The right strategy for texts in e-commerce

What are the different types of content in e-commerce?

The range of content on e-commerce websites is diverse:

• The home page of an online shop or your digital service should first and foremost arouse the attention and trust of customers. In addition to the desired conclusion of the contract, it’s all about strengthening the recognition of your brand (brand awareness).
• Category pages play a central role in e-commerce marketing. They summarise the contents of the product pages, list offers, encourage people to click further and serve as a distributor for the subpages.
• Descriptive texts for the individual products provide detailed information about the goods or the services offered. This is where the actual purchase takes place.
• Ultimately, a corporate blog can be useful in supplementing the content for e-commerce. Here users can find inspiration, background information or interesting stories about the company. The blog has several functions in e-commerce marketing and is a great way to gain new customers while keeping hold of existing customers.

Why is good copy so important on e-commerce websites?

Content marketing accompanies the entire consumer journey of online shops. The texts must meet different tasks and requirements. Generate new users for your online shop or parties interested in your digital services using search engine optimised content. It is important to attract these first-time users to your offers and services with interesting, target group-specific texts. Published content is the deciding factor for the length of stay of the readers - if the time that customers spend on the page increases, this has a positive effect on the ranking in search engines and of course on your sales figures. Interesting or surprising texts in e-commerce also create increased awareness of the brand and improve customer loyalty. Satisfied buyers, in turn, report on their experiences on social media, which in turn makes increases your brand visibility. As you can see, good content for your e-commerce opens up new ways to sell your products.

How to create better copy for e-commerce

A strategy for e-commerce marketing consists of several building blocks. First of all, it is important to determine which texts you need for your business, and where you need them. Would you like to redesign category pages, do you need product information or should it be a blog with stories and background information about the goods and digital services on offer? The next question is which language: Where do your customers come from or do you want to enter a new market? The texts need to be localised according to the target country. In addition to the selection of the right content for the respective online business, the general success factors for e-commerce also play a role in text creation. Good and appropriate content takes this into account and supports this by, for example, increasing user-friendliness, presenting service and delivery conditions in a transparent and clear manner, and establishing the price-performance ratio of the offers.

Why is it useful to have e-commerce content in different languages?

If you want to win customers from different countries for your online business, your content must be multilingual. Most customers understand English, but an international online shop in the user's mother tongue increases the sales opportunities. If you speak their language, users will immediately feel at home. It’s much easier to navigate a website in your native language. You can understand details in the product descriptions more quickly and recognise small differences between the competition. In addition, using the native language builds a greater sense of belonging and the readers gain confidence in your company and your products or digital services more easily. In short, a website in the language of the customer leads to higher sales - and that is the primary goal of content marketing in e-commerce.

How do you differentiate between translation and localisation in e-commerce?

For content in e-commerce, it is important to differentiate between pure translation and complete localisation. In exclusively translated texts, grammar and spelling in the target language are technically correct. The translation contains all important information in the desired language and readers will understand the texts. But the cultural adaptation of the content falls by the way side. Localisation is important in order to master the specific use of the language in the target country. This translates jokes and idioms and takes into account special preferences or taboo subjects as well as the special features of the culture of the country. Images may also have to be replaced and the design and colours should be adapted. We recommend localisation for high-quality products as well as for central pages of the online shop such as category pages.

Is it expensive to create content in multiple languages?

No, because greatcontent creates multilingual content as human hybrid teams, i.e. linguists supported with artificial intelligence. That helps lower the costs. In the human hybrid process, an author individually writes the first text following a detailed brief. Machine tools then quickly translate the text into any desired language. Each language version is then checked by native-speaking post-editors. They optimise the content linguistically, guarantee correct content and eliminate errors. Depending on the target market, our post-editors adapt the text to the specific locality of the respective cultural context. So, the post-editing ensures the desired standard. Ideally, the translated texts should then be optimised for search engines. This is because the search behaviour of customers differs from country to country and keywords other than the correct translation are important for search engine ranking.

What makes texts successful in e-commerce?

To create good content for your online shop or digital service, you always need a well-structured brief. This contains information on the structure of the text, the target group, the wording and writing style. In addition, it is important to choose the right keywords: What is your target audience looking for and which words are they using when searching? Once the search terms have been defined, their scope and placement in the text must be specified. A good layout is also part of the overall picture for professional content. You need the right authors to create the texts. greatcontent works with a large pool of copywriters who specialise in a wide variety of industries. It may also be worthwhile to use machine learning tools so that websites are created from a single source. We use translation memories, for example. The system uses previously used and learned expressions and idioms to adapt the text.

When to outsource content production for e-commerce

When planning content, it’s important to establish who is responsible for producing the content and whether there are enough staff with the necessary training within the team. In-house editing is fast and accurate, as the authors are already very familiar with the products or the digital offering. This simplifies the briefing and the employees can start writing the text straight away. Internal editing is particularly suitable for urgent and important topics. On the other hand, in-house content production is comparatively expensive and capacities are quickly exhausted. If a large number of new texts are required, perhaps even in several languages, outsourcing is a good solution. In this case, a good briefing and an experienced external team are the most important factors. For simple texts, you can hire less experienced and therefore cheaper authors or even process machine-generated texts.

Do you still have questions about your content strategy in e-commerce?

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