase. And your product pages will be optimized enough to sustain your success.

Here’s our guide to specific product page enhancements every marketplace should be making and why.

Improve Loading Speeds

As basic as it sounds, loading speeds can make or break organic traffic generation. If your site or your product images take a few moments to load, it can put users off completely. In fact, 53% of people expect a web page to load within 3 seconds

If it loads too slowly, the same survey found that nearly half of customers will be dissatisfied. And if they click away from your site that quickly, it hurts your traffic substantially.

Buyers want a swift, painless experience. Don’t give them time to second-guess their purchase or your professionalism! 

Accurate Product Information

The best product page enhancements are all about product information. Product data enhancement is the key to winning more site traffic. Attention to detail at this stage is the number one way to push customers through to purchase.

eCommerce product data includes written information, as well as images and other details. We’ve broken down how to improve each area.

Product Descriptions

Product data is everything. Potential buyers want to know every detail about your products. Data-driven product catalog management should be central to your strategy.

That goes beyond dimensions and delivery dates. An eCommerce product description should be as thorough as seeing it in person.

In a brick-and-mortar store, shoppers can pick up the product. They can feel its weight, gauge its size, and read more information on the package.

eCommerce marketplaces can combat these challenges by providing just as much information.

If any product information is missing, consumers won’t have the confidence to buy. Or they may return the product.

For online purchases, the average return rate is a staggering 20%. The problem is not just lost revenue, it’s a loss of confidence in your marketplace.

If your product descriptions do not accurately represent the product, they won’t just return it – they won’t come back. That is less site traffic from repeat customers, which leads to less organic traffic generation.

Clearly, an accurate product description is key to repeat customers, which drives organic traffic.

Accurate product data also helps your product get identified by search engines. Besides a clear description, search engines respond well to these details:

  • Global trade item numbers
  • Manufacturer part numbers
  • Brand names
  • Stock keeping unit numbers

Consistently structured product data is also helpful for both search engines and consumers. On every product page, data should appear in the same order and in the same places, so people know where to look. 

This is especially important if several stocked products are relatively similar. Their differences and unique identifiers should be clear enough that customers and search engines can distinguish between them.

High-Quality Images

Good images are just as important to consumers as good data. Bad images, or worse, none at all, reflect badly on your business. If you can’t provide several high-quality images from a variety of angles, buyers jump to questioning your authenticity.

Your goal should be to provide enough images that users feel they’ve seen the product in person. That will give them the confidence to buy and come back in the future.

Visible Product Reviews

Reviews add to your site’s verifiability. In fact, nearly 90% of customers surveyed said that they read reviews before purchasing a product online. The same survey found that even more than 90% of people trust reviews as much as recommendations from people they know.

Make sure it’s easy to leave a review so that previous buyers do so.

Include an image option with reviews so that buyers can upload images alongside them. These candid review images add to buyer confidence even more than professional ones.

Buyers are also interested in your responses to reviews. If any customer leaves a negative review with a complaint, you may want to respond to save face.

According to the survey mentioned earlier, these business responses are read by and are important to nearly 60% of customers. Make sure you represent your business well and respond in the most considerate way possible.

Product Page Enhancements for Your Online Marketplace

Putting these enhancement tips into practice will win you more traffic. But working with us gets that number even higher.

Our solutions for marketplaces go beyond product data enhancements. They win more traffic by fixing attribution, removing duplicates, forecasting demand, ensuring accurate taxonomy, and creating an optimal shopper experience.

Don’t struggle through manually improving product pages in-house. Instead, let us go through your marketplace with a fine-toothed comb and find every optimization opportunity.

Book a demo with us today to learn how.

5 Marketplace Growth Opportunities to Watch for 2023

5 Marketplace Growth Opportunities to Watch for 2022

Keeping a pulse on eCommerce trends and opportunities is not an easy task as it constantly evolves with new and consistently emerging consumer demands – which has been fast-tracked today by a global pandemic.

 

The emergence of different types of online marketplaces has certainly helped to ease the influx of the online shopping shift. With many consumers being forced to buy their groceries and essentials online, this is one of many marketplace trends that will stick around for a while.

 

In fact, according to a recent Alvarez & Marsal Consumer and Retail Group survey, 85% of consumers indicated they will maintain their shopping habits post-pandemic, which bodes well for online marketplace growth.

 

As the new year is just around the corner, many eCommerce brands and sellers are likely considering where to place their bets on strategies that will boost their marketplace growth. While creating a foundation of accurate catalog data is table stakes, knowing where to focus next is key to winning with shoppers.

 

The following compilation is a shortlist of opportunities to watch, pulling from trending headlines, combined with insights from key online marketplace data:

1. Consider the Petcare Category

One of the benefits to being locked down in quarantine is families were spending more time working and learning from home, therefore giving them more time to care for pets. This brought on a surge of pet purchases and adoptions (in the UK alone, 3.2 million pets were bought during the pandemic).

 

According to Pet Gazetteonline marketplaces are the biggest opportunity of growth for petcare brands, as the sector has been shifting to digital, and it is predicted that a third of global petcare sales will be eCommerce transactions by 2026.

 

As such, beginning with an Amazon or Walmart as a launchpad is recommended as a starting point, since the petcare landscape is oversaturated with well-known brands. That said, the data shows that shoppers are mainly researching their items by product and not household brands, making it a level playing field for the category. So, as this category continues to grow, marketplaces should take note.

2. Invest in Cross-Border eCommerce

Data from eShopWorld shows that one-quarter of shoppers surveyed across 11 countries purchased apparel from websites outside of their home market in 2020 (rising even higher among Gen Z and Millennials).

 

This trend goes to show the importance of investing in and offering cross-border eCommerce capabilities, especially for the clothing, footwear and children’s apparel retailers/categories online. The international momentum is still high making the total for cross-border eCommerce up 74% year-over-year for the first four months of 2021.

 

As such, having the right global and cross-platform strategy is key for capitalizing on this growth-area. Ensure to invest in the right data to help fuel this cross-platform/cross-border strategy to take advantage of this new international shopper.

3. Prepare for Longer Holiday Seasons

Data from many online marketplaces showed that consumers started their holiday shopping much earlier than ever before and simultaneously increased their use of online marketplaces. The ongoing supply chain disruptions have prompted consumers to start their research and purchasing earlier so as not to be let down by inventory issues or shipping delays.

 

The once Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale anticipation has now stretched to a longer holiday season, and the average consumer still plans to conduct most of his or her shopping online, even with the reopening of brick-and-mortar retail stores.

 

“As a result of supply chain disruptions and unpredictable product availability, global consumers are starting their holiday shopping earlier than ever before and using online shopping to avoid disappointment,” according to Adrien Nussenbaum, co-founder and co-CEO of Mirakl. “The data from our Holiday Shopping Snapshot offers proof that many of the temporary behavioral changes originally brought on by the global pandemic are becoming permanent. In particular, shoppers are increasing their use of online marketplaces to help reduce costs and ensure gifts arrive on time, with marketplaces seeing the greatest gains among frequent shoppers.”

 

Knowing what high-demand products to promote, and at the most competitive prices, will be imperative to keeping up with the longer shopping season at least until the supply chain regulates itself again (remember: it’s a marathon, not a sprint).

4. Look to Luxury

While many shoppers flock to online marketplaces for good bargains, the luxury sector has also seen a surge brought on by COVID-19, shutting down travel for destination shopping experiences. But translating that journey into a virtual experience has helped with an uptick in growth.

 

According to Forbes, Farfetch serves more than 190 countries and territories with an average order in the first quarter of 2021 totaling $618, with a digital platform GMV growth up 60% year-over-year. Other luxury brands on the marketplace bandwagon include Net-A-Porter and Matches Fashion, using more strategic ways to profit from omnichannel retail.

 

What’s more, Bain & Company projects that as much as one-third of all personal luxury purchases will take place digitally by 2025, with revenues reaching an estimated $136 billion. In order to take advantage of this growth opportunity, fostering product discovery to drive sales is key in luxury.

5. Keep Up with Emerging Competition

Many large and well-known brands having been struggling to keep their doors open resulting in talks of splitting up: separating the brick-and-mortar footprint from the eCommerce business. Most recently, Macy’s has been on the fence about it, attracting a lot of attention, however Fortune reports that “An online only Macy’s would need to work incredibly hard to differentiate itself against Amazon and many other players.”

 

Macy’s is not the only one to watch: Kohl’s and Saks have been reporting a similar story, and most recently Giant Food has launched an eCommerce marketplace featuring non-grocery products. Whether some of these splits will be cause for concern for marketplace competition, only time will tell if they can compete with the likes of Amazon, Walmart, or eBay, etc.

 

How can online marketplaces get ahead of the competitive landscape? The answer is in the data. By having real-time insights at their fingertips, marketplace leaders can build a catalog that can be trusted, with the right power sellers to overcome any competition. It’s a win-win-win for marketplaces, sellers, and shoppers alike.

Recommendations

Use key product data to know where to expand next, whether it be in petcare or luxury items. Look to high-demand products at the most competitive pricing and know when to offer the right promotions to remain top-of-mind. While the marketplace industry may seem oversaturated at times, building the right backend product data catalog is essential to keep up. Then, invest in a cross-border, cross-platform strategy – agility is critical to survival in a constantly changing eCommerce landscape.  

 

Scaling an online marketplace for success can feel like a major undertaking, but with the right canonical catalog as a foundation, and an eye on the right real-time data, seizing the next big opportunity can help marketplaces continue to thrive without signs of slowing down.

7 Tips To Recruit Power Sellers to Your Marketplace

If you’re looking to create a multi-vendor eCommerce marketplace, one of the most important things to consider is how to attract the right vendors to your marketplace.

Although eCommerce marketplaces can be incredibly lucrative, recruiting sellers for your marketplace can be extremely competitive. 

However, if you want to attract thousands of shoppers to your marketplace each day, you must give them what they want — quality sellers. And that means you must have a top-notch seller recruitment strategy.

Here are seven tips to help you figure out how to get vendors to sell on your website:

1. Contact eCommerce sellers on top eCommerce marketplaces

When you’re putting together your seller network, contact merchants on eBay, Facebook, or Amazon that meet the needs of your shoppers. More often than not, these sellers would love the chance for added publicity and likely would agree to also sell their services or products on your marketplace. 

2. How to find a seller offline

Reaching out to sellers via social media and other online marketplaces is a great idea; however, in-person meetings are also highly effective. Today, more organizations are again holding-in-person events after holding virtual-only events during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. As such, you should take every opportunity to connect with vendors at meetings of merchant associations, trade fairs, and other offline events. After you get to know sellers at these events, add them to your social media contact list or send them emails to keep in touch and discuss collaboration prospects.

3. Offer a good user experience

A poor user experience is a major reason your target sellers would opt for Amazon rather than your marketplace so make it easy for vendors to publish and manage orders via your platform. For example, offer sellers an administration panel where they can track how many people viewed their products or service listings. You should also offer to help them publish their listings and provide 24/7 customer support. In addition, build a knowledge base to guide sellers as well as users around your platform. 

4. Employ a smart marketing strategy

A smart marketing strategy is one of the most effective methods to promote your multi-vendor marketplace platform and attract sellers. There are a number of ways you can promote your eCommerce marketplace.

For example, using social media groups, forums, and communities. Social media is a great way to connect with sellers and bring results for your business. Try posting informative and promotional messages on social networks. Regularly sharing information on social media platforms will keep sellers updated about the latest news regarding eCommerce marketplaces in general and your website in particular. Joining merchant communities and forum discussions across different social media websites and channels will also help you connect with them directly. 

5. Target ads properly

Another way to get the word out about your eCommerce marketplace and persuade merchants to join is by running Google search ads and display ads campaigns. Build ads so businesses can register on your online marketplace as sellers. You can also publish your ads on eCommerce websites.

6. Write blogs to attract vendors

Writing blog posts is another effective way to draw merchants to your multi-vendor marketplace. You can write about the successes of your current sellers, offer information about selling on eCommerce marketplaces, and other helpful business information for merchants. Post your blogs on your social media accounts as well as on your website. And you can boost your rank in Google search results by optimizing your blog posts for search engine optimization.

7. Target the right vendors at the right time

The types of merchant you want to attract to your marketplace varies according to where you are in the process. 

  • Stage 1: Launch and development: focus on finding specific merchants rather than specific products. Seek out experienced marketplace vendors with large product catalogs to ensure you’re offering buyers a large variety of good quality products.
  • Stage 2: Established marketplace: after you’ve attracted a sufficient number of experienced vendors, you need to ensure that you’re offering all the products and services that meet the needs of your buyers. Now, you can also onboard and train sellers who are less experienced to ensure they are also successful. However, you still need to keep seeking out experienced vendors to expand your eCommerce marketplace.

Conclusion

Acquiring the right vendors is a critical component of a successful eCommerce marketplace. The tips we’ve offered here will help make your eCommerce marketplace a success. However, attracting vendors is an ongoing process so you should periodically re-evaluate based on the requirements of your buyers.