Next up - titles and descriptions. Online, product titles typically play a role in helping a shopper identify a product, but more importantly, they’re essential in driving discoverability through search.

Rather than opting for internal manufacturing language, CPGs should use the common keywords and phrases that shoppers use to find products and categories, as this will help increase how relevant a product is to a shopper’s search. CPGs should also consider the maximum number of characters that can appear on different retailers’ websites, and aim to use consistent naming conventions to make it easy for people to shop across their ranges of products.

You might choose, for instance, to first mention the brand or product name, then the sub-brand, then the flavor or variety. After that you could include the product type or a similar keyword, and finally the weight of the product or pack size.

Next: product descriptions. It’s not just down to the product title to do all the heavy lifting when it comes to driving relevance in search algorithms - product descriptions can also help in this area. As well as including keywords in the product description to drive search relevance, suppliers should look to highlight key product information and benefits, and answer common consumer questions.

Some retailers might even offer suppliers the opportunity to create more advanced product content - also known as rich media, A+ content or ‘below the fold’ content. This is content that’s designed to drive consumer engagement and sales - it can help a brand build a complete picture of their product story and benefits, and may well include videos, comparison charts and 360-degree images.

Now, it’s important to bear in mind that your content strategy should balance the opportunity this content gives you to communicate with shoppers, against its cost and how complex it can be to develop.

You’ll need to consider different retailers’ site guidelines, the cost, expertise and resources involved in execution, the ease of executing content on different retailer sites, the scalability of the content across other retailer sites and the level of engagement shoppers have when shopping with the category. Shoppers buying low-cost everyday essentials, like milk or bread, will be far less likely to engage with product content than those purchasing higher cost or luxury items.

In general, the vast majority of the eCommerce content that you create should focus on meeting the requirements of priority SKUs and retailers. It’s better to first focus on optimizing content for the products that are most popular online and then turn to other, less popular products if you have the time and resources to do so...

Product Titles & Descriptions

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