Last week I wrote about Grabble and reviewing their app spurred me on to look at other apps in the ‘content commerce’ space. In essence, content commerce is about obtaining revenue from your digital content, irrespective of the form the content comes in (e.g. blog, film, music, etc.). These are some of the content commerce examples I looked at:
The Hunt
The Hunt‘s strapline reads “Style & Shopping” and that’s exactly what you get. Very much image driven, the user can search for fashion and styling ideas. I didn’t find the app the easiest to use, and I wasn’t sure about the ‘return of investment’ I was getting on the effort I had to put in to find a piece of clothing ‘similar to this’ (see Fig. 1 below). I can see, however, that The Hunt does help users discovering new fashion items and sharing these with their friends for input.
Fig. 1 – Screenshot of an exact match for Dark Maroon Nike’s – Taken from: https://www.thehunt.com/the-hunt/dhXw8s-dark-maroon-nike%2527s
Gilt
Gilt is a member’s only community which offers products from the world’s biggest fashion and accessory brands with discounts of up to 70 percent. I can imagine that Gilt acts as a trusted style adviser in the eyes of its community members and I can therefore imagine its curated ‘top picks’ section to get a higher clickthrough rates than similar sites (see Fig. 2 below).
Fig. 2 – Screenshot of ‘Top Picks’ on Gilt – Taken from: http://www.gilt.com/
Spring
Spring is another good example of an eCommerce site with a strong curated feel about it. Spring offers an Instagram-like photo feed of products to purchase, with a curated community of brands that includes luxury labels and emerging designers. The collections displayed have been curated by influencers and editors (see Fig. 3 below). Spring has no shopping cart. After users have initially filled out credit card and shipping info, they just swipe beneath an item to buy it. And after users like an item, the relevant seller can send them push notifications.
Fig. 3 – Screenshot of collection on Spring – Taken from: https://www.shopspring.com/
Product Hunt
Product Hunt is one of my favourite places when it comes to finding out about new gadgets and technologies. The combination of a dedicated community curating the products shown based on votes and related conversations between community members works really well. I know that the good people at Product Hunt are looking to expand into non-tech areas, and it will be interesting to see if and when they’ll be able to build up a community around fashion for example.
Fig. 4 – Screenshot of ‘products’ screen on Product Hunt’s iOS app
Mumsnet
If we take the definition of content commerce at its most basic level, then I would say Mumsnet is a great example. Mumsnet is a large community and acts a go-to place for lots of mothers and mothers to be. Below example of a page where users can read trike and ride-on reviews as well as engage in ‘discussions of the day’ is a really good example of how you can combine relevant content with eCommerce (see Fig. 5 below).
Fig. 5 – Screenshot of Mumsnet product reviews page – Taken from:http://www.mumsnet.com/reviews/on-the-move/trikes-and-ride-ons
Related links for further learning:
- http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/78916-13-Innovative-Mobile-Commerce-Apps
- http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/38837.asp#multiview
- https://stacksocial.com/
- http://www.forbes.com/sites/lorikozlowski/2014/02/05/where-content-meets-commerce-apps-gadgets-and-drones-all-hand-picked-by-humans/
- http://www.ebaypartnernetworkblog.com/uk/2014/03/06/ebay-launches-collections-follow-passion/
- http://content2commerce.com/agenda/
- http://www.econtentmag.com/Articles/Resources/Defining-EContent/What-is-Content-Commerce-80914.htm
- https://branch.io/content-analytics/
- https://gigaom.com/2010/10/26/419-why-content-and-commerce-is-a-marriage-made-in-heaven/
- http://skimlinks.com/features
- https://www.shopdirect.com/
- http://www.diagonal-view.com/
As I learn ... 