For eCommerce Content, It’s Experiences Over Speed

Among the main virtues of this golden era of eCommerce and digital payments is speed. Seemingly instant access to extremely specific product pages. Quick browsing. Fast checkout and transactions — the fewer buttons the better. Have-it-yesterday delivery.

Sometimes, though, that ideal of speed can and even should take a back seat to content — the type of content designed to pull in sophisticated or specialized consumers, the type of content that can seem out of place during this time of reduced attention spans and proud, aggressive multitasking.

Online luxury marketplace 1stdibs stands as an example of that kind of content, along with providing — as do some other companies — a demonstration of the appeal of both digital and physical forms of content to tie consumers to a brand or ecosystem. In a discussion with PYMNTS on Wednesday (Feb. 27), Anthony Barzilay Freund, editorial director and director of fine art at the retailer of antique and modern furniture, jewelry, fashion and art, talked about the role content — even long-form articles — can play in eCommerce in 2019.

Speaking to Audiences

The company, which launched in 2001, has since about 2006 provided online and physical content — a collection that now includes a print catalog — as part of 1stdib’s effort to cement its position in the luxury marketplace.

But the company doesn’t just use its content to speak to one audience. Instead, it needs to reach a “very sophisticated audience who expect a high level of content,” Freund told PYMNTS, “and also an audience that knows a little less” about the products, dealers and artists featured by 1stdibs. Consumers in the latter group often need more guidance via the content about the value and pricing of the works sold via the online luxury marketplace, he said.

Content has long been a feature of successful of eCommerce, if only for SEO purposes. But Google (and other) search algorithms have developed over the years so that search results more regularly reward strong, unique, credible content — SEO experts can attest to that — which in turn has forced eCommerce operators to up their content games. Meanwhile, in recent years, catalogs have experience what might reasonably be described as mini-resurgence, at least when it comes to eCommerce — Amazon has been involved in all that — with those catalogs taking on a more digital feel.

Print Declines

That’s not to say one should expect a general resurrection of catalogs, especially print ones. Even IKEA reportedly is reducing the print run of its 2019 catalog by 50 percent. “We’re sharing content in new ways because consumers are consuming content in new ways,” said Kendra Ferguson, media project manager for IKEA North America. “We’re doing more digital and having experiences so people can interact with us more.”

According to the Data & Marketing Association, 9.8 billion catalogs were sent to U.S. consumers in 2016, down from the peak 19.6 billion in 2007. The paper catalog is in a clear decline despite recent revivals.

But catalogs can work, as 1stdibs and other retailers have learned.

Recent reports have pointed to millennials’ desire for catalogs — nostalgia and the appeal of tactile sensory experiences during shopping apparently fuel that — and noted that 65 percent of men have made catalog-influenced retail purchases. Wayfair is among the major online retailers that see renewed value in print catalogs. “The catalog offers an incredible opportunity to deliver a rich, tactile shopping experience to our customers,” said Bob Sherwin, Wayfair’s head of North America marketing, in a Digiday report from late last year. “We send it out to high-value target customers, or people who have moved into certain neighborhoods — it’s for targeting prospects as well as existing customers.”

More Than SEO

For 1stdibs, catalogs, along with other forms of content, do the job of SEO while also telling stories and using other forms of communication to tell consumers why they should buy vintage items and other products on the marketplace. But the content operation is not a matter of sparking sales from a particular article, Freund told PYMNTS. In fact, he said, “that’s never been the driving force.” Rather, because 1stdibs has some 860,000 product listings from more than 4,000 dealers, the content functions as “an island in the midst of all those things you can buy,” he said. “We don’t talk about prices so much as celebrating those items.”

That may sound like more than a little bit of marketing gloss, but that reasoning is what helps to justify 1,000-word, long-form articles (with pictures and slideshows) from the luxury marketplace. Consumer are “literally spending minutes with our content,” Freund said, instead of seconds, as is often the case with many other types of sites.

Granted, that reflects a certain consumer mindset — shopping for luxury goods is different from seeking out some blue jeans at the best price, after all — but it does underscore the point that not everything in eCommerce is necessarily about speed. Further evidence of that came from a recent PYMNTS examination of subscription eCommerce, a deep look supported by new PYMNTS research into that topic.

In a recently-published PYMNTS interview, Emma Clark, chief of staff at Recurly — a participant in that research — observed that “quick checkout itself doesn’t necessarily equate to seamless checkouts.” That’s in part because “subscriptions in general involve building relationships” with customers, and that could mean those customers, attracted to a specialized product or offering, might not mind moving more slowly than would normally be the case with other online retail sites.

Of course, profit is the ultimate point of anything when it comes to payments and commerce. Neither 1stdibs nor any other company puts in the work of creating original content just because it’s fun. But the content experiences so far of that luxury marketplace do offer lessons for other retailers trying to reach a select audience base that can be persuaded to slow down for a bit.