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Conversion Optimization in E-Commerce: 3 Examples of How Companies Improve KPIs Through Optimized Product Pages

Reading Time 7 mins | June 18, 2021 | Written by: Carina Meyer

More customers, a growing number of orders and higher volume of sales: The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a global gigantic e-commerce growth. In 2020, the global e-commerce sales increased by 24% to $4.29 trillion, a significant increase of the 17.9% growth from the previous year (digitalcommerce 360, 2021).

Evermore online shops are being created, promoting a tougher competition than ever. E-commerce executives must implement targeted measures, in order to increase the conversion rate on the product pages and to reach their profitability targets in 2021. In e-commerce, a conversion (German: Konversion) means a successful purchase.

Methods to increase conversions in your online shop

There are many ways that can help you to increase the conversion rate in your online shop. Apart from technical measures, such as user-friendly navigation, optimizing the loading time and the customer-friendly checkout, optimized product descriptions are of great importance for a higher conversion rate. According to a study of the statistical portal Statista, good and extensive product descriptions at 60% before price range (56%), the payment methods (56%), the free shipping (42%) and other criteria are good reasons to purchase from an online shop. (Statista, 2017)

Furthermore, optimized product descriptions have another advantage. They reduce the return rate of your online shop and by that, there is no additional effort and costs caused by unnecessary returns. If the return rate of the product is significantly higher than the average, the product description on the website lacked relevant information for the user.

Optimized product descriptions win over potential customers in the online shop

Since the product is not physically present during online shopping, customers require a product description that ideally contains all details, added values and benefits about this product. The goal is to inform the customers and offer them a positive impression and picture of the article. By doing so, the appropriate tone increases the trust in the online shop and in the article  itself. Product descriptions ensure relevance and the desire to purchase among the visitors of the online shop.

Automatically generated product descriptions save time and costs with the same quality

If online retailers already dispose of a database (such as PIM system) that contains all characteristics of the products, it is very useful to create the content in an automated way – even for large product ranges and in different languages. With automated product descriptions, you can optimally attract users and increase your online sales.

We present down below three companies from the e-commerce sector that have increased their conversion rate in a scalable manner:

Schäfer Shop automates more than 85,000 product descriptions.

Schäfer Shop is a leading online retailer of stationery and office supplies that has more than 250,000 customers in 10 countries. The company has been using AX Semantics’ software for a few years for generating automated content and is currently automating more than 85,000 unique product descriptions that are based on a PIM system data.

Harry Olfert Schäfershop

Larger shopping carts through better texts

Through automated content creation, Schäfer Shop achieves optimization in the form of higher productivity. Instead of manually creating 2,000 pieces of content per year, editors can now generate automated 30,000 pieces of content per year. “As we `pressed the button` for the first time for a category with around 600 content pieces and as a result, 10 minutes later 600 top pieces were online, we were astonished. All remaining skeptics were silenced,” said Harry Olfert, Head of Content Management at SSI Schäfer Shop GmbH.

The average shopping cart at Schäfer Shop has increased by 10%. This proves that a good product description is worth the money. Another great result is that instead of 26 euros for a manually written product description, Schäfer Shop has reduced its costs to only 3 euros per content piece. This means under 13% of the previous costs.

Automated Product Description Schäfershop - Example
Product description of copy paper – created with AX Semantics
Vanessa Wurster from Akku Sys

Akku Sys creates thousands of product descriptions in a short time

The Akku Sys Akkumulator- und Batterietechnik Nord GmbH is a specialist company for batteries and accumulators with over 16,000 business clients in Germany and Europe. Recently, the company started using AX Semantics for generating automated product descriptions.

The company has automated a small selection of their product range so far, with about 1,200 product descriptions. Akku Sys plans to expand the automation and internationalize its online shops in the following months.

The challenge Akku Sys faces is that the products have similar specifications. For this reason, the company requires content which can be easily adapted, when needed, and uses good data and automation to achieve this result.

Enormous time savings through automated product descriptions

Akku Sys had impressive success with content automation. “We did an A/B test with Google Optimize for a battery segment and compared the conversion rate of the manually written content with the automated one. We couldn’t determine any significant difference, which confirmed us: The automated content is indistinguishable from the handwritten content, but it saves time,” said Lisa Bleser and Vanessa Wurster from Akku Sys. The enormous time saving contributes to cost savings.

Automated Product Description Akku Sys - Example
Product description for Castrol Motoröl created with AX Semantics

1,800 online shops automated content with FACT-Finder and increased conversion rates and sales

FACT-Finder is among the top names of European e-commerce. The software company has been using machine learning for increasing their conversion rate for years. 1,800 online shops in whole Europe use FACT-Finder – among them are Douglas, Lidl and OBI and the widely known B2B retail chains, such as Berner, Kaiser+Kraft and Distrelec.

Conversion rate increase

2.3 more products per shopping cart by using the predictive baskets

FACT-Finder offers a 1:1 personalized, unique shopping experience for every visitor of the shop. Through artificial intelligence, FACT-Finder evaluates individual customer journeys in the online shop, recognizes patterns and interests – such as brands, colors, categories etc. – and personalized search results and recommendations. As a result, the customer sees exactly what he wants to see, and the online shop has an increase in the conversion rate and shopping cart items.

The Kastner company has sold on average 2.3 items more per shopping cart with the help of Predictive Baskets, and Eddie Bauer has generated 3% more sales. These results are results of individual features. Things get interesting when individual modules interact and optimize each other. This is how FACT-Finder achieves sales increases of 20-33%.

By using the right strategy and numerous tips, high-quality product descriptions can influence the behavior of the customer in the online shop. With automated content generation, you can improve the relevance and the quality of product descriptions and increase the conversion rate of your website. The great advantage is that high-quality texts can be generated quite fast and for a wide product range. Our AX Semantics software converts data in high-quality product descriptions by automating the repetitive parts of the writing process.

Sources:

digitalcommerce 360 (2021): Global online sales reach nearly $4.29 trillion in 2020 https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/article/global-ecommerce-sales/

Statista (2017): Wie wichtig sind Ihnen folgende Kriterien bei der Auswahl eines Online-Shops?, https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/20028/umfrage/kriterien-fuer-die-beliebtheit-von-favorisierten-online-shops/

Carina Meyer