The term “digital shelf” was created to describe the place and moment in time when a consumer has a digital interaction with product content. Not only did this term fall short of conjuring these ambitious goals at the outset, but organizations who think in terms of “digital shelves” limit their perspective in ways that miss huge opportunities and put their business at risk.
Problem 1. “Digital shelf” shouldn’t translate to “product detail page”
The term “digital shelf” was never intended to be synonymous with “product detail page.” Nevertheless, when you survey ecommerce teams for examples of “digital shelves” they have prioritized, inevitably you get a laundry list of category- and product detail pages at various retailers. And it’s easy to see why. A “shelf” was a simple concept borrowed from the physical sales floor. And while it was easy to understand, the analogy was a poor choice for describing all the ways in which consumer experience is shaped by digital product content.
Businesses do themselves a disservice if they use the product detail page as their sole proof point for understanding, prioritizing and measuring content quality. The problem gets worse if that measurement is based on scraping the front-end of a website without engaging that retailer in dialog. There are at least three major reasons why.
First, product attributes that a brand sends to a retailer get used in a variety of ways and contexts. Sure, they appear on the webstore. But they also appear in mobile, they’re indexed for search, they’re printed on coupons, packing slips and invoices, they’re syndicated in targeted search advertising, they power reviews platforms, they’re distributed to marketplaces. The true impact of a product attribute on customer experience can’t be fully understood, measured or prioritized by scraping the front-end of a retailer’s website.
Second, scraping product data from the front end of a retailer’s website ignores the logic that was used to create it. An obvious example is when analytics engines are not geographically aware. It doesn’t matter how many times you tweak the product detail for a snow shovel if the analytics engine is scraping from an IP address in Georgia. This may strike you as absurd, but many analytics platforms are incapable of synthesizing product data across geographical regions. That makes them worthless for a multinational beverage distributor who contracts with different bottling and distribution companies, making different products available to different regions of the country.
Geography isn’t the only example – it’s just the silliest. Websites are becoming increasingly personalized – surfacing product categories, brands and content to consumers they believe have the greatest propensity to buy. Boston-based startup VIZIT analyzes product imagery against the backdrop of a consumer persona, and then reprioritizes those images based on the likelihood they will resonate with a given target audience. That means the images I see of a product are likely different than the images seen by my 27 year-old, female neighbor.
Personalization also impacts search. In another obvious example, the same word can be used to describe different products depending on who is doing the searching. A search for “pad” can return football equipment, feminine products or office supplies depending on who’s doing the searching. An obvious question is, “Does the script scraping my product content from Walmart.com think it’s a 15 year-old high school girl in Lenexa, Kansas who likes unicorns and show choir? Or does it think it’s a 54 year-old male janitor in Revere, Massachusetts who still lives with his mother?” Retail sites increasingly resemble the dynamic content of Facebook and Instagram more than a physical storefront that can be objectively measured by brute force.
Third, in addition to the ways in which they drive consumer experience, product attributes also support the supply chain. Manufacturers, distributors and retailers use this data to power distribution. Fixating on the product title, images or feature bullets at the expense of case quantities, dimensions and product formulation could mean the retailer doesn’t know how to store, pack or ship your product. What good is an accurate product description if the product arrives at the customer’s doorstep in pieces?
When product breaks or spoils, returns and liability cost more that the effort to engage meaningfully with the buyer in the first place.
Brands put retailers in the best position to succeed when they partner with the retailer to provide the content they need rather than mindlessly scrape and analyze the product detail page.
Problem 2. “Product refresh” is marketing subterfuge.
When brands fixate on making the “digital shelf” a pristine incarnation of their product online by continuously refreshing consumer-facing data, they’re throwing away resources that could have greater return elsewhere.
As the product content space consolidates, one popular and practical marriage is that of product information management and syndication platforms. This makes sense if you consider that companies only create product content that they intend to use or distribute for some reason. So as you create product data, wouldn’t it be swell if you had visibility to the product attributes that are required by downstream stakeholders?
But make no mistake, the lions’ share of value gained by connecting content distribution to content creation is in surfacing and understanding retailer schemas, not the painstaking, incremental dollars gained by refreshing content over time. The dramatic reduction in initial time to market is worth real money in both earlier sales and category share
Is there value in refreshing marketing content after the initial product release? Sure. But it’s a shadow of the initial value created by a fast and effective launch. The endless analysis and revision of product copy is a luxury most brands can ill-afford and most retailers refuse to prioritize. For all the noise around refreshing the digital shelf in a closed-loop cycle, in most instances it’s mostly marketing hype.
Brands have enormous incentive to deliver high quality content for new products as quickly as possible, and to get it right the first time. But the content required for a new item extends well beyond anything consumers see on the digital shelf, and they’d do well to consider the end-to-end customer experience. Retailers and distributors require everything from product formulation to palletization to regulatory data to disposal guidelines. Why? Because the buyer journey doesn’t just end when the customer clicks the buy button. Retailers need to pick, pack and deliver that product quickly, profitably and safely in a way that delights the end-consumer.
While it lacks the raw sex appeal of consumer-facing “digital shelf” content, there is more value in complete and accurate operational data than there is in never-ending, incremental revisions to marketing copy.
Problem 3. Everything is digital.
If we were having lunch at a conference, and someone around the table were to suggest that we should drop the “e” from “e-commerce,” everyone around the table would nod their heads over plates of quinoa and mixed greens. “Oh yeah. Absolutely right.” But very few brands have an organizational structure, culture and priorities that reflect that.
Optimizing the “digital shelf” became just another one of those activities the digital team does. But in reality the data that appears on the digital shelf is just the tip of the iceberg floating above the water. The retailer needs all of the data required to receive, store, market, sell and deliver that product both online and in-store. And all of those activities are powered by digital technology.
Today the most successful organizations put digital at the very foundation of everything they do. Seen through this lens, literally everything is digital. It’s not a department, it’s embedded in their culture, in their operating philosophy, in their customer experience.
The metaphor of a “digital shelf” can be harmful for three reasons
First, it constrains the scope of digital customer experience to those places that can be observed online by the naked eye. Too often this means fixation on the product and category pages. Not only can that fixation waste resources, but it also shrouds the organization in language that blinds it to other, more creative and lucrative opportunities.
Second, marketing spin from vendors puts disproportionate focus on “taking control of the digital shelf” which eclipses the more important partnership discussions with the retailer. Naturally, hammer vendors want you to view the world as replete with nails. But the value of product content can only be understood with the context provided the retailer itself can provide. There’s no magic easy button – we’re talking about the everyday hard work of talking to one another. Forging real partnerships.
Third, it perpetuates a situation where digital is “something we do” rather than “something we are.” Instead of leveraging digital as a multiplier in every function and customer interaction, it defines “managing digital” as something we can neatly categorize and list in a job description. It’s the mindset of 20 years ago when CEOs hired their nephew to “manage the website.”
Perhaps it’s time for a different metaphor. Or perhaps it’s time we view the hard work of business building through a digital lens.
