You’re absolutely right about Retailers under utilizing the power of MORE content and content that appears outside of the eCommerce catalog. Reassuring your shoppers by reinforcing their buying concerns within content is a great way to not only rank higher on engines, but to also capture more orders and a potentially higher conversion rate.

I am a firm believer that having product specific content, along with niche specific content is a great blend on any Online selling site and can make a big difference between success and failure. Retail blogs are becoming more mainstream, along with buying guides and linkbait campaigns surrounding specific products or groups of items.

Being creative and offering something unique to YOUR shoppers, current customers and prospects is the key. Thinking outside of the box and offering content no one else can will certainly make a retailer stand out from the competition. The examples you proved are great creative ideas that nearly any retailer can use, anytime during their store development process, even later (it’s never to late to employ this tactic).

One such site that comes to mind would be ShopWiki. They have an excellent UGC section featuring buying guides, videos, blogs etc. It’s not a typical retail site, but uses the same principle within their site/wiki. It wouldn’t surprise me to see more retailers start using things like blogs and wikis within their site, outside of the catalog, to overcome the eCommerce content dilemma.

Great write-up and advice, keep up the quality blogging Dave!!

eCopt