Before 2020, a do-it-yourself staircase kit valued at over $3,000 may have seemed like an unlikely item to buy online.
Post-2020, they’re selling routinely, according to Catsy co-Founder Jamie Lipitz.
Part of that shift can be attributed to the many buyers who were stuck at home last year in search of DIY home projects to occupy their time. The other driving factor, Lipitz said, is Catsy’s product content platform.
When the pandemic called for retailers to temporarily close their physical locations, a staircase kit manufacturer turned to Catsy to package their products for an online store. Accurate product images, descriptions, reviews and videos of their staircase kit followed in an effort to build buyer confidence for a product that traditionally rarely sold online.
“This rich and compelling product content is what drives conversions and revenues,” Lipitz said.
Catsy’s product presentation plan worked, and the manufacturing company saw instant sales conversions.
As 2020 unfolded, more and more companies sought out Catsy’s platform to quickly get their products presentable for an online audience and to update product information across selling channels.
Lipitz shared how Catsy adjusted to this surge in new users and how last year’s events have impacted e-commerce moving forward.
INDUSTRY INSIGHTS:
What major e-commerce trends was Catsy addressing prior to the pandemic and how did this shift as more shoppers turned online?
Lipitz: Catsy was helping companies drive revenue without extra workload by leveraging product content for e-commerce. The need for e-commerce has been increasing as has the importance around quality buying experiences. When a customer goes online to look up a product, they want to see strong titles, descriptions, benefits and features of the product, plus product images, videos and lifestyle images. This content is what drives conversions and revenue.
Prior to the pandemic, we were preparing to make this an easy process to create, manage and update content across several selling platforms. During the pandemic, this demand for compelling content took a new level of urgency — as did the need to keep content updated across selling channels. As COVID-19 drove more shoppers online, the thirst and need for this content to drive revenue increased, as did the need to reduce time-to-market. Companies wanted to onboard more and more content quickly to serve customers online.
What product adjustments did your team make to accommodate for the surge in new Catsy users?
The first thing we did was build an in-app, video-based training to onboard our new users and allow them to navigate it at their own pace. Then we added in-app support options so that users could contact us directly within the app. We also introduced free trials, proof of concepts and tutorials to help interested clients learn the platform through a hands-on experience which ultimately helped them get up and running faster.
On the technical side of our platform, we added capacity to our cloud stack to address database growth and improved our processing engine and export engine with more job-based asynchronous processing. The Catsy platform was originally built for companies with large product portfolios, so we could always handle large volumes, but adding synchronous processing allowed us to scale our services.
What did your team learn while executing these changes?
Our engineers learned how to use cloud resources to operate in a cluster-based approach and how to use asynchronous processing. We also learned how to get more organized with our day-to-day work while our team was expanding, which included the implementation of project plans and short daily status and progress calls. These helped our team sort through priority issues and platform updates.
What permanent changes to e-commerce do you think the coronavirus pandemic caused? Will any fade away?
Ahead of 2020, many businesses were already planning their digital transformations, but when the pandemic hit, it created a new sense of urgency around plans already in place. This won’t fade away. What will fade away is our mental distinction that separates online shopping business models from retail location models. Instead, we think the omnichannel shopping experience will become the new, universal retail business model.
For e-commerce, next is going to be omnichannel growth and nailing the buyers’ online experience as they interact with a product page.”
What do you think is next for e-commerce, and how are Catsy engineers preparing for it?
For e-commerce, next is going to be omnichannel growth and nailing the buyers’ online experience as they interact with a product page. Unlike the physical world, there is no real person selling any given product. Instead, it is the rich content, videos, product titles, descriptions, features and other engineering data selling the products. Our goal is to help companies deliver these robust and compelling experiences so the digital shelf that e-commerce is continues to be profitable.
We are now also supporting international customers in Europe, Australia and Latin America with our support for localization.
The last thing we think will be big for e-commerce is a seamless workflow. Right now there are tools for online e-commerce and another set of tools for data synchronization for offline. We see these two worlds coming together and we plan on delivering on this.
