Last updated - July 8, 2021
eCommerce websites are made up of digital media. The audio, images, and video files that fill a website set the look of the brand, and provide visitors with decision-critical information. The most critical digital media file of an eCommerce website is the product image.
A big image that doesn’t is too slow to load, or a low quality image that doesn’t display the product properly will not do well for your conversion rates. People are quick to abandon eCommerce sites that don’t provide fast and quality media. Your website is a reflection of your business. If you don’t provide the digital goods, what does it say about your physical merchandise?
What Is Digital Media?
Digital media is a type of media content which is encoded in machine-readable formats. You can store, view, create, edit, and distribute digital content on digital devices. eCommerce websites are composed of digital media, which helps users recognize the brands, products, and services you sell on your websites.
Here are a few examples of digital media formats:
- Audio—an audio narration of a blog post, a music jingle that advertises your business, and informative podcasts that teach customers how to use your products.
- Video—an interview that introduces the team behind the brand, a promotional video that tells the story of the brand, an informative video that explains the value of the product.
- Images—photos of products, brand logo, favicon, featured images of blogs, illustrations, background images, memes, GIFs, infographics, etc.
eCommerce businesses use digital media on a daily basis, for providing customers content that informs, engages, advertises, and generates brand awareness and loyalty. The content is distributed through all relevant digital marketing channels, from the eCommerce website to social media pages and ads, and newsletter campaigns and surveys.
How to Improve Conversion with Digital Media
Let us see a few strategies on how to use digital media to improve conversions.
Image optimization
The purpose of image optimization is to maintain a high quality for images while using the smallest image size. However, when optimizing images, you need to take into account the resolution, format, and the dimension. Resizing the image without maintaining the resolution can result in a low image quality, and even pixelation.
The size of the image (and any media file) influences the speed of your website. For eCommerce websites, image size can be the difference between happy (and buying) visitors to annoyed visitors. The latter will result in cart abandonment, or even in a reputational damage if word gets out the site is slow to load. The consumers of 2019 don’t want to wait even a second.
Image optimization starts with choosing the right size and format for your website, and keeping a good balance. Start with assessing your hosting service, the current size of your website, and the expected growth. Here are some questions to get you started:
- What is the loading speed provided by the host?
- How many pages do you have?
- How much digital media?
- Do you want to add products without removing the existing line, or do you want to rotate products and product lines?
The more images your site contains, the more computing resources it’ll require. Once you assess your resources, ensure that you keep a balance between media files and your computing capacity. Prioritize quality, to ensure that you’re making the most of your resources. For example, you can use a heavy PNG file for a logo, but prefer a smaller JPG for product images.
Media optimization and personalization
An eCommerce website will contain as many digital media files as you upload into it. Some website owners and admins don’t have the time and resources to update a website on a regular basis. They use static content, which is a file that doesn’t change. Once you upload it to the website, it will stay ‘as is’, until you remove it and replace it with another file.
If you have the time and resources required for continually updating your website, you can make use of interactive media. These are typically rich media elements, which enable the use of multimedia. For example, WordPress gallery that rotates ads made of images and text, is an interactive media ad. Basically, if the media moves, then it’s interactive.
Dynamic media is updated on a regular basis. It’s usually an automated process that analyzes user behavior, and then optimizes and distributed the content accordingly. A dynamic media system can provide a personalized user experience that increases conversions. When the system is powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI), you can deliver data-driven results. The system will continue to learn the visitors, optimize the content, and displaying the products they are most likely to buy.
Automation and real-time distribution
eCommerce websites rely on media to generate sales. The bigger the eCommerce website, the more media it needs. To save time and money, eCommerce admins can make use of automation tools such as bulk-upload, bulk-edit, and bulk-distribution. Bulk features can help deliver product images faster, providing your visitors with the images that’ll help decide whether they want to buy your product or not.
Basic automation can be seen in many Digital Asset Management (DAM) systems, which provide capabilities for organizing, storing, cataloging, editing, and distributing digital assets. DAM solutions with AI provide features such as auto-tagging, which delegate tagging to the system. You create the organizational system, and the AI will analyze images and tag them accordingly. With tagging on automation, you’ll be able to reduce the time spent on media management.
Once you have automation and auto-tagging set up, you can improve your conversion rates through real-time media distribution. The AI will analyze each visitor, and then deliver the content it needs in real-time. The ability to influence the customer journey in real-time is critical for eCommerce. Real-time media distribution gives you the chance to deliver results visitors won’t want to abandon.
It’s a Wrap!
Digital media is an essential part of eCommerce. The images, videos, and audio media displayed on your site does the work of a sales representative, marketing agency, and spokesperson. They need to sell your brand, and sell your products, and ensure consumers that they’ll get good service and delivery.
The bigger your eCommerce website, the more digital media capabilities you’ll need. Maintain a balance between your computing resources and the media you upload to your size, choose the right media formats, and continuously optimize your media. The more optimized and personalized your media is, the higher rates of conversions you’ll see.
