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Research Shows That Poor Product Content is Still Driving Customer Frustration

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To say that online retail has had a “good time” in the past year is a gross understatement. With the global pandemic in full force and people’s movements restricted, millions of people in multiple countries turned to the internet, not just for their essential groceries but for all the items they would otherwise be buying on the (shuttered) high street.

However, with vaccine rates rising worldwide and economies starting to open up again (albeit with the continuing complications caused by the Delta variant), there has been one constant question on retailers’ lips: will these new customers now abandon online for the high street? How much of that lovely online growth is temporary? How bad will the backslide be?

Answers range from the anxious to the bullish, but the truth is that it is still too early to tell how much of a permanent change has occurred in people’s shopping habits. However, what we do have is a prime opportunity to capture as many of those consumers as loyal, online customers of your brand as possible.

Selling online continues to have challenges. Recent research by Walnut Unlimited on behalf of Ve Global has identified some of the customer difficulties and frustrations that plague online purchases. Chief amongst these, as has long been the case, is a lack of clear information. A quarter of respondents said they’d had trouble when trying to browse for products online, while over 20% said that they had encountered confusing or missing product information. Over a third of electronics customers said they missed the buying advice that often came with in-person shopping experiences.

These are not insurmountable problems. There are new technologies to help fill the experiential gap that customers find online vs the high street. There are new and more accessible formats to get the story of your product across. And, at the centre of it all is the continuing need to have clear and consistent product information for your products, on every page they are listed. If we’re able to deliver on these fundamental aspects of the buying experience, we’re already well on our way to making a customer an online retail convert.

Digishare Publication Tracker Updates and UI Overhaul

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Here at Digishare, we’re continually looking to refine and add new functionality. We’ll be sharing regular blog posts talking about the recent changes we’ve made to Digishare, and what new features you can look forward to in the future.

Publication Tracker Updates

We’re pleased to announce a long list of improvements arriving shortly, with a number of long-requested features:

  • ASINs – ASINs will show in the Publishing Tracker
  • Comments – Comments can be left next to any product in the Tracker, to add context to their status
  • Comments Filter – Products can be filtered to show only those with or without comments
  • Filter by Multiple Statuses – Products can be filtered to show those with one or more statuses. This is ideal for identifying products that have yet to be submitted or published
  • Preview StoryBuilder – You can view the StoryBuilder preview directly from the publishing tracker

 

Digishare 3.0 UI Overhaul

Progress on Digishare 3.0 continues, with development on our UI overhaul now underway. Our aim is to take all of the great functionality we’ve created for Digishare over the past two years and present it in a clean and intuitive way. By splitting out various functions and content types, we’re hoping to decrease page load and save times by at least 50%. By speeding up these functions, we hope that it will go a long way towards helping to streamline your workflow.

We’ll be posting more in the future to keep you up to date with all the latest news, so make sure to check back regularly, or sign up for our newsletter here.

 

Bulk Action Update for Digishare

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Do More, Faster

When it comes to working with large volumes of product data, there’s always a need to complete more actions at a faster rate. That’s why we’re releasing the Bulk Actions update for Digishare.

Bulk Actions

You’re now able to select multiple approved pages for publishing on Digishare. This removes the need to publish the pages manually one-by-one, streamlining your workflow and saving you valuable time.

As a safety measure, only pages with the “Approved” status can be published in bulk. This ensures that only the content you want your customers to see goes live.

The Continuing War on Fake Reviews

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2021 will likely see the majority of China’s retail sales come from online (52.1%), a historic first for any country. Although this far outpaces almost every other state (South Korea is next nearest with 28.9%), the global pandemic has only accelerated the already-unstoppable trend of online growth.

But as many markets move towards an “e-commerce” model, they will all have to confront the rising problem of online trust and fake reviews.

This week, a new report from consumer watchdog Which? has called on Google to clamp down on businesses purchasing fake reviews. According to the report, nearly 50 had been caught participating in such schemes.

“According to its investigation, gaps in Google’s review monitoring has left customers at risk of being misled by businesses, in some cases putting them at considerable financial risk.”

A Widespread Problem

This comes almost exactly two years since Which? demanded Amazon do the same, slamming the online giant for hosting thousands of fake 5-star reviews on popular tech items. In September of last year, an investigation by The Financial Times found that many of the site’s top reviewers were receiving thousands of pounds by offering fraudulent reviews in exchange for free products.

This problem isn’t isolated to the global tech behemoths. As the importance of online rises, so will the temptation to obtain the visibility and sales that top reviews impart.

A Review Arms Race

In response to the report, Google said:

“We invest significantly in building technologies and instituting practices that help people find reliable information on Google.”

For many of the larger markets, this seems to be a problem so vast in scope that the only realistic solution is a technological one. The next few years will likely see an escalating arms race, with marketplaces rolling out more sophisticated processes to combat the innovation and imagination of the scammers.

But, as hundreds of Americans who received mysterious seed packages in the mail last year have realised, the fakers still have plenty of tricks up their sleeve.

First Features for Digishare 3.0 & Premium Content Feeds

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Here at Digishare, we’re continually looking to refine our tools and add new functionality, all with the aim of allowing you to do more, easier. Each month we’ll be sharing a short blog post talking about the changes we’ve made to Digishare in the past month, and what new features you can look forward to in the future.

Digishare 3.0 Update

The development of Digishare 3.0 continues apace, which means we can now reveal the first functionality that we’re excited to present to you on launch.

The ability to process large volumes of pages at once is a high priority for many of our clients. That’s why Digishare 3.0 will allow you to bulk-publish approved pages from the StoryBuilder Overview, rather than product by product within the editor. As these pages will have already been approved as part of the creation process, we hope this will go a long way towards streamlining our users’ workflow.

Navigating to multiple different pages to complete a single task can be frustrating and time-consuming. That’s why allowing our clients to access various tools and information within StoryBuilder is one of our core aims for Digishare 3.0. With the latest version, you will see a brief overview of where your product content has been published without having to navigate away from StoryBuilder or launch the Publishing Tracker.

Work is continuing to accelerate on the new version of our platform, so please check back next month to hear the latest news about Digishare 3.0.

Premium Content Feeds for Amazon

We’re proud to announce that we have completed the first successful test of a Premium A+ Content feed for Amazon. 

In collaboration with one of our most valuable clients, we have created a successful integration that allows a standard content feed to provide Premium Content in the correct format for Amazon platforms.

This feed integration allows partners to:

  • Flag which module to use
  • Match content to the module fields
  • Provide both desktop and mobile imagery
  • Utilise feeds designed for basic content

Having experienced this process first hand, we believe other customer feeds may also be easily adapted to include premium content. We hope to highlight our journey in a future case study, so that everyone can see how painless and efficient it can be to automatically load Premium Content onto Amazon.

 

Digishare 3.0, New Metrics and More

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Here at Digishare, we’re continually looking to refine our tools and add new functionality, all with the aim of allowing you to do more, easier. Each month we’ll be sharing a short blog post talking about the changes we’ve made to Digishare in the past month, and what new features you can look forward to in the future.

Coming Soon: Digishare 3.0

New year, new… us? While we’re always working hard to refine the Digishare platform, sometimes you just need to start the year with a whole new look.

That’s why we’re excited to announce that development of the next version of Digishare is now well underway. With this update to the platform, we’ll aim to bring you a more intuitive, user-friendly experience. We will be streamlining existing processes and reducing the need for duplication wherever possible. We’ll also be adding in extra functionality, and giving newer technologies (such as Augmented Reality) more focus.

Our goal is (as ever) to save you time. With fewer hours and resources needed on page-building tasks, we hope Digishare will give you the space you need to analyse the results of your actions and see the global impact of your product content strategy.

We’re looking forward to showing you all the first features of Digishare 3.0 at the end of Q1.

Reporting Dashboard

Speaking of analysis, we are pleased to announce the roll-out of our new reporting dashboard is complete and is available for activation for all clients who request it.

The dashboard is designed to provide easy-to-visualise data on page approval and publication metrics. Users can compare numbers from different categories and countries, and compare figures with YoY.

We’re also in the process of loading syndicator metrics from partners such as loadbee and Syndigo, allowing users to view up to 6 different metrics (where available): visits, unique visitor numbers, viewable impressions, interactions, interaction rate, and average time on the page.

We hope that, when used in combination, these metrics will allow our users to not only see what actions are being done globally, but what impact these actions are having.

Image Rights

Finally, we have been working hard to build new functionality into our system regarding images and regional usage rights. Following a request from one of our clients, we’ve made it easier for them to add and access usage right information for images uploaded to the Digishare platform. We’re able to give users clear information about which images are suitable for use in their chosen region. We’re also working towards passing this information along to syndicators and other partners, ensuring correct and consistent images globally.

If this type of functionality interests you, please talk to your Digishare account manager to find out more.