This post will take a close look at what Amazon is doing with it’s Product Questions and Answers capability, covering how they have implemented this feature on their product pages and highlight some hidden gems that drive impressive results.

How Amazon Product Questions & Answers Engages Customers

When you visit a product page on Amazon, you’ll notice that they have a preview of the product Q&A engagement right under the product title.  See how that is displayed, pointed out in the following screenshot…

That let’s the visitor know that the product question & answer capabilities and content available.  You’ll see a bit further down the page that there is a more “in your face” call to action right above the product details and specifications, where they ask the user to enter any product questions that they may have through a simple field.  See how that is displayed here….

This gives the customer the ability to ask their own specific question with the goal of removing any information barrier that may exist on their journey of purchasing the product.  The tool will autosuggest existing answers to them if the content is already available, saving them the time of needing to read through (and successfully find) the information within product descriptions, product specifications, etc.

Finally, below all the product information that the seller has made available, you can see that they have the full Customer Question & Answer functionality and content for that product available as displayed here…

This gives the customer another engagement point to ask their product question if they didn’t find it within the product information above, and also shows the current question and answer content that is available for that product.

All of these options on the product page give customers easy access to the product Q&A capabilities and content, ensuring that they can get their product questions answered and get on with the sale.

This all seems simple enough, and many of you undoubtedly have used the functionality yourself….but there are some details in the way that Amazon has implemented product questions and answers that ecommerce merchants need to recognize and learn from in order to not miss out on some great opportunities for their own sites to use product Q&A to drive new organic traffic and drive conversions to their site.

There are a couple treasures hidden in plain site with how Amazon has implemented Q&A that most people don’t recognize and they’re driving both organic traffic and conversions to Amazon’s products.   Let’s dig into the details of how Amazon has implemented this capability to get the most out of that Q&A content and engagement.

Landing Pages for Each Product Q&A Thread

The first treasure I’ll point out has a notable impact on product question and answer content getting indexed in Google (and other search engines) and growing consistent traffic from customers who are asking similar product questions on those search engines.   Let’s look closely at how Amazon publishes the Q&A content on the product page.  Take a look at the question title on the page…see here:

That question title is a link.  When you click on the link, you’ll see that it goes to a page that is a specific page designated to that specific Q&A thread…see here:

Now, let’s focus on what this does for Amazon….having a specific page for every single product Q&A thread.   What it does is allows Google to recognize the question title as anchor links to the question details page and therefor be recognized as a page that covers that question.   Google crawls to those pages, indexes those pages, and then shows them in search results when customers are asking similar product questions on Google.

See an Amazon product Q&A landing page as the second organic search result here:

You see in the above image that the second result is Amazon’s product Q&A landing pages which are  getting indexed and that is driving brand new customers to that content.  The first organic featured snippet result is an Answerbase customer, as we power product Q&A landing pages for ecommerce merchants with their own sites (the merchants can have those landing pages on a subdirectory or subdomain of their site) and we ensure those pages are optimized for search with the appropriate page title and markup on the page.   Better optimized pages will lead to better matching to what the inquiry is, and better click-through.

The visitors to these product Q&A landing pages click to see the content, see the answers to their questions, and then many purchase the product from the site that is providing the information they’re looking for.  You can see it works for Amazon’s product Q&A content, it works for our customers who use Answerbase to power these pages, and it’s important for ecommerce merchants to also support product questions & answers in this manner as well…so you can ensure that your content is available within organic results, lifting both traffic and sales on your site.

Most people engage with Amazon’s product pages and don’t ever realize that those landing pages exist….but they do, and it’s helping Amazon drive traffic and sales.

As a provider of product questions and answers, Answerbase has seen that these landing pages can significantly increase the organic traffic to a merchant’s store.  We have a case study where one of our customers increased their organic traffic by over 4x previous levels and Q&A content is now responsible for over half of the overall traffic to their site (they have consistently created GREAT content, and that is what Google is looking for).  A typical organic traffic trend to that product Q&A content looks like this:

It’s important to note that the above chart is ONLY organic traffic and ONLY traffic to those Q&A content pages.  As you continue to answer customer questions about your products, you not only help convert those customers but it builds those landing pages which start to show up in search engine results….and lead to year over year organic traffic growth to that Q&A content.

Another notable thing about the traffic coming into those pages, is we’ve seen that the average lifetime value of customers that come in through the product question and answer content is up to 2x higher than our customer’s normal Google traffic.   That speaks volumes on the intent of the users who are asking those questions on Google (and other search engines).

As a merchant you are wise to implement product questions & answers on your site in a similar manner, so that you can leverage all of the product knowledge of you and your team…and ensure that knowledge is driving new traffic and conversions.

Getting Answers from All Available Product Information

The second detail we’d like to highlight in how Amazon manages their product questions and answers functionality is uncovered when we look at the ask question field, see here:

When you start typing in your question, it will autosuggest answers….but it will look for those answers within all of the product information that is available.  That means it will look through the product description, product specifications, Q&A’s, reviews, etc…..and ensure that if the information is currently available, it’s going to be presented to the customer to read.  See an example of some results here:

This helps ensure the customer gets the answers they’re looking for and don’t have to wait for a response.  It also reduces the number of questions that need to be managed by the seller….while still being able to convert those sales.

Answerbase sees that up to 75% of the product questions answered convert to a new sale, so the ability to effectively answer the customers questions in the quickest possible way will increase your conversions and sales.

How to Put Lessons from Amazon to Work

If you don’t have a product Q&A capability on your product pages, it’s important that you get one and start to build that valuable content in order to grow your conversions and traffic.   Not all product question & answer providers are equal.   Answerbase’s product question & answer capabilities will ensure that you are able to take advantage of your content through dynamically creating new Q&A landing pages and driving conversions, so we’d happy to service you with these capabilities if your current provider is falling short with how they are managing that engagement and content.

We hope this post has been informative and encourage you to Schedule a Demo if you’re interested in hearing more about what product questions and answers can do for your ecommerce site.

The post How Amazon’s Approach to Product Questions & Answers Drives Sales appeared first on Answerbase.

When looking for that product information, the answer to their pre-sales question can be found throughout the page….typically in one of the following formats:

• Product images
• Product descriptions
• Product specifications
• Product reviews
• Product question and answer content
• Product manuals
• Product-related videos
• Product-related articles

That’s a large list of areas where they may be able to find the answer to their product question, that may be the only barrier to them converting to a sale. Seems like quite a bit to look through to get an answer to one question, doesn’t it? It’s because it is.

This is the reason why having the ability to easily search through and find product information within the product page is critical to ensuring that customers can easily find the information they’re looking for…and get on with the purchase.

This post covers how you can provide this capability to your ecommerce customers, to remove those barriers to purchase and increase your sales.

How do customers search and find product information now?

On most ecommerce websites customers don’t have the ability to search and find the product information they’re looking for….they’re forced to browse (more like “dig”) to find it.

Some ecommerce merchants make a good amount of product information available, which is great, but they expect the customer to read and browse through the available information on the page in order to find the information they’re looking for which will seal the deal.   That information can become so robust that it becomes unmanageable for a user to efficiently sift through.

Have you ever seen a lengthy product description? See this example:

What about a detailed product specs table? See this example on a product page:

And that’s not even starting on the hundreds (or sometimes thousands) of product questions and answers that have been addressed or product reviews that have been given, as well as any product documents where you can download the full product specs sheet or product manual.

It’s great that all of this information is available. What’s not great is that customers are being left with the burden of sifting through and reading all of those details just to find the specific information which will convert them from a visitor to a paying customer.

Your job as an ecommerce merchant is to make the access to that information as quick and painless as possible.

How can product page search be done better?

Let’s see how Amazon addresses this, because they’re doing a good job. Notice how Amazon provides this field before your get to the product description and more detailed product information on their pages.

They encourage the customer to ask any questions they may have about the product and Amazon will look to find answers in the following places:

• Product information
• Q&A’s
• Reviews

As you start to type in your question, it will search through all of the product information it has and auto-suggest the information to the user as seen here:

It gives you results from all of the product information sources that are available, and also allows you to filter whether you’d like to see the information from the Product Information, Customer Q&A’s, or the Customer Reviews. This ensures that wherever the information that the customer wants to see could be found…is presented to them as quickly as possible so they can get on with the sale.

Engaging customers through product questions

When customers are looking for product information, a search can typically be phrased in the form of a question and it’s a great way to engage the user in order to get them to that information. It’s a natural way for the user to see that there is a way to get the specific information they’re looking for, and engage.

You’ll notice on Amazon in their customer questions and answers section on each product page, by default they will show the most popular Q&A content underneath the ask question form as seen here:

But…as soon as the customer starts asking their specific question…they search through all the available product information regardless of where it can be found, as seen here:

Supporting product questions and answers on your ecommerce site is the easiest way to get those customers engaged and make it so they can easily find the product information they’re looking for…and move onto the sale. If the information isn’t currently available in the information you’ve already provided, it allows them to go ahead and pose that question to your team (and other customers if you’d like to enable that capability) and then that question can be addressed to help convert that sale as well as any future customers with a similar question in the future.

Answerbase (who powers product page Q&A) sees that up to 75% of the questions that are answered on product pages convert to a sale. That’s quite a lift in revenue by simply helping to ensure customers have easy access to content you’re already providing.

How can I support this on my own ecommerce product pages?

If you’re looking for a tool or an app to support a product questions and answers capability similar to Amazon’s on your ecommerce site, Answerbase powers ecommerce product Q&A and can also index your other product information including product details, product specifications, product manuals, and product reviews. If you’d like to speak with a representative about what Answerbase can do to help customers easily find product information and convert to a sale, Schedule an Answerbase Demo today.

The post Make it Easy to Find Product Information on Ecommerce Product Pages appeared first on Answerbase.

This post will explore how ecommerce retailers can most effectively display product question and answer content to get the best results on Google through proper page schema, structured data, and qualifying for getting that content displayed as rich results on Google.

What is the SEO goal for Product Q&A Content?

Potential customers are asking questions related to a product purchase every day on Google. If you’re an ecommerce merchant, your goal is to have content that fulfills that content demand and is displayed in results to drive traffic to your site and converts the sale.

Take a look at this great example of how this can be effectively done on a search result where product Q&A content results in a featured snippet result on Google.

That result is simply content that was created by the ecommerce merchant answering questions that were posted by their current visitors. The content has been published and distributed in a way that Google recognizes and in turn, other customers who are asking similar product-related questions on Google see that content, see the product that is related to the answer, and then is driven to the purchase.

What is the Value of Search Visitors to Product Q&A Content?

Ecommerce retailers see that the value of search visitors to Q&A content can notably impact their store through increased overall traffic and more valuable customers coming to their store through search.

These results show how relevant searches that match product Q&A content are, and where those potential customers are within the marketing funnel as they’re looking for product related information on Google.

Also, as you continue to answer questions from your existing visitors, it continues to grow brand new visitors to your site year over year. Here is a chart that shows only organic visitors only to Q&A content landing pages over several years.

As you continue to publish value product Q&A content, that fills the demand of thousands of inquiries every month as potential customers ask similar questions through Google and are led to that content.

How to Distribute Product Q&A Content for SEO

Online retailers with traffic will recognize as soon as they integrate a product question and answer tool into their product pages, they’ll start to receive questions about the products for them to answer. As they have their team (and sometimes other customers) post answers to the questions, then it’s a matter of distributing that content in a way that takes advantage of that content to get results in conversion and search.

Questions and Answers on the Product Page

The most obvious place to ensure effective distribution of Q&A on your site is on the product pages. This not only helps convert more visitors to paying customers but also ensures that Google can recognize that content on your page and you’ll start to see your product page coming up for queries related to that content.

See this example of a product page coming up as a result of the product question and answer content on the page as a customer asks ”Best performing Chamois for a 100 mile ride?” into Google:

Google recognizes that the product Q&A content matches a question that was asked by a previous customer on the page, and as a result the product page pulls up in the results.

There are ways of identifying structured data for Q&A content which we’ll cover below, but for your product page you’ll be using the Product Schema which doesn’t currently support identifying the specific Q&A content on the page. As product Q&A is becoming a staple on product pages we do expect that to be worked into the product page schema…but until then it’s enough to simply get your product Q&A content displaying on your product page which will get you results like mentioned above.

Product Question and Answer Landing Pages

You’ll notice when you view one of Best Buy’s product pages, that they display the most popular Q&A content on the product pages but each of the product question titles is actually a link that leads to a page dedicated to each Q&A thread.

Those landing pages get picked up by Google as they’re recognized as a page dedicated 100% to that product-related question…which leads to results like this on Google:

If this is optimized appropriately for Google and you’re ensuring quality answers are being posted to address those product questions, you’ll start to see that content showing up as featured snippets in Google’s results and many times showing the related product image along with the content.

These landing pages ensure that you have a page dedicated to ensuring each specific product query given the attention it should get, because other customers all over the world are asking similar questions on Google…and Google is looking for the content that most effectively answers the question.

It’s great to have some of that content on your product page, but when you start getting into having more than 10 Q&A pairs that have been posted per product….you’ll not want to publish all of that content on your product page to display by default. Sometimes that Q&A content gets up into the hundreds of Q&A pairs per product over time and you don’t want to lose the value of that content that you’ve created. Expanding that content onto other pages is the way to ensure all your valuable Q&A content is available for Google to crawl and display in results.

Product Q&A Schema for Google’s Rich Results

Google recognizes structured content related to product Q&A with the QAPage schema, so you want to take advantage of that for your product question and answer content when it makes sense.

The QApage schema is specifically for Q&A content pages where multiple answers can be submitted by a community of users, so it’s perfect for ecommerce merchants who want to not only answer questions themselves…but also want to get other customers who have purchased a product involved in providing answers. If appropriately executed, Google will be able to recognize the structured content on the page in order to identify the question, the suggested answers, the accepted answer, etc.

If you enable this schema for your Q&A landing pages…you can use the Google Rich Results Checker to ensure it appropriately picks up the structured data within the page. The results will look something like this if only one answer has been submitted to the question:

If more than one answer is available, Google shows a carousel of the potential answers to ensure they click into and view the answer that they find the most valuable as shown here:

The power of rich results is that it communicates to the person searching that Google has recognized that they’re asking a question…and showing within the results content that is specifically catered towards answering that question. This helps increase CTR and leads the user effectively to the answers which then drive product conversion.

How to Add Product Q&A to Your Ecommerce Store

Answerbase powers product Q&A for ecommerce merchants to ensure they can achieve the goals laid out above, and get the most out of their product question and answer content. We encourage you to Schedule a Consultation to discuss what product question and answer content can do for your store.

If you’d like to dig into the technology that powers effective product Q&A, you can also Start a Free Trial of Answerbase to review the platform and preview the tools to integrate into your storefront.

The post How to get Rich Results for Product Q&A Content on your Ecommerce Store for SEO appeared first on Answerbase.

Let’s have a look at the most popular ecommerce return reasons for a deeper understanding of how to deal with them.

• The wrong size, fit or color
• Damaged item
• Dissimilar online photo and real view (expectation VS reality)
• Personal dislike
• Changed mind
• Late delivery
• Bracketing (saving the preferred item and sending back the rest of them).

Although some of the reasons depend entirely on the buyer, more than a half could be avoided at the retailer’s side. As we see in the graphics above, 58% of returns occurred due to sizing and product photos issues. So now we will focus on how to prevent them.

5 WAYS TO REDUCE RETURNS IN ECOMMERCE

1) Help to choose the right size & share as many product details as you can.

Sizing and fitting data is a big issue here. It’s important not to stick to universal sizing tables, but provide the one needed for a particular brand. Moreover, if you get additional sizing data from the manufacturer or the product reviews, add this info to the product description. It will help your buyers to make the right choice.

Augmented reality trends could also help to provide a better experience, and not only in fashion. As an example, IKEA has already launched the AR app to help people test how their desired furniture will look inside their houses.

The decision-making process differs. You never know which little detail could become crucial for a buyer in choosing the product. It should be your top priority to ensure that all the available product data is accurate and published. Extensive product content with all the specifics needed is key to customer satisfaction.

To make your product content even stronger and identify gaps in your existing product information, integrate the Ecommerce Product Q&A into the product pages of your store. Product page Q&A ensures that each customer’s specific need is met, and reduces the likeliness of products being returned.

2) Find a balance between making attractive photos and the real image of a product

Retailers often make their own studio photos to make the products stand out from the crowd, get better SEO rankings, and impress the buyers. It’s also a great practice to make both studio and lifestyle photos. But be aware, that applying too many enhancements to a product photo makes it look far from reality. So yes, you sell the product, but later it’s resulted in returns and angry customers. Be careful here.

3) Encourage your users to share product reviews and answer product-related questions

Social proof today is fundamental for any Ecommerce business. The more reviews the product has, the more popular it becomes, helping other buyers to make the right decision. To get more reviews you can offer exclusive discounts, achievements badges, giveaways among the most active users, and so on. Along with helping your customers with their choice, unique and useful reviews content improves SEO ranking.

But reviews are still not enough, because a customer could need a specific detail, which is not mentioned there. It could also happen that a product has tons of reviews so that it’s extremely hard to search through all of them for the demanded product detail. That’s where the Q&A section takes the stage, providing customers with the exact data they want to get. Another benefit here is building trust within the desired item since the other customers are answering instead of the store who has a financial incentive.

4) Set up automated product content delivery & optimization

Retailers usually work with a variety of data sources, taking product content from a wide range of manufacturers. Each brand uses its own way to share product information, which is often incomplete within the retailer’s needs. To save time on manual work and minimize the risks of mistakes, product content syndication software could be implemented. It will automatically deliver the standardized product information from suppliers directly to your store.

5) Audit your shipments and packaging to prevent damages

If the delivery company breaks your parcel, it doesn’t matter how perfect your product and its description are. Keep track of it and if the damage happens, do your best to make the customer happy. If not, an angry buyer could leave dissatisfied reviews not only at your own store but all across the social media channels.

HIDDEN OPPORTUNITY OF A RETURNED PRODUCT

According to Digital Commerce 360, the Ecommerce return rate lays between 15%-30%, depending on the industry specifics. But after a buyer decides to give a product back, the fight for the purchase is still not over. Are you already offering an alternative product in a process or the return? Customers tend to exchange the items they bought, but only if a product returns process is easy. According to ecommerce returns statistics, customers are willing to change the purchased product into a new one. But they choose exchange rather than taking a refund only if the following options are available:

• Free shipping for an exchange
• Similar product alternatives at the store
• Another size
• Direct exchange delivery requested online
• Different color

BENEFIT OF IN-STORE RETURNS

One more successful tactic is to encourage your customers to return goods in-store. You could do it by offering more attractive conditions. Product returns statistics show that buyers who get satisfied with their returning experience at the offline store, tend to:

• Buy more goods, that were not planned
• Purchase planned items
• Take a replacement product
• Exchange due to color or size

It’s also quite a useful tip for retailers to replicate some physical store elements at their online stores. Suggested items are where to get started on this road.

KEY TAKEAWAYS FOR RETAILERS

Product returns analysis helps to optimize sales, logistics, and Ecommerce business in general. So successful retailers constantly keep track of their ecommerce return rate statistics and react with corresponding activities. You could find more surprising statistics and tips in a detailed e-book on how to minimize product returns.

Be transparent about your product returns policy. Be flexible. Be the retailer customers love to come back, again and again. And let your sales rise.

Author: Margo Sakova, Marketing Manager at Gepard

The post 5 Ways To Reduce Ecommerce Returns appeared first on Answerbase.

We’ve spoken to merchant after merchant who have seen their business start to diminish as Amazon opened up new categories of products…..and we worked with them to identify the assets that they have which will allow them to not only survive…but thrive.

This post covers how you can protect the business you have and also create a competitive edge over the bigger players…with assets you already have. To start, let’s take an inventory of those assets which will help you accomplish these goals.

What You Need to Compete

Here are the items that will give you the edge…

Product Knowledge & Expertise

If you’ve been selling products online for a sustained period of time, and better yet services that you provide around products that you sell, there is value that you’ve built in experience with serving customers to date. At this point, you should have in-depth knowledge about the products that you’re selling and able to dig in deep on topics in order to solve the pain points your customers have which make them want the products in the first place. Your experience and expertise on how to solve problems what people are searching for, products are just a way to solve those pain points. You, your sales agents, your customer service representatives….they all have in-depth knowledge about experiences and problems that your customers are experiencing which leads them to purchase a product. It’s well known that “Content is King”…..well, that knowledge and expertise is gold that fashions the crown upon that King’s head. Digest what experience and expertise you have within your business, that is a huge asset you should be taking advantage of and getting to work for you.

Great Customer Service & Responsiveness

When customers are looking at a product and have a question about how it applies to their specific product, they want to ask a question in order to get an answer before they order. On Amazon, they can do this through the product page Q&A feature, but many of those questions are answered by customers. Those customers have other jobs, other duties, and they may not get an answer in the timeframe they want it. That is a problem for them, and you have the tools to solve it.

It’s time to go back to the old fashioned values of business, in putting the customer first and making sure that they love the customer service they’re given. When you mix the product knowledge and expertise that you and your team have as your first asset, with responsive and friendly customer service that focuses on their problems and resolves them quickly…that is the recipe to get those customers to convert for you and prefer that experience. So, make sure you shower customers with ease of asking their product questions and make sure you have friendly and knowledgeable team members answering those questions quickly.

The Incentive to Do Both Well

When it comes to answering questions about specific products, Amazon’s approach is to offer a Q&A feature on their product page where they control the content and it works to their benefit…and many of the questions are answered by other customers. These customers, while creating some quality content, don’t necessarily have the incentive to do a deep dive in order to give the best responses to those product questions.

Guess who does? That’s right, YOU!

With the mix of in-depth product expertise and answering product questions well like it’s your job (because, it is in fact your job), that is a powerful combination where you can simply do it better than they can. All of the things that you need to effectively fulfill those demands are in your corner, and you have the most incentive to make sure that it’s done as best as it can be done. This is something that you have that Amazon’s way of doing things doesn’t always compete well with, and you can take advantage of it.

How to Use those Assets to Thrive

Do you have all the assets above and looking on how to capitalize on them? Good, the next part is relatively easy…and the good news is, you’re probably already doing this in some manner already, you just need to focus those efforts with the right tools.

Let’s summarize your call to action here…

Use your product expertise to service your existing customers well that increases their lifetime value and also drives new customer acquisition.

Now the obvious question. How?

We know this because at Answerbase, this is what we do and we have case studies to prove it. You need to ensure that you have Q&A calls to action and content on your product pages, and in a way that will accomplish these goals. Let’s explain how it works.

By putting Q&A on your product pages allowing your customers to ask their presales questions, respond to them with great answers, and convert those customers. Answerbase sees that up to 75% of questions answered through Answerbase turn into a paying customer. Also, anybody in the future with those same questions that ask through your site see those answers you’ve already posted, and convert as well.

But, that’s just the short term benefit…..ready for the magic of the long term benefits?

Those same question and answer pairings are valuable content that attracts brand new customers to your website through long tail search! Here’s how it works…

You answer questions with great original content based on your expertise and experience. Guess who love great original content if it’s optimized for search?

Answer, Google does! (and sure, other search engines too)

Make sure that the Q&A content from your products are published in a way that Google gobbles it up and leads users who are asking similar questions through search to your site, so they can purchase product from you. You have the expertise, you have the time, and you have the incentive to do it well…..if you get this consistent content creation working in your favor, Google will reward you with brand new traffic that is relevant to your store. How relevant?

New customers acquired through Q&A content are up to 2x more valuable that those acquired in general from organic Google search, and up to 6x more valuable than those coming from Facebook. That’s huge as you get to acquire new customers, more valuable customers, and all while you’re converting existing customers at a higher clip (as already noted above, up to 75% of customers who get their product questions answered through Answerbase turn into a sale).

Of course, the data that we’re sharing in this post is based off Answebase’s customers for merchants using Answerbase Product Page Q&A, so we encourage you to start a free trial and get your knowledge and expertise working for you today.

We hope this post has been helpful and let us know if there is anything we can assist you with in order to grow your business.

The post How SMB Ecommerce Use Their Product Expertise to Compete with Amazon, and others appeared first on Answerbase.

Product Page Q&A Integration

When you’re running an ecommerce store, most of the customer service questions that you’ll field will likely be related to the products you’re selling.  Your product details page is the most visited page on your website and the most natural for your users to engage with your business, why wouldn’t you have customer service software and content integrated seamlessly into those product pages so that your content can assist in converting sales?  It’s important that your knowledge base has APIs or widgets that allow you to integrate at least product Q&A capabilities right into your product page…see an example here:

What that will do is ensure that your the Q&A content generated from your previous customer service inquiries builds a useful knowledge base that gets distributed within your product pages and can help convert new sales.   Answerbase customers boast that up to 75% of customers who ask questions through the product page convert to a sale.   To have your customer questions being answered, but not effectively distributed to impact sales doesn’t make sense.

Duplicate Question Recognition and Management

When your customers are engaging your customer service software and knowledge base, either on the product page or through the help or knowledge base section of your website, you want to make sure that it has the ability to effectively recognize if the information they’re seeking out is already available.  The questions that the user inquires about should be compared automatically to your existing database of previous customer service inquiries and relevant matches should be presented through a predictive auto-suggest capability as the text field is being populated.

If this is done well, this should serve both your customer and your business well, since customer service questions that have already been answered should be addressed automatically with your existing content through the software.   From the customer’s standpoint, they get a  great answer to their question immediately without having to wait for a response via email or chat.

Studies show that 71% of customers prefer self-help that don’t require them to interact with a person.  Give them that option, its preferred by them and saves you time and money if done well.  Answerbase customers see that between 60-75% of questions posed by customers are answered automatically by existing Q&A content that has already been answered in the past.

SEO Friendly Landing Pages for Content

The customers who are engaging your website and asking you customer service questions are not the only people who have questions about the products you sell.  Guess who else does?   Potential customers are asking those same questions through Google and other search engines and they are ripe for purchasing the products that you sell.  This gives you a great opportunity to turn your customer service content on your knowledge base into content marketing material that can actually help you acquire new ecommerce customers!

See an example of how this works below, as a customer looking for a specific product is introduced to content from an ecommerce merchant’s knowledge base as the first organic result:

The right customer service software should have pages that are optimized for search right out of the gate, with SEO-friendly slugs, tagging, page titles, etc.   An example of an ecommerce store doing this well is Epestsupply, where they have quadrupled the organic search traffic to their site and doubled their overall traffic by growing a valuable knowledge base of content…simply responding to customer questions (self-serving plug…they use Answerbase to power that knowledge base).   This is a huge opportunity to both support your customers while also creating a new customer acquisition channel in the process.   Answerbase has studied customer results where the knowledge base content that is created simply by addressing customer questions can turn into one of their most productive channels.    What we see is that new customers acquired through customer service content has an average Lifetime Value (LTV) of up to 2x more than the overall visitors from Google, and up to 6x more than those coming from Facebook.   You can save costs on customer support while in the same breath increase your sales and conversions, now that’ something to get excited about!

Support Multiple Content Formats

Your customers will have different preferences on how to be serviced as customers, and your customer service knowledge base of information should be communicated in formats that play well to the products that you sell, generational considerations, and even down to the personal preferences of your customers (which, conveniently, will service many).   Ensure that your knowledge base of customer service content not only supports text but also allows you to post videos, images, and documents to support their informational needs.   See an example of how this can play out to most effectively service a customer’s request for information related to a product…

This will help ensure that your content addresses their specific needs with the most appropriate format(s).

Partner & Customer Community Features

This section is most relevant if you want to consider getting manufacturers, influencers, partners, service providers, or even other customers involved with creating valuable customer service content that you own which can benefit your business.   It’s not uncommon to have at least a small group of partners that you trust in that process for at least some of the content formats you support…so ensure your knowledge base software at least offers the capabilities even if you just want to test it.

A good knowledge base will not only have community features, but also allow you to identify specific groups of users and allocating special permissions to those groups.   For example, if you want to open up answering of customer service questions but only to select customers, select partners or service providers, etc.   You can get the right mix that is comfortable for your business, and ensure that your customers are showered with the best content from the best possible sources within your network.  Your ecommerce customer service software should allow your content to visually distinguish the source of the content and make that clear to end users.  See an example here on how answers from a company’s staff are specifically highlighted and pinned at the top.  See how this example distinguishes between staff answers and answers submitted by everyone else…

A good ecommerce customer service solution should have the ability to scale up and down these features as you’d need, whether you choose to open capabilities up to only a select group of influencers….or whether you’d want a full blown community with user profiles, gamification, etc.

It’s common to give customers who have purchased a product the ability to post answers to new questions about that product, but on the other side of that some ecommerce businesses prefer not to have to deal with time or cost of moderating user generated content.   There are pluses and minuses to everything, so you should weigh those out and determine what makes sense for your business…but don’t get stuck with a knowledge base that doesn’t give you the option to enable these features at any time.

We hope this post has been helpful as you consider what knowledge base and customer service software to use for your ecommerce store.   If you have any questions or would like a consultation to speak about the goals of your ecommerce site, you can Contact Us and we’ll have an ecommerce specialist help point you in the right direction.

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The Internet’s Content Deficit

Did you know that Google recognizes that about 15% of the trillions of searches done per year, don’t have sufficient content available to fulfill that demand for information?  When asked how many searches Google manages, in 2016 Google communicated that it was at least 2 trillion searches.   Since then….they’ve just communicated “Trillions”.   But let’s do some math there, let’s say they are still processing even just 2 trillion (we use “just” lightly there, and its almost certainly expanded from there as Android continued to increase its market share since then, etc.)…..with 2 trillion searches that means that over 300 billion searches per year don’t have content in place to effectively fulfill the demand.   That’s astounding, isn’t it?   It’s both astounding and a huge opportunity….that they’re capitalizing on through Google Question Hub.

Of course…this content gap and the need to fill it isn’t new…Answerbase has been helping to fill the content gaps for years through more efficiently managing ecommerce customer questions in an SEO friendly way.  But, what’s interesting about the Google Question Hub is that Google is privy to is what searches are just bubbling up to the surface where the searches are brand new….never been seen before.   That is content that isn’t yet available, because the demand for that content is just popping up.  There’s an opportunity out there for merchants who can effectively use these new tools.

This content deficit is certain to not go away, since there will always be new questions asked about brand new products, brand new services, etc…but the efficiency of filling that content gap will certainly improve…and Google’s helping to do that in a major way.

Google Question Hub Identifies Brand New Questions Needing Content

So…it still begs the question….What is Google Question Hub?

For these brand new questions that are on the cutting edge of what people are searching for….Google is providing a way for users to submit their queries for the world to know about so the content gap can be filled.   See a screenshot of how this is playing out in the regions where Google has started to collect these queries….

Then…as they’re collecting these queries Google’s Question Hub allows publishers you to see those questions that are posed through Google…where Google just doesn’t have sufficient content to present a good answer.

See some screenshots of how this is currently displaying for publishers:

There are other screenshots that show that Google will let publishers know when the questions have been asked multiple times, further supporting the demand for that content…and therefor as the recognition of that demand grows it further justifies it may be worth taking a look at.

How Google Question Hub Impacts Ecommerce Content Marketing?

The simple answer to this question is having more data to make better decisions with content strategy…in order to service customers that will purchase your products with great content they actually want.   With all the other tools that digital marketing departments and agencies use to formulate their content strategy, Google Question Hub has the potential to be an important part of that decision making.

The value is simple, you’re able to quickly identify what new questions that your current customers (or potential customers) are asking about the products that you sell and having that known demand shape what you post content about.  This is obviously very early as these questions are just bubbling up to the surface….but but as they gain some traction that becomes interesting because if it is a question that will be repeated then you have the opportunity to have a great answer of a question related to products you sell…and lead them to your online store where they can purchase from you, grow your remarketing list, grow your email marketing lists, etc.   For digital marketers who are consistently asking the question “What do we prioritize next?” when it comes to content strategy, this can help answer that question.

Google Question Hub & Answerbase

As mentioned earlier, Answerbase is helping ecommerce merchants to fill in the content gaps (and create better content for searches that do currently have results) as ecommerce merchants have a monetary incentive to provide great answers to questions that their customers ask through the Answerbase product page Q&A widget.   Those answers on average receive a 96% positive rating by customers…and those Q&A combinations are spawned into landing pages which we’ve seen increase organic traffic to their ecommerce stores year over year as it better fulfills the content demands.   Most of the time these are questions that have been asked before (for some of our customers over 60% of the questions are answered through existing content), but most of the time that content is being held/managed in emails or other support ticket systems in a way that isn’t SEO friendly…and therefor there is a deficit in the information being made accessible in a way that Google can actually use to fulfill the customer demand.

But…what Google Question Hub allows Answerbase customers to do is to use any additional resources to start addressing relevant questions that are just bubbling up to the surface from customers through Google.   Answerbase customer can post that new Q&A content through Answerbase as well, to continue to add to it’s valuable knowledge base and be automatically fed into the sitemap, which will allow them to stay on the bleeding edge when it comes to content creation to service their customers and potential customers.

If you’d like to learn more about Google Question Hub and it’s implications for ecommerce digital marketing, or how Answerbase will be utilizing this data, please Contact Us and we can schedule a call about how it can help your ecommerce content marketing strategy.

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