How to look sharp and sell fast online – Eebz

Our last article in MCV/DEVELOP looked at the four levers of Digital Shelf Discoverability, namely Search Engine Ranking Position (SERP), search term optimisation, SKU name representation and packshot conformity, and their importance for ensuring your game pages are optimised on retailer sites, whether for digital downloads or physical items.

In short, a clear and consistent online product representation is one of the most important discoverability aspects in the world of e-commerce. Get it wrong and your monthly sales reports won’t be quite what you were expecting.

We need to ensure products are displayed correctly on the digital shelf with consistent and compelling content to drive consumer conversions.

But what are the common issues we see on listing pages? We took a deep dive into our data to illustrate the consistency issues we routinely see across various categories (not just games).

Here are three examples we found of misrepresented products for multiple industries worldwide:

1. Low SERP triple-A titles

The search results ranking for these two triple-A titles, God of War on EB in New Zealand and Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 on Mediamarkt in Poland are 13th and 17th, respectively. The positions should be much higher for the games in question, which immediately tells us significant improvements can be made to the product listings. If your game can’t be seen, it can’t be bought.

2. Incorrect or missing pack shots

Images are responsible for some of the most common errors we see, with the examples below highlighting PS5 pack shots for Just Dance PS4, a one-month PS Plus subscription card with a 12-month image and, finally, no images at all for the SSD. All three errors are likely to sow doubts with your prospective customer and could lead to lost sales.

3. Absent or erroneous titles

Probably the most significant regular offender is your game simply having the wrong title in a store or, worse still, no title at all. In the non-games example below, we can see that it is missing the E14 bulb type, a key discoverability factor in the product name; that consumers will invariably be looking for, which could lead them to ignore your listing as a result.

Ultimately, once they discover or see your product online a potential shopper needs to understand it instantly or else the sale is lost, which means tracking SERPs, EAN, pack shots, reviews, age ratings and many other data points are vital if you want to win the digital shelf battle.

To avoid these all-too-common mistakes, your sales and marketing teams need to be in a position where they can spot errors and correct them quickly, which means having the right data at their fingertips at the right time.

In the next issue of MCV/DEVELOP we will be looking at preparing and optimising the digital shelf live throughout Black Friday and other special events.

eebz is the world’s premier product relationship management system that integrates bricks and mortar, e-commerce and digital channels. To find out more, visit www.eebz.com, email info@eebz.com or call 020 3886 0265