So much of our shopping today is done digitally, so the value that is offered by personal interactions in-store with staff needs to be delivered in other ways.  It’s why personalisation, detailed and updated product content, accessibility across all touchpoints and channels, and effortless navigation is so important with online shopping – and why it’s valued so highly by customers.

At first glance, it can seem daunting to meet these requirements. But with five steps, eCommerce retailers can improve the customer experience they offer, and put themselves in the driving seat to boost loyalty and encourage growth for the future.

  • Evolve legacy content management systems

Fear of the unknown can hold a company back, and that’s particularly true when it comes to upgrading technology. All too often, organisations hang on to their legacy solutions, either because of constrained budgets, or due to concerns about the operational impact. Unfortunately, this means being stuck with outdated platforms including traditional content management systems (CMS).  With their rigid framework, it can be difficult to know where the most impactful content, including web pages, page templates and plug-ins are hosted, and who controls it.

Instead of trying to pinpoint content using the familiar monolith platform, retailers and brands could opt for an API-first, headless CMS. Headless simply means that the backend functionality is separated from the customisable layers at the frontend. While developers can work on standardised components, marketing departments are free to create web page content quickly and easily across multiple channels and touchpoints that will delight customers, without any of the complexities of writing code.

  • Be more agile to work smarter

Working in a silo is never beneficial, and when it comes to content delivery, it can slow down and unnecessarily complicate the process. While marketing and development teams can and should utilise different tools, retailers and brands need to guard against any bottlenecks that can occur in the development workflow. This just results in topical content being delayed while web pages load too slowly, and the lead times for minor content updates are unnecessarily long with the need for approval from multiple stakeholders.

Instead, retailers can opt for an agile CMS which will allow teams to work in harmony on a single platform. This will enable updates to be logged in real time and create a more agile workflow for content creation, reviewing and publication.  Good CMS platforms will include scheduling and previewing features and accommodate engagement from all relevant stakeholders, making processes faster and more productive.

  • Make your brand consistent

Customers are discerning when it comes to brands. They want to see brand identity clearly visible across every channel and touchpoint they interact with. To maintain a consistent and seamless journey between platforms is much easier if retailers move away from cumbersome CMS’ that serve only website content. A modern CMS will allow huge volumes of content variations to be stored, allowing marketers to easily distribute consistent content across many different contexts and channels. This gives team the opportunity to ‘create once, publish everywhere.’

  • Optimising for conversion

Rich and inspiring content encourages customers to dwell on retailers’ channels, pass on recommendations and convert from browsing into sales. Across landing pages, product pages and video content, the key to ensuring that digital channels work hard and deliver is rich content. With the right tool, marketing teams can create multiple different content variants from a single master asset, adapting and scaling for smartphone screens and using shoppable media that will drive customers to make purchases.

  • Be adaptable so you can scale to meet changing needs

Now more than ever, retailers need to be agile and adaptable. If a marketing or merchandising team is unable to respond quickly to market or business changes with fresh and topical content, it is in danger of alienating customers. Simple templates and linear customer journeys no longer suffice, and the distribution of a brand’s content needs to be everywhere – from websites to mobile, on apps and in social channels – and it needs to be delivered on-demand and fully optimised.

By choosing to remain wedded to their existing legacy CMS, retailers and brands are missing out on cutting-edge tools and solutions that a more modern architecture could deliver easily. Following the five steps above and migrating to an API-first, headless CMS will create an innovative foundation which will scale to support businesses as they grow and allow for the development of a  customer-centric shopping experience.

Beth Norton, Director of Content Marketing at Amplience.