Lecture 1

1.1 The Importance of Having Quality E-commerce Content

The Importance of Having Quality E-commerce Content

1.2 Orientation

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1.3 Introduction

After completing this lecture, participants will be able to:

 Grasp the importance of providing quality e-commerce content when selling online;
 Identify the various elements that make up quality e-commerce content; and
 Assess how to use e-commerce content in an effective manner.

1.4 Why is Having Quality

E-commerce Content Important?

Why is Having Quality E-commerce Content Important?

1.5 Answer the question

Feedback:

This is false.

The role of e-commerce content is not just to inform potential customers. It is also required to comply with
regulations, access logistics and payment solutions and ensure that a company is able to claim ownership of
its intellectual property. As such, having quality e-commerce content is a necessary stepping stone for
companies that wish to engage in e-commerce activities.

1.6 The nature of an electronic transaction

Electronic transactions require a high level of trust. Due to the absence of personal contact, the different
stakeholders in the e-commerce value chain are not able to confirm the quality of the product, nor the
trustworthiness of the seller from which they are considering making a purchase. They cannot touch, examine
or experience the products that interest them.

This means that it is crucial to provide the most information possible in order to overcome any mistrust or
misconceptions. E-commerce content needs to offer all of the unconscious information that potential
customers and other stakeholders would get from a physical interaction with a company or product.

This is even truer since online transactions usually require the buyer to pay before receiving the product.
Given the important role that content plays in creating trust, buyers, authorities, marketing partners, as well as
payment and logistics providers all need to have the complete information available to them before they make
their purchase or offer their services.

1.7 Why e-commerce content is necessary to sell online

Selling online is a process that involves a number of stages in order to ship products from the “first mile” to
the “last mile” - the final buyer.
Each of these stages requires the creation of specific e-commerce content aimed at different stakeholders.
By creating quality e-commerce content, you will be able to build trust with all of the stakeholders with whom
you interact. This is crucial if you are to be successful in your e-commerce activities.
1.8 The economic value of having quality e-commerce content

You may think that developing quality e-commerce content is an expensive process, both in terms of time and
money. What you may not have considered, however, is that having quality e-commerce content actually
carries a number of economic benefits.

Influencing price perception

Quality e-commerce content influences buyers’ perception of a product. A customer might be willing to pay
more if they see that the product they are looking at online is supported by high quality content, and
understand that their purchasing experience will be smooth and hassle-free.

Assisting with online searches

Quality e-commerce content is worth marketing dollars, as it will ensure that your products are near the top of
online searches. This is because Search Engine Optimization (SEO) prioritizes content that has been
genuinely written by humans. This means that, rather than simple synonyms and keywords, today’s SEO
algorithms used by Google and other search engines look for unique, non-repeated content that is rich in
semantics and meaning to prioritize.

Example

Let’s say you want to create content for a company that produces olive oil. You might use expressive
sentences such as, “our family planted these olive trees 100 years ago”, “our ancestral, reddish soil is very
rich in minerals”, “we only sell produce from our latest harvest”, “summer is the season of harvest for us”, “we
use hand-press artisanal machines”, “we also use the leaves and branches of the olive trees to prepare a
home-made sauce”, etc.
In other words, the more naturally you speak about your product, the more you will be able to create a great
semantic field, without necessarily constantly re-using the same few key words. This will make it more likely
that your product’s page will appear first in search engines and marketplace search results.

Building brand recognition

Providing compelling e-commerce content to your customers is a powerful way to build brand recognition.
Good content helps differentiate your brand from your competitors and facilitates engagement with your
target customers. You can also use e-commerce content to demonstrate the importance that you give to
transparency and traceability.

Reducing human resources cost

Remember: it is very unlikely that a buyer will decide to buy from you online without having all the information
they need. As such, it is important that you provide them with as many details as possible in order to build
trust and avoid additional enquiries. The more complete your e-commerce content, the fewer questions you
will need to answer and, in turn, the fewer resources you will need to spend on customer support.

What’s more, the more information you provide, the less likely it is that customers will return your product
because it did not match their expectations. Posting a simple FAQ online about your product is already a
great help to reduce human resources costs.
1.9 Should you develop your own e-commerce content?

In short, yes. Nobody knows your product better than you. As such, outsourcing the creation of e-commerce
content to a third party risks causing you to publish incorrect or incomplete information which will, eventually,
result in additional costs for your company when you need to correct them.
What’s more, the time and money that you spend on giving instructions to and paying a third-party content
creator may not be proportionate to the output you receive.
Finally, by developing the content yourself, you dramatically lower the risk of copyright infringement. This
applies not only to written content, but also to photos and other visual media.

1.10 The risk of not having quality e-commerce content

Simply put, if you do not have quality e-commerce content, you will not be able to sell online. You will not be
able to create an online payment solution, register on online marketplaces, clear customs, use logistics and e-
fulfilment services, direct traffic to your website, or ensure an efficient customer service.

This is because, as we mentioned previously, the different stakeholders in the e-commerce value chain will
require content from you at different stages of the online sales process. If, at any point, you do not have
quality content to provide to them, your sales will be negatively impacted.

That said, though, 80% of the e-commerce content that you will produce will be relevant for all stakeholders.
This is why we recommend creating all of your e-commerce content before you begin your online sales
activities in order to ensure smooth transactions without any dissatisfaction, delays or extra charges.

1.11 Ask the expert

http://www.youtube.com/embed/nNrBOwtp_4w?rel=0&cc_load_policy=1
1.12 Answer the question

Feedback:

This is false.

While, in theory, it is always possible for your buyers or other stakeholders to contact you and ask for
additional content, in practice this rarely happens. If you do not provide all of the necessary information to
them upfront, your prospective customers are unlikely to invest the time required to ask you more. Instead,
they will probably just buy a similar product from your competitors. Similarly, stakeholders such as logistics
providers may refuse to offer you their services, or may charge you extra for the delays incurred by having to
ask you to provide them with extra content.
1.13 What is Quality

E-commerce Content?

What is Quality E-commerce Content?

1.14 Answer the question

This exercise is not available in the PDF version of this lecture.

1.15 The different types of quality e-commerce content

E-commerce content can be broadly divided into 2 types depending on its purpose. These are:

“Product” e-commerce content

“Product” e-commerce content is designed to provide information about products. It can be further
subdivided based on the stakeholder for which it is intended:
 For customers: photos/videos, name, description, price, stock-keeping unit (SKU)
 For online payment providers: name, description, price
 For logistics-providers: photos, name, description, price, SKU, Barcode, HS Code
 For customs authorities: name, description, HS Code
 For marketplaces: photos/videos, name, description, price, SKU, Barcode, HS Code
 For marketing partners: photos/videos, name, description, price

“Company” e-commerce content

“Company” e-commerce content is designed to provide information about the company selling its products
online, including the legal terms and conditions of transactions. It can be further subdivided based on the
stakeholder for which it is intended:
 For customers: company description including photos/videos, terms and conditions, privacy policy, return
and refund policy
 For online payment providers: company description, terms and conditions, privacy policy, return and refund
policy
 For logistics-providers: return and refund policy
 For virtual marketplaces (VMPs): company description, terms and conditions, return and refund policy (if not
regulated through the VMP itself)
Note: As you can see, there is a significant amount of overlap between the different types of content required
by the various stakeholders in the e-commerce value chain. This is why we recommend creating all of your e-
commerce content upfront to ensure a smooth online selling process.

1.16 The various stakeholders of the e-commerce value chain

Let’s take a step back to look at the various stakeholders involved in the e-commerce value chain in more
detail.

Buyers/customers: These stakeholders need to be given information on the product that they are considering
purchasing. In an e-commerce context, it is safe to assume that most buyers do not know anything about the
product or company that they are looking at. As such, they need convincing, whether through rational or
emotional argument (or both).

Most of all, though, they need to trust you if they are to make a purchase. It is important to understand that
being protected by a VMP’s terms of use or by a payment operator’s refund guarantee will not make a buyer
trust you. Even if they can plausibly expect to recover their money if something goes wrong, most buyers
won’t want to put up with the hassle in the first place. They want to make sure that they understand what they
are buying and that the product they receive corresponds to what is being advertised online.

Payments providers: Online transactions need to be authorized, and this process requires online sellers to
provide payment providers with certain information about themselves and their products. Keep in mind that it
is the responsibility of payment providers to prevent money laundering and crime financing. As such, they
need to have enough information to enable them to establish with certainty that your business is genuine.

Logistics providers: Logistics providers deal with large quantities of goods on a recurring basis. As such, they
need to have enough information to be able to quickly identify and manipulate your products. If your orders
are incomplete or incorrect and slow down their operations, they will charge you more, or simply stop offering
you their services altogether.
Customs authorities: Customs authorities deal with a large variety and volume of merchandise. In order to
apply the relevant regulations, they need to be able to quickly identify the origin and composition of each
product that crosses the border. By providing complete and correct information to the customs authorities,
your product will be able to cross the border quickly and easily, ensuring a rapid and hassle-free delivery to
your final customer.

Virtual marketplaces (VMPs): VMPs (and especially business-to-consumer (B2C) VMPs) are highly regulated.
This means that they require extensive information from prospective sellers on their platforms. In fact, the level
of compliance required by VMPs is similar to that required by the banking industry. In addition, an increasing
number of VMPs are today beginning to offer integrated e-fulfilment or logistics services, which require
additional information on the part of sellers.

Parrtners (affiliate marketers, resellers, etc.): Your marketing partners can only be efficient if they receive
quality content that they can use to build effective campaigns. What’s more, your partners also need to trust
you and be convinced that your product can actually generate sales. The better your content, the more likely
your marketing partners will be willing to promote your offering to a wider audience.

1.17 Answer the question

This exercise is not available in the PDF version of this lecture.

1.18 Using Quality

E-commerce Content Effectively

Using Quality E-commerce Content Effectively

1.19 Answer the question

This exercise is not available in the PDF version of this lecture.

1.20 Be organized when creating your content

Creating e-commerce content is not something that you should improvise. While we will talk in more detail
about creating both product and company e-commerce content in the following modules, keep the following
steps in mind as you begin to consider how you could create content for your e-commerce activities.
1. Capturing
Content creation starts by capturing all of the information necessary to effectively showcase both your
company and your product. In doing this, keep in mind that the best source of information about a product is
its producer. If that’s you, great! If not, we highly recommend contacting your suppliers to learn more about
their production process.
2. Editing
Editing involves selecting and preparing written, visual or audible media to convey the information that you
have captured in an appealing way. Keep in mind that different stakeholders prefer different media, as well as
different tones for your content.
3. Organizing
It is paramount that you organize your e-commerce content once you have edited it. If you do not keep your
content organized, you will quickly lose track of it, particularly after some time has passed. Wherever you
store your files and other electronic documents, use a naming standard that will allow you to quickly find them
and keep track of different versions (i.e. “raw” vs. “edited”).
1.21 Making effective use of e-commerce content

Keep the following points in mind if you want to make effective use of your e-commerce content.
Have all of your e-commerce content ready before starting your e-commerce activities
Since 80% of the e-commerce content that you create will be relevant to all of the stakeholders in the e-
commerce value chain, making sure that everything is ready to go before you even begin will save you a lot of
time and additional work.
If you do not have your e-commerce content ready before you begin, you might find yourself unable to use
important e-commerce services, such as those of payment or logistics providers, customs authorities, or
VMPs. What’s more, if your prospective buyers find your information lacking, they are likely to buy from your
competitors, rather than investing additional time and money to obtain the necessary content from you.
This means that creating quality e-commerce content is an economically advantageous proposition. Once
you have created it, it is a matter of a few clicks for you to upload and publish it to hundreds of online
channels. Using data feed management will allow you to quickly and easily update your product information
across hundreds of marketplaces and price comparison engines.
Create your own e-commerce content
Make the effort required to create your own e-commerce content. While this may be a little time consuming, it
is generally not very expensive and will save you a lot of trouble down the road. By creating your own e-
commerce content, nobody can stop you from using it, or accuse you of plagiarism. In addition, you will avoid
any miscommunication or misuse of your content by third parties.
We recommend including a copyright notice on your website when it becomes available to the public. Doing
so will not cost you anything any may help to deter plagiarism or provide proof if you ever decide to sue
somebody for copying the content that you have created.
1.22 Ownership and plagiarism

Ownership
Ownership in the e-commerce value chain starts with creating and owning your content. If you are the one
who created the content, no one can stop you from using it or accuse you of plagiarism. Only, however, if you
created and published the content first.
If another online seller takes a photo of your product or design and publishes it online claiming it as their own,
you will not be able to contest their claim unless you can prove that you were the first to create and publish it
(e.g. through proof of domain name registration or screenshots from an Internet archive), or through other IP
protection measures such as registering a trademark, etc. Including a copyright notice on your website can
also help.
In reality though, if an online seller uses some of your content and decides to use it for their own promotional
purposes, you will almost certainly not be able to stop them. Engaging in a legal battle can be costly for SMEs,
and the international nature of the Internet may make litigation impractical.
This is why publishing content early and often is key. Google and other search engines have algorithms to
recognize plagiarism, based on a piece of content’s date of publication. This means that, if you are the first to
publish a given sentence, image or video, search engines will recognize that it is original, and redirect more
traffic to it. As such, any competitors who attempt to plagiarize you will have a hard time getting traction;
search engines are designed to send visitors to the most authentic and earliest source of a given piece of
content.
1.23 Being responsible for what you publish

Publishing e-commerce content comes not just with rights, but also with responsibilities. As the creator and
owner of the content, you can be held responsible by your customers or service providers if information is
missing or incorrect.
Remember that online sellers need to provide full and accurate content for their stakeholders if they are to
avoid miscommunication along the e-commerce supply chain.

1.24 Activity – Creating your own e-commerce content

This exercise is not available in the PDF version of this lecture.

1.25 Key Points

Remember:
 Creating quality e-commerce content may seem difficult and time consuming. However, it is absolutely
crucial if you want to be successful in selling online.
 E-commerce content is divided into 2 types: product and company content. These are further subdivided
depending on the stakeholder to whom they are addressed.
 E-commerce content comes with both rights and responsibilities. As the owner and creator of content, you
are responsible to ensure that it is both complete and accurate. On the other hand, you are also entitled to
protection against plagiarism.

1.26 Thank you for completing the lecture