Third-party channels are your ticket to reaching a massive audience ready to buy your products. This article explores effective ways to increase your online sales in third-party channels. Read on to learn more. 

Optimizing Your Product Pages for Third-Party Channels 

Third-party platform optimization is essential for you to compete in your market. Household names like Amazon and Walmart provide access to millions of intent-driven shoppers. You must optimize your product pages for third-party channel success to capitalize on this reach. 

Below are six essential tasks that will help you increase your sales through these platforms.  

1. Secure the Fundamentals of Product Content 

You know that product content is essential for brands to win the digital shelf, including on third-party channels. Content drives your revenue: a recent survey found that seven out of ten online shoppers decide not to buy products due to poor quality content or a lack of content. 

Your PDPs must get the basics of product content right to deliver the engagement, traffic, sales and profits you’re working toward. 

Meeting basic product content requirements is fundamental to increasing online sales in third-party channels. Fundamental product content includes:

• Page Status – live, not found, or missing
• Product Status – availability, Buy Box, seller type, manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP), sale price
• Content Scoring – product title, description, bullets, images, videos, documents
• Content Usage – marketing copy, images, videos, documents, ratings & reviews

Basic product content is the building block of your brand’s success on a third-party platform. Unfortunately, many brands miss this first crucial step, negatively affecting their presence on the digital shelf. 

Without basic product content, shoppers can’t find you. And if they do, the lack of content raises red flags concerning your brand and product quality, leading shoppers to look elsewhere for the goods and solutions they need. 

Secure the fundamentals of your product content. This is step one to increasing your sales in third-party channels. 

2. Deliver Enhanced Product Content 

As addressed above, your product content is essential to your success on the digital shelf. Executing basic product content is the first step in a successful content strategy, but enhanced product content is equally important in engagement, building trust and selling your products. 

Enhanced product content is an extension of fundamental product content. While basic content conveys information, enhanced content compels shoppers and provides a rich shopping experience. 

Enhanced or rich product content can include:

• Thorough product descriptions
• How-to videos and user guides
• Product comparison tables
• Warranty information
• Shipping and return information
• 3D and augmented reality (AR) product views
• Customer ratings and reviews
• 360-degree spin imagery 

Your enhanced content preemptively answers consumer questions, addresses and quells concerns, and showcases how your product is the ideal choice for the shopper. It allows users to see themselves using your product and visualize how the purchase will positively affect them. One study found that enhanced product multimedia, like videos and AR applications, persuaded shoppers to buy a product they didn’t think they needed or wanted. 

Enhanced product content will not only educate consumers about your product, but it helps them identify with your brand. Rich media connects intellectually and emotionally to help you sell more via third-party platforms. 

3. Ensure Content Consistency Across All Channels 

The growing number of online sellers can cause your content to lose focus or spin out of control. When you sell through third-party channels, that risk intensifies. Maintaining consistency across all channels and customer touchpoints will boost your legitimacy and authority and help increase your sales. 

In an omnichannel market, consumers aren’t engaging with a brand in one place. When shopping for a significant online purchase, consumers typically research at least four products and visit multiple sites, with 29% of users visiting at least four. The same research shows that 81% of consumers expect a brand’s product content experience to be similar everywhere they interact with that brand. 

Savvy consumers spend more time than ever comparing products online and evaluating PDPs on third-party sites. They will engage with your products across various platforms where you choose to sell. It’s your responsibility to ensure they receive the same content at every interaction, inspiring the confidence they need to commit to the purchase. 

4. Include Relevant Customer Reviews

Customer reviews shape your brand reputation. Ratings and reviews are the most crucial factor affecting purchase decisions, ranking above price, free shipping, brand recognition and personal recommendations from family and friends. Including relevant customer reviews on your PDPs ensures you’re providing shoppers with the social proof they demand before making an online purchase. 

The presence of reviews boosts your sales, but the absence can be devastating: 43% of consumers say too few reviews will cause them to leave a PDP. 

Implementing an effective rating and review management system will help you earn positive reviews, leading to higher success on third-party channels.

5. Meet and Maintain Third-Party Retailer Requirements 

Every trading partner has content requirements that you must meet before selling through their platform. As your business grows and your partnerships increase, you’ll find that manually keeping up with these requirements for every product, every PDP and every partner will become impossible. You need a system that empowers you to meet and maintain third-party retailer requirements for every product. 

Standardizing and validating your data ensures real-time content syndication third-party sites demand. Implement a data management system that leaves no gaps in your content so you can reach more shoppers to sell more products. 

6. Digital Shelf Analytics 

Increasing your sales across third-party channels requires you to know your sales data. You can’t improve your performance if you don’t know where you stand. Digital shelf analytics provide hard data that gives you a real-time, direct view of your performance with third-party sellers. 

This data helps your teams understand which content engages and converts and which is effective for your audience. It also highlights aspects of your PDPs that need restructuring so you can make the most of your resources. 

E-commerce analytics provide reports that deliver insights to help you grow your business. 1WorldSync provides a unique Content Quality Rating (CQR) that provides:

• Retailer-relevant functionality and priority 
• Focus on title, descriptions, enhanced content, images, videos, ratings/reviews and questions

This rating allows us to provide item-level recommendations and actionable insights that help you increase your sales. 

Selling More in Third-Party Channels 

The digital retail market extends beyond your brand’s site and into all corners of the internet. Third-party channels provide many benefits to sellers, helping you reach a wider audience and ultimately sell more products. 

Winning the digital shelf requires optimizing your third-party sales strategies. 1WorldSync has the solutions you need to increase your visibility, engagement, and sales in third-party channels. Reach out today to learn more about how we can help your brand or business take hold of market share.