Three ways content connects to commerce

The modern customer journey takes numerous twists and turns. From initial research to post-purchase engagement, shoppers are relying on content and taking more control over their journey than ever before.

So, what does this mean for merchants?

It means that they can’t just rely on digital channels to drive purchases. Consumers are taking charge of their purchasing decisions, and retailers need to be out in front of their journey by offering immersive, engaging content that informs consumers and moves them down their path to purchase.

Smart merchants have understood that this confluence of content and commerce is a valuable investment for their digital channels. Here are three prime examples of different ways retailers have optimized their customers’ journey.

Tarte – Shoppable Social

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Tarte Cosmetics is an innovator in the beauty industry, offering eco-chic, cruelty-free cosmetics and hypoallergenic, vegan skincare. Tarte sells its full line of products at leading cosmetic retailers like Sephora and Ulta. The brand has also cultivated an industry-best social media presence with more than seven million Instagram followers and a robust influencer program.

When building their cutting-edge digital commerce experience, Tarte wanted to find a way to blend their immense social media footprint with their new commerce channel. The answer? Shoppable video content.

Tarte’s most popular content – makeup tutorial videos – is social media gold. Viewers love the videos and use them to guide their product selections when it comes to pulling off the perfect look.

When Tarte rebuilt its site, it married content and commerce by building a page dedicated to these videos. Now, users can access these videos on-site, search for their favorite looks, save their favorites, and find their way to the relevant product pages in just a click.

Chicco – Guiding the Customer to What They Need

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Chicco is a renowned global expert and retailer for everything baby. Founded in Italy in 1958, the brand represents a rich legacy of product quality, innovation, and style. Beyond its sharply designed car seats and strollers, Chicco leverages its passion for knowledge to inform and guide new parents in their quest to provide the best for their children.

Chicco knew that few people face more stressful purchasing decisions than new parents. For carseats and strollers, height, weight, and age play a huge role in finding the best product. To drive more qualified web traffic, though, Chicco needed a way to draw users to their site when they were in this discovery phase of their customer journey.

To solve the issue, Chicco developed a series of guided selling tools aimed at informing visitors. Engaging graphics, content, and navigation features guide shoppers to the perfect products based on the age, height, and weight of their children. With one click, customers can view a lineup of Chicco products that match their exact needs. This is the union of content and commerce.

Pharmaca – Embodying the Modern Customer Journey

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For more than 15 years, Pharmaca has been a force for change in the world of natural health and beauty. The certified reseller employs a holistic approach to healthy living, offering a variety of products from leading brands such as Burt’s Bees, Jane Iredale, Thorne Research, Skin Authority, and many more.

Oftentimes, though, resellers like Pharmaca can struggle to attract high-quality traffic when they have to compete against the brands that they also offer. Unable to compete on branded search terms, Pharmaca needed to optimize its content strategy to grab clicks from other sources.

This is where content met commerce. Pharmaca honed in on a robust content and blog strategy aimed at searchers looking for natural health information: not just brands or products. Not only did Pharmaca gain those qualified clicks, it also established itself as a verifiable expert in its industry, offering shoppers a wide selection of brands and products for the issues they originally searched for.

As you can see, the era of eCommerce being just about the digital storefront is over. Customers are leaning on digital channels earlier and earlier in their buying journey, and the merchants that embrace content and commerce and enhance these early-funnel experiences are the ones who are finding success.