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
