Content and Commerce: Integrating content in the purchase journey

Content and Commerce are often seen as separate. 

On the one hand, content (marketing) is concerned with customer acquisition, at the top of the marketing funnel. Commerce on the other hand is the final step in the funnel: purchase. 

The theory goes that once a customer is in purchase mode, for example on Product Listing Pages (PLPs), we shouldn’t take the customer back to the previous steps. 

But is that so? 

In this article, we buck conventional wisdom and explore the benefits and ways in which you can weave content and commerce as part of your Magento design.

The customer journey is becoming longer and more complex

We tend to oversimplify customer journeys in our heads by implicitly imagining that customers go through their buying journey in short, linear ways. 

However, actual customer journeys are far from linear or simple. There are now more media, devices, choices and supporting sites such as comparison engines and review sites, making product research longer and more involved. 

As a result, new visitors are unlikely to buy a product the first time they visit. 

Each time they come back to your site is a touchpoint. Funny word, isn’t it? 

It means every interaction a customer has with the site: directly, via search, advertising, affiliate or any other channel.  

Touchpoints before a first purchase will vary widely depending on the sector – big-ticket items might have 8 touchpoints, while lower-value items might only need 2 touchpoints on average.

Plus, the only thing that matters is what your customers go through; what’s typical in your category. 

Below is an anonymised example. For this retailer, most purchases take between 4 and 10 touchpoints, with an average of 6. Is this more or less than for your store? Let’s find out. 

Bonus: How to find out the number of touchpoints before purchase.  

Google Analytics (GA4) is now user-centric. Therefore, it has become a lot more capable of reporting on the path to conversion – including days and touchpoints for every type of conversion path. 

The “Conversion Paths” report in GA4 will list every combination of touchpoints leading to purchases, based on the attribution model of your choice. 

By default, Google Analytics will show you conversion paths by default channel group. In this report, you can see the average number of touchpoints, as well as the average days to conversion. You can also see this data by individual conversion path, or use histograms to explore this data (like we did in the example above)  

Using Customer Journey Mapping to understand what customers need through the purchase journey. 

Customer Journey Mapping is a visual representation of the sequence of events that customers go through.

Because each customer follows a different journey, the purpose of this exercise is to represent a “typical” journey. In doing so, we specify the typical thoughts, actions and needs of customers. This in turn helps us design an experience helps customers meet their objectives.  

To do this, we need to interview customers about their typical experiences shopping and buying products like ours. Rather than just getting them through our own site, we need to enquire about the whole journey, from the moment the need for the product is triggered. 

What this journey mapping exercise above shows is that a “new homeowner” audience needs information about installation and product types whilst they’re shopping for the product. And that offering this information during the purchase journey can foster customers’ reassurance and preference.

What are the different ways to integrate Content and Commerce?

There are endless possibilities to combine content and commerce across the purchase journey. In order to make some sense of it all, you can consider the role they’re playing and at what ecommerce stage they appear. 

Homepage + Landing pages	Product Listing Page	Product Description Page
Content-led experiences to launch new brands, and collections Inform customers on how to use products	Links or widgets driving customers from product grids into guides and lookbooks.  We do this to inspire or equip the customer to make a purchase.	Informational content on how to use the product or how to choose the right attributes for it (in configurable products)

Content-led experiences from the homepage or landing pages 

Ecommerce brands can use modules on the homepage in combination with campaign landing pages to introduce new brands, collections, curated looks and other forms of editorial content. 

This approach starts with a creative idea and then uses video, photography and editorial content to bring the idea to life. The purpose of this experience is to engage customers with a collection of products in a meaningful way, building brand consideration and enabling customers to purchase. 

For example, “United by summits” by adidas is a campaign that introduces the Terrex range through stories of hiking, mountaineering, running and winter sports. Customers watch a hero video, read interviews with athletes and explore product collections through an experience that weaves content and commerce seamlessly. 

For a more informational approach to content-led experiences consider this example from The Body Shop. When shopping for face creams, it’s key that we get our skin type right. The Body Shop helpfully gives customers an overview of skin types, offering examples of best-sellers in each category. 

Guides and editorial in CLPs and PLPs

Many times, customers are buying a product for the first time. New technology from home security to electric bikes, as well as categories such as Home renovation, Gardening or Hobbies, attract many customers with product knowledge gaps.  

In traditional ecommerce design, we encourage customers to explore the catalogue as quickly as possible. To enable this, we have category menus prominently displayed, homepage banners and search functionality – all these features are designed for prompt navigation to product pages. 

This is great Ecommerce UX – customers can start browsing products quickly if they know what they want. 

But what if they don’t? 

What if they don’t know the difference between mixers and thermostatic showers? Or if they are thinking about an electric bike but it’s been 10 years since they last had a bike and they don’t know where to start? What if they’re just browsing and would prefer to explore product collections in an editorial way, rather than through technical product copy? 

Offering customers a way out of the “purchase zone” on a Product or Category Listing Page can be a fantastic way to avoid an exit rate. Instead, we engage the customer and increase their knowledge. This does two important jobs: it enables/encourages the customer to make a decision and reinforces the familiarity with the retailer, which makes purchases more likely. 

Let’s look at an example. Shopping for electric bikes, Evans kindly offers us a step back into a guide. This will take us further away from the product (in one sense), but in doing so, increases our engagement with the retailer, our ability to make a decision on what to buy and therefore, the chance we will eventually purchase from Evans. 

The best way to do this is to make the content-led experience shoppable. When we check the Electric Bike Buying Guide, besides helpful video and copy we have dynamic widgets merchandising best-selling electric bikes. This makes it super easy to navigate between products and guides, bringing online the power of physical retail experiences where browsing, learning and shopping happen seamlessly. 

Deeper product explorations, informational content and curated recommendations on the PDP 

When a customer reaches a PDP, we want them to put that item in their baskets. 

This is why we always recommend using a sticky button – wherever the customer navigates on the PDP, they can always be anchored with this call to action. 

And why we always design PDPs that immerse customers into products, allowing them to explore them from different angles – visually, technically, practically, contextually, or through stories of provenance, craft and possibility. 

In this example from Tommee Tippee for breast pumps, we use “Highlights” to explore the benefits of the product and persuade customers to buy.