The Future Of Ecommerce: Content Commerce 101 [REPORT]

What stands behind the omnipresent content marketing hype? That's right: the fact that you can no longer ignore customers' desire for content, purpose, and meaning. And yet, more often than not, online shops still resemble soulless product catalogues. That HAS to change.

And that's why we recently created the first Content Commerce Report to explain HOW. Free-to-download, of course. Get your copy here.

Content Commerce

Content Commerce is the future of online trade. It's a logical consequence of this tremendous, worldwide trend that content marketing turned out to be. Once brands and businesses across the whole retail scene have finally realized that they need to provide their customers with more than mere products, the next step is to learn how to integrate content into their online shop and seamlessly merge the two experiences.

The retailers that will thrive will be the ones that allow customers to shop when, how and where they want to. This requires significant investment in technology and logistics and will be a struggle for smaller physical-heritage retailers, many of which will be squeezed out. Start-up retailers will come from a tech-savvy, Internet-first standpoint and will be better equipped to develop an omnibrand strategy.

Source: Criteo

The seed that content marketing has grown from contains many more blossoms than "just" creating value for people who just MIGHT be interested in our products. Even though the discussion about what content marketing is hasn't slowed down over the years, there's one thing that many agree upon: content marketing has shifted its focus away from the intrinsic product-centric point of view towards a people-focused approach that puts the needs of the customers at the centre. That's a very important step to take in the commercial world. Nevertheless, it seems to be quite hard for the e-commerce industry to integrate the new idea into the shop systems. Unfortunately, when it comes to online shops, there are still poor product images, keyword-stuffed product descriptions, flashing call-to-actions, confusing navigation, etc., that people have to deal with. All this causes nothing but confusion for the customer.

Imagine a person landing on an online shop because he liked something he saw on a brand's corporate website, Facebook page, YouTube channel, blog or micro-site before. That person feels as if the brand knows what he likes and what he's interested in. Perhaps they share the same values, or are committed to similar projects – or maybe the brand has just solved a problem that the visitor has been trying to solve for ages. And then… and then there's a shock. A soulless, profit-oriented online shop. How does it fit together with the content experience the customer had before? That's right – it doesn't whatsoever.

Why are so many online shops and e-commerce companies losing business opportunities by confusing their visitors and customers with different channels and approaches? Because they're not aware that Content Marketing and e-commerce should be brought together.

That's why we’ve created a comprehensive guide in which you'll learn:
-- Why retailers should rethink e-commerce
-- What Content Marketing has to do with it
-- What's the definition of Content Commerce
-- What are the three ways to combine content and e-commerce systems on a technical level

The great future of Content Commerce has just begun. So be in the moment and bring your store to the next level – otherwise you're at risk of being overlooked by your potential customers. Boris Kochan, CEO of Kochan & Partner (Winner of the German Award for Online Communication) makes a good point, which, unfortunately, not many online retailers have yet realized: "The product of the online merchants is the user experience – and not the product itself".