Effective eCommerce content strategies for today's customer

Guiding principles for an eCommerce content strategy

When building any content strategy, I always find it helpful to start with guiding principles. 

This lays a strong foundation for how you create content, ensuring a consistent approach across your entire strategy.

You can reflect on your strategy and set your own, but here are four universal principles that I can highly recommend for pretty much any eCommerce website:

Personal

Not to be confused with the ‘personalisation’ technique, personal content refers to producing content that speaks directly to the reader.

Your content should feel like it’s made just for them. I’m talking about addressing their wants and needs, using a voice that resonates. Your content should feel personal.

• Write in a way that reflects the customer’s perspective and values.
• Use language that mirrors how your customers speak, making the experience more relatable.
• Address pain points or desires directly, showing empathy with their situation.
• Don’t be overly generic—make them feel understood by tailoring content to your audience's demographic or interests.

Valuable

Content needs to offer real, useful value. All information should help your customers better understand you and the products you sell.

Think–what does this content add to the customer’s experience? Valuable content should always educate, inform, or solve problems somehow.

• Answer fundamental questions about products and services.
• Provide insight and knowledge beyond basic product information.
• Offer solutions to common customer pain points or challenges.
• Highlight key features or benefits that differentiate your products from competitors.

Digestible

Keep it simple. The internet is a crowded space, and if your content is hard to read or overwhelming, customers will look elsewhere.

Make it easier for customers to absorb information quickly, without feeling like they’re working too hard.

• Use formatting best practices like short paragraphs, bullet points, and bold text to surface key information.
• Set minimum, maximum, and target word counts for different types of content to maintain a consistent experience.
• Consider how your website design either adds to or detracts from the digestibility of content.
• Break up dense sections with images, infographics, or videos to keep readers engaged.

Timely

Providing the right content at the right time can make all the difference.

This principle is about choosing opportune moments to present different content types to your customers, ensuring maximum impact and engagement.

• Tailor content to the customer's stage in the buying journey—blogs for early browsing, detailed product info when they’re close to purchase.
• Use time-sensitive content like promotions, seasonal updates, or limited offers to create urgency.
• Schedule content updates around key dates, such as product launches, sales events, or holidays, to align with customer interest.
• Regularly review and update content to ensure it remains relevant, reflecting current trends or customer needs.

What can you add to your eCommerce content strategy

Whether launching a new website or refining an existing one, a strong content strategy is essential for engaging your customers and driving conversions. Let’s explore practical ways to elevate your content across your website.

Products

The right product content can transform a hesitant browser into a confident buyer by answering key questions and highlighting the product's value.

Review your product descriptions

Begin with an honest, comprehensive review of your product descriptions. As the cornerstone of every PDP, they should align with your brand and speak to your audience.

If you’re just using the manufacturer’s copy, you’re not alone, but that doesn’t make it good practice. Using the same content as others will negatively affect your SEO, and generic descriptions don’t differentiate you from competitors.

You may need to rewrite descriptions with your brand voice and principles in mind.

Prioritise your information

Not all products are the same, and neither is the type of information your customers are looking for. You should prioritise what’s most valuable to your audience.

For technical products, manuals, guides, and detailed specifications should take centre stage. For visual products, high-quality images and videos may do the heavy lifting.

Organising content in a logical hierarchy ensures your customers find the right information quickly.

Call out your key USPs

Your USPs can make or break a sale, so give them the attention they deserve—don’t bury them in lengthy descriptions.

Consider breaking them out as distinct callouts across the PDP, making it easy for customers to spot and understand.

For example, if your product is made from 100% recycled materials, make that a bold, clear point. This aligns with the digestible principle—offering information in an accessible, eye-catching format.

Integrate real-life UGC and reviews

Social proof is one of the strongest forms of persuasion, so why not let your customers do some of the selling?

By integrating user-generated content (UGC), such as photos of real customers using your product, and highlighting customer reviews, you add an extra layer of authenticity.

This is especially useful for products like clothing, where seeing the product in a real-world context can drive conversions.

Link to informative articles/guides

Do you have an in-depth blog post or product review? Link to it directly from your PDP, particularly for higher-ticket items.

Long-form content, such as detailed product comparisons or reviews, provides valuable insight that can push a hesitant shopper toward purchasing.

Answer your FAQs

If customers frequently ask the same questions about a product, why not address these directly on the product page?

Whether through written FAQs or video, providing this information upfront eliminates friction and enhances the user’s trust in the product. It also saves your customer support team from answering the same queries repeatedly.

Review your product media

Product images are often the deciding factor in an online purchase. Review your current visuals—are they of the highest quality? Do they showcase the product from different angles?

Consider adding 360° views, videos, or zoomable images to give customers a more detailed look. Investing in high-quality visuals is one of the quickest ways to elevate your product page.

Blogs

A strong blog strategy can drive traffic, build trust, and offer your customers a deeper insight into target products.

Blogs aren’t just about writing for the sake of content—they should inform, engage, and add genuine value to your customer’s journey.

Use search data to answer real-life questions

Leverage tools like Semrush or Ahrefs to conduct keyword research around real customer questions. This data can help you uncover what potential buyers are asking, allowing you to create content tailored to their needs.

By focusing on the most searched queries, you’ll address key customer pain points while improving your SEO performance.

Deep dives and reviews, linked to products

Some products—whether they’re technical, high-ticket items, or simply more complex—can’t rely solely on short product descriptions to win over customers. In these cases, consider creating detailed product deep dives.

Explore the product’s unique selling points (USPs) and link these blog posts directly to the corresponding product pages. This gives customers more content to understand the product, helping them make an informed decision.

Humanise your blog content

Adding a human touch to your blog content is an underrated but powerful technique. Have members of your team write blog posts under their names. You foster a stronger connection with your audience by showing the faces and voices behind the business.

It’s a small change, but personalising the author of your content makes your brand feel more relatable and approachable. You could also highlight employee expertise, and build trust with readers.

Create content clusters/pillars

Organise your blog content into content clusters or pillars that guide your strategy. Create consistent blog types each month, such as:

• ‘Company insights’
• ‘Product reviews’
• ‘Brand features’
• ‘Industry trends’

This structured approach not only ensures a well-rounded blog offering but also builds consistency, which can be repurposed across other channels like email marketing and social media.

Build an email marketing strategy around your content

Once your content clusters are in place, you can integrate them into a broader email marketing strategy.

Each new blog post or content type becomes part of your monthly email campaigns, helping to engage your audience and drive traffic back to your site.

Repurpose content for social media

Don’t let your blog posts live in isolation. Repurpose them into bite-sized, snappy content for your social media channels.

Whether it’s an excerpt, quote, or a quick summary, social media allows you to keep content top-of-mind for your audience, extending the reach of your blogs.

Pages

Core pages are the backbone of your website’s content, offering visitors key information about your brand, policies, and values. Optimising these pages not only builds trust but also enhances the customer experience.

Build a content hub around advice and guidance

Create a dedicated hub of content that offers advice, guidance, and insights into your products or broader themes relevant to your audience. A great example of this is our client Run and Become, who offer comprehensive running advice.

A well-executed content hub not only helps existing customers make informed purchasing decisions but also attracts new users searching for relevant information. This positions your brand as an authority in your field, helping to build long-term trust.

Tell your brand’s story

Today’s consumers want to know who they’re buying from and what your brand stands for. Make sure you tell your story through key pages like your "About Us" section or, if you have physical stores, a showcase of each location and the staff who work there.

Sharing your brand’s journey and values connects you with customers on a personal level and helps to humanise your business.

Highlight your sustainability efforts

If your brand is committed to sustainability, communicate this clearly on your website. Create content that outlines your sustainability measures, policies, and any third-party certifications or partnerships that support your initiatives.

Transparency here is key—by showcasing your efforts, you build trust and attract eco-conscious customers who value businesses that care about their impact.

Clear and accessible policies

Essential information like return policies, shipping details, and terms of service should be easy to find and written in a clear, accessible format. These pages should be accessible from key areas like the footer or a customer service hub, ensuring customers can quickly find the information they need.

Providing easy access to these details helps reduce friction in the buying process and shows that you’re transparent and customer-centric.

SEO

Google has recently made key updates to its search algorithm with a greater focus on valuable and relevant content as part of its search algorithm.

The following techniques can help optimise your website and give it a better chance of ranking for your target keywords.

Content optimisation for search

Make sure your product descriptions, blog posts, and core pages are aligned with the search terms your audience is using. Again, tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs can help you identify relevant keywords.

Incorporating these keywords naturally into your content improves your chances of ranking higher in search engine results, making it easier for potential customers to discover your products and services.

The process of Keyword Mapping can be effective here. This involves you mapping your different products, listings pages, core pages and blog posts to specific, individual keywords to focus your optimisation efforts.

Use structured data (Schema)

Schema markup helps search engines better understand your content, allowing them to display rich snippets—like product ratings or FAQs—in search results.

By implementing structured data, you not only improve your site’s SEO but also enhance how your content appears on search engine results pages (SERPs), increasing the likelihood of attracting clicks.

Optimise meta titles and descriptions

Every page on your website should have an optimised meta title and description.

While no longer a direct ranking factor, these elements are often the first thing users see on a SERP, so they should be compelling and concise.

Crafting clear, keyword-rich meta tags and titles can greatly improve your click-through rates and ensure more traffic lands on your website.

Build an internal linking structure

Creating a strong internal linking structure boosts SEO and helps guide users through your website seamlessly. Link related products, blog posts, and core pages to each other to keep users engaged and signal the importance of your content to search engines.

This strategy improves site navigation and encourages visitors to explore further all while enhancing your site's SEO health.

Audit your content regularly

SEO isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it practice. Regularly reviewing and updating your content ensures it stays relevant to current search trends and remains fully optimised for search engines.

Performing content audits helps you spot outdated information, identify new keyword opportunities, and make necessary updates to maintain or improve your rankings.