The power of curation in eCommerce
Struggling to stand out in a saturated marketplace? Curation could be the answer. Learn why in our article.
We live in a golden age of eCommerce. It's easier than ever to set up shop online and sell your goods. But that comes at a cost. With so many brands clamouring for attention, it's increasingly hard to stand out.
It's a problem that faces many startups. How do you convince shoppers to buy
your coat hangers and not, well, anyone else's?
Curation could be the answer. It's an approach to marketing and inventory management that, when done well, can reap real rewards.
But before we make the case for the power of curation, we need to explore its opposite: aggregation.
Why aggregation rarely works
Aggregation is where an eCommerce brand aggregates as many SKUs as possible from as many different sources.
It centres on the so-called "endless aisle", giving customers the ability to buy pretty much anything. eCommerce brands that adopt an aggregation strategy are doing so in the hope that they'll create an Amazon-like horn of plenty with minimal effort.
The focus is on speed and scale rather than expertise. Your job as an aggregator is to scrape as many products and product descriptions from as many sources as you can find. You then spotlight the products that are doing well on your landing page.
In the aggregation model, product descriptions tend to be on the scant side. Instead, detail is provided by reviews. You're essentially outsourcing product descriptions to your customers.
The appeal of aggregation is simple. By offering everything, you cast your net wide and catch more customers. But there's one big reason why it rarely works.
The answer is Amazon. Amazon has monopolised the market. Even a medium-sized business can't compete with it – let alone a startup. Compared to Amazon, your endless aisle is going to appear… well, endful.
Thankfully, help is at hand in the form of curation: a strategy that puts thoughtfulness front and centre and boosts customer confidence in you and your products.
The power of curation
Let's say you want to buy a drill bit. You could go to your local hardware store or you could go to Amazon or another online aggregator. The difference is one of expertise.
The product pages for drill bits on Amazon aren't written by hardware geeks. If you're unsure whether this drill bit is the right one for the job in hand, you're probably going to have to scour the customer reviews and do some extra Googling.
At the hardware store, by comparison, the products on offer are curated. The store isn't a jumble of drill bits, onesies, Easter eggs, books… What you get is hardware – and a person behind the desk who knows their stuff.
Translate this into eCommerce and you can see the appeal. By carefully selecting your products and ensuring that each one has a clear, informative product description, you're demonstrating that your focus is on the customer's needs.
This means that the customer is confident you know your onions and they'll get the product they need. In turn, this means they're more likely to come back for more.
That's the philosophy: but how's it done in practice?
How to curate
To curate your eCommerce brand, you need to source your data, content and products only from authoritative sources.
You don't need every nine-volt adaptor in existence. You pick a few and make the differences between them super-clear.
The purpose of curation is to inform before you sell. That way, you're not relying on the wisdom of your customers' reviews or on the lazy, inaccurate, even AI-generated product descriptions that you've scraped from other sites.
Helping the customer out
Sometimes, an online shopper wants to browse. But too often, online shopping can feel like a trip to a Moroccan souk with salespeople jostling you at every turn.
You want a black cashmere scarf. But
which one? There are literally thousands to choose from.
eCommerce brands that adopt a curation strategy are helping the customer out. Once they've found you, they trust you. Sure, they'll still click around other sites looking for a better deal – but they know that you have a taste and judgment that reflects their own.
Curation, then, is a way of making the online shopping experience less overwhelming without making it underwhelming. It's the company as connoisseur. Aggregation, on the other hand, is the company as hoarder.
Why is curation on trend?
Trends come and go – but it looks like curation could be here to stay. Why? Because the online marketplace is saturated and people need guidance.
In the
words of snack expert Andrea Hernández:
"To me, the curation approach is about removing friction around the discovery process… It's also why you see brands like Pepsi trying their hand at direct-to-consumer retail by bundling their products into kits based on utility, like they’ve done with Pantry Shop."
This brings us to our next point. Curation isn't just about the online endless aisle. It can also be about physical presentation – kits, boxes, bundles and more.
Selection boxes can make for great gifts. They're a quick win for the giver and potentially less likely to end up under the recipient's bed.
Giving customers the option to create product bundles can also be a great way to keep them onside and engaged.
Then there's curation on your website or in your marketing emails. A bookseller, for instance, could highlight staff picks. This shows your passion for what you're selling – the opposite of the aggregatory approach.
Conclusion
Making your mark in a saturated marketplace is no easy task. But careful curation can show passion, judgment and taste – all qualities that have the potential to keep customers onside.
Gift boxes, bundles, staff recommendations – all give you an edge that industry giants like Amazon don't have. And at a time when standing out from the crowd is harder than ever, it's surely worth a shot.
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