“Business white space” for on-line content

Survey shows that brands and digital publishers are missing untapped business opportunities using solutions based on user redirection.

People love consuming digital content, be it on-line magazines, apps, videos, live streams, blogs or something else entirely. In their journey of content engagement, people enjoy discovering products and brands and often desire to buy products they find.

A recent study conducted by Norstat shows that there is a business white space for on-line content. The study showed that¹:

38% have aborted a purchase because they were redirected to another site to complete the order. In metropolitan areas it is even higher (45% in Stockholm).

54% prefer to have product information and purchase possibility at the point of discovery and within content instead of being redirected.

53% expect to be able to discover products and make purchases within content while staying on the site or app within the next five years.

Affiliate links (as well as ads) redirect readers away from the content, most often to a marketplace, to place the order. This redirection results in publishers and content makers losing their audience, and it is a missed opportunity for brands to convert readers into customers at the point of discovery.

It is today often the traffic being monetised and not the content itself, as readers are redirected to other sites or marketplaces via ads or affiliate links. As a result, the business and organisational focus is on clicks and traffic, which in the long run leads to that the content itself becomes secondary since it only has indirect impact on revenue.

Third party sites are more than happy to take content makers’ traffic and to compete for their attention with ads. However, increasing the number of steps to complete an order, providing an user experience that is not aligned with the site or apps own brand, and to load a new page (which is often unknown to the customer at the time of clicking) is likely to impact conversion negatively.

More than a third of the surveyed people find shopping links and redirections frustrating. A bad customer experience that adds friction in the most crucial moment of the on-line sales process, when the customer makes the purchase decision. Furthermore, an even larger part of the surveyed people has aborted a purchase due to being redirected to another site. All these results point to that there is a lot of room for improvements that are key to higher conversion, and to improve the experience for content makers’ readers.

Is its also notable that 58% of the surveyed people also prefer that content makers get a share of sales revenues instead of other business models such as content paid by ads and paywalls. For people under 30, as many as 65% prefer a revenue-sharing model for the on-line content they read.

”The survey validates the need and demand for Spotin’s technology. It proves that the current industry’s solutions are not meeting users’ expectations. Today’s on-line users want availability and to be able to get what they want — where and when they want it.”
Kristoffer Karlsson
CEO and Founder of Spotin

There is hope
The reasons for leveraging on-line content to drive sales are many. Engaged readers interested in the subject matter, an audience that is highly receptive to the message, and a high level of trust in the author or source of the content. Add to that a tremendous opportunity to increase the availability to buy products and to drastically improve the customer experience

With Spotin’s content commerce solution brands can increase their sales reach and sell their products directly within any on-line content, and customers can purchase products without being redirected to third-party sites. The content-commerce solution allows brands and content makers to mutually benefit from the synergy of engaging content and a seamless customer experience to increase conversion that turns readers into customers.

Content makers do more than keep visitors on their site; they also grow their audience by adding content commerce. Traffic can be increased with commercial offers, brand-collaborations (such as limited drops), or social-media campaigns with use of Spotin’s tech.

Want to know more about Spotin’s content commerce solution? Get in touch

¹ Survey carried out independently using a sample of >1000 people by Norstat. Survey subjects were 50% men and 50% women aged 18 to 65+, and geographically distributed across all of Sweden. Study by Norstat carried out on behalf of Spotin.

This article was produced by Spotin.

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