Content Discovery is a measure of many sales pitch assets are discovered by shoppers.

Just because an asset is on a page doesn’t mean it’s being discovered. This happens because the page has so many other elements that are screaming for attention. Product pages are a noisy place.

The challenge for the marketer is that if key aspects of her sales pitch aren’t discovered the shopper will have an incomplete picture and those visitors rarely pull out their credit cards.

If you have been reading our 4 CHAPTERS you know our go-to conversion move is adding micro-improvements and a long-form sales pitch to product pages. If this is the first article you are reading we strongly recommend starting with our marketing secrets article.

I Was Late to the Party

I’ve spent 85% of my career trying to figure out the secret to writing content that converts shoppers. It’s how we discovered the nine truths about online shoppers.

But I made a mistake.

I spent all my time thinking about content, and not enough about content discovery rates.

This post exists to save you from making my mistake.

Explaining Content Discovery Using an Example

You want a product page that has an 8% conversion rate. So you rip the old page and build it from scratch– working on every pixel and word. The new page should must look good, engage, and convert.

After 3 weeks of backbreaking work you have a really good-looking page:

You run a test and conversions drop 2%. This is shocking and embarrassing. The marketer’s first instinct is to immediately consider the project a failure and revert to the old page.

But does the 2% conversion drop prove the new concept is a dud? Not necessarily. If visitors didn’t discover and consume key elements of the new content that was added how can you conclude the new content is the culprit? It could simply be that the new layout negatively hurt content discovery, and consequently conversions.

The drop in conversions could be a symptom, not the cause.

The worst thing you could do is throw the baby with the bath water.

Analyzing and fixing content discovery is a two-step process.

Step 1

Add content discovery trackers. Peter Drucker said, “[only] what gets measured, gets managed.” That applies to our situation.

To understand how these trackers work let’s return to the Litter Robot example.

On Litter Robot’s page, I shortlisted 5 key elements. These are things I definitely want my new visitors to see. These 5 elements work as a team to close the sale. Each team member plays a part.

Here are the 5 key elements I shortlisted on the Litter Robot PDP:

A:

At the top of the description, the brand states their cat litterbox is used by 750,000 cat parents. This is a powerful social proof element. Is this possible that mobile page visitors are blowing past without registering the number? If true it would greatly disadvantage our sales pitch. So I’d add a marker to make it stand out.

I’d update it to this (notice the Reveal button in the screenshot below):

When clicked, we’ll show this:

Now I can know if people saw the 750,000 number because it’s only revealed when clicked.

B:

There is a really good product demonstration video but how many miss it as they scroll rapidly?

We need tracking so we can count how many clicked the video play button.

C:

The Q&A section is important. This is where shoppers go to get answers to their questions. But this mobile page is long, how many actually found this element that’s revealed on scroll 7? And even when it is revealed it’s competing with product reviews.

If we had tracking for people who clicked it we’d know if the Q&A content was visible enough. If the data revealed it wasn’t very visible we could conditionally mention it higher on the page (that conditional trick is covered in Step 2).

D:

Social proof is very important:

It calms healthy skeptics because it makes clear this automated litterbox doesn’t just work in controlled settings. It also works for shoppers on the site. As evidenced by customer submitted photos of their cats using the litterbox.

But if people aren’t seeing this element and interacting with then it will not generate the conversion impact we hope to have. Again, if we had tracking for people who clicked on any of these customer-submitted photos we wouldn’t have to guess.

E:

Finally, we know reviews matter. The more reviews you have the better. This graph is a broad eCom study and shows how review counts and conversion rates are correlated:

You might think reviews are unmissable on an eCom product page. After all, online shoppers are trained to seek out reviews. How surprised would you be if I told you that in our experience (because we track this stuff) under 20% of page visitors actually scroll down to the reviews section? If you had review tracking enabled you wouldn’t have to take my word.

F:

In this Litter Robot example, the site didn’t have an LFSP so it wasn’t shortlisted as a key element. Had this been a client site you can bet your last dollar it would have had a CTA to a long-form sales pitch.

Step 2

In Step 1 we added trackers. These trackers are designed to make clear if we have a content consumption problem. If there is a content consumption problem we have two paths available.

Path 1 – Reorganize the Page

If reorganizing the page layout is possible reorganize it so key elements of the new content are given more visual prominence.

Path 2 – Add Conditional Nudges

If reorganizing the page layout isn’t feasible add conditional nudges so that if a key element is missed it’s repeated for the shopper. This is the path we typically use with client projects.

Lets describe conditional nudges by revisiting the Litter Robot example. In point A: above we talked about adding a {Reveal} button to reveal the 750,000 number:

Once tracking has been added I can set the {Reveal} button as a choreographed experience. Now if it isn’t interacted with at its original location it’ll be conditionally repeated lower on the page. This strategy greatly improves content discovery. You can learn more about this conditional targeting in this article: Choreographed Experiences.