THE AMPLIENCE

BOOK OF CONTENT

IN A MOBILE

FIRST WORLD

Prologue

In a mobile-first world where shoppers have limited attention but almost

unlimited choice, the key challenge facing retailers is around shopper engagement.

At Amplience we understand that all solutions lie in delivering more effective and relevant content, and deepening customer relationships

with more engaging storytelling.

In this book, you’ll find out how Dynamic Content solves the planning, scheduling and visualization of content for retail. You’ll see how Content Audits provide a more intelligent framework for devising content strategy, and how Amplience Diagnostics help you focus on the real

issues around content production and delivery.

Retail Engagement? We have this story covered…

Content remains king, but deeper engagement is achieved with better

storytelling.

DYNAMIC CONTENT

Chapter One

AMPLIENCEDYNAMIC CONTENT

Dynamic Content provides the platform to help retailers and brands significantly boost shopper engagement in a mobile-first world. But how?

Dynamic Content is designed for retailers who understand the persuasive

power of content, but who are frustrated by the barriers in delivering that

content to customers.

More engaging customer experiences can only be created if you have the

right tools.

Dynamic Content solves the retail engagement problem by streamlining

the content production process while empowering content planners and

creative teams to deliver timely and engaging shopping experiences.

Most ecommerce and marketing teams currently plan and schedule content

across the retail calendar using spreadsheets, however Dynamic Content

features a calendar interface which allows teams to plan and schedule

campaign content directly from inside the software.

Dynamic Content

Using the calendar, you can scrub through time and drill in to dates and

events and preview content at any moment, past, future and present.

In addition, we understand the importance of being able to visualize how

content will appear in any channel, so Dynamic Content allows you to

instantly preview how content will appear on desktop, mobile or app.

What are you publishing? When do you want to publish? And where do you

want it to appear? For the first time ever, retailers and brands can realize all

aspects of their content strategy from inside one platform.

Better tools mean better storytelling.

Dynamic Content is your tool.

We’ll leave the storytelling to you.

Watch the video for more information.

AMPLIENCEDYNAMIC CONTENT

INTELLIGENT STORYTELLING

“All of our solutions are rooted in understanding the

fundamental challenges facing our customers. It is with great excitement that we bring you

Dynamic Content, the next iteration of our CMS designed specifically for

retailers and brands.”James Brooke

CEO - Amplience

“Our headless and API-first approach makes it

simple to bring sophisticated content management capability

into retail systems like ecommerce.”John Williams

CTO - Amplience

Manage your content calendar, production schedule and content delivery, all from one place and with an

easy to use, intuitive user interface.

AMPLIENCEDYNAMIC CONTENT

Plan and schedule everything from regular seasonal campaigns to sales, web site refreshes and “pop up” promotions

Schedule each “drop” of content for delivery to one channel or multiple channels simultaneously

Create once, publish anywhere: we separate the content from the presentation. This makes it easy to

deliver the same content to many channels.

AMPLIENCEDYNAMIC CONTENT

Developers define the structure of the content, content producers use our tools to create as many variations of that content as they choose

Preview what your website or app will look like at any point in the future

Chapter Two

The Art of Storytelling

Stories are what make humankind unique. We have been trading in them for a very long time.Humankind evolved in the last great Ice Age, when the rich vegetation that covered the planet fell back and great plains opened up.

To survive and thrive in this new environment we developed a cerebral cortex – the part of the brain that enables us to navigate, hunt and find. And we developed language – as a means to classify what we found and pass it on to others.

The way we passed on this knowledge was through stories. They had characters and props and action.

“We found a valley beyond the mountains full of nuts and berries and food. But we also met a very large brown creature we had never seen before. Sadly it ate Bob. We called this creature a bear. We suggest you avoid them at all costs.”

Stories were designed to help us survive and thrive in an expanding and ever changing world – to help us exploit opportunity and avoid risk and danger.

From then on, what has defined cultures, are the stories they tell and share – the myths, legends and fables designed to pass on wisdom and knowledge.

Technology and storytellingTechnology has always driven the way we tell and share our stories – from early cave paintings to the written word.

The ancient Greeks were the first to start to write things down. They used papyrus. It was hard to make and hard to write on, so the stories were short and concise – little pieces of wisdom that were captured and passed from hand to hand. They called these little messages ‘bibles’.

Seven hundred years later, when we developed the process of book binding, the most popular ‘bibles’ were spliced into The Bible and it became a book. This explains the way the Bible was written – a series of parables and vignettes.

The Art of Storytelling

Our ability to print and share material changed the way stories were told. Books were linear – the stories they contained had a beginning, a middle and an end.

Mechanization changed the game again. Popular fiction emerged in the nineteenth century – from Jane Austen to Mark Twain – and the ability to print cheap books made them accessible for working class people. Their work and lives were hard. Fiction was a reprieve. The stories were of adventures and escape.

The nineteenth century also saw the emergence of the periodical as mechanized printing presses meant newspapers and magazines could me made. Enter Charles Dickens. Stories became episodic. Each chapter was a discrete weekly tale, but with a through line to the next. Characterization became important, repetition, and pathos. The modern soap opera was born.

The twentieth century was the era of the consumption of products, stories and content. Film, movies, radio, TV were the new technologies that defined how stories were told and suddenly there was more space than content.

Stories became epic, dramatic, aspirational and, as the century progressed, often less and less grounded in reality.

Advertising and marketing followed suit.

The Participation Revolution - I don’t want to listen to your story, but you can play a part in mineAnd then The Internet changed everything again. It enabled people to actively participate, rather than just passively consume. People didn’t just lean forward, they got up and started to get involved.

The central premise of my book ‘The Participation Revolution’ is that we are in the middle of an economic and social transformation, which is shifting the onus from consumption to participation, where the successful companies and businesses are not the ones that make products and control markets, but those that make tools and platforms to facilitate and enable mass participation in those markets. 

In the twentieth century the successful companies were the ones that made and

distributed things. In the twenty-first century the successful companies are now those enabling others to participate – in markets, in the world, in other people’s lives.

Google doesn’t share information, it helps us find it. Facebook doesn’t make content, it provides us with the means to connect with others. As does Twitter, Whatsapp and Instagram. HBO and Netflix might make content but they let us decide when and where and how we experience it. And they do not stand alone. A huge ecosystem of fan sites and discussion threads has evolved around them.

Digital technology has profoundly changed how we interact with each other and the world. I really don’t want to participate in the story you want me to be in, but I’ll listen to your story if you can add to mine.

Start with the context not the contentThe successful businesses and organizations in the emerging new economy will be those that become an active part of their customers’ lives – that enable them participate and take part, to become part their stories.

To be a great story teller in the digital age you first have to understand the context in which people live: the broader social context they live in, their hopes, fears and aspirations, and the context in which they want to interact with you in any given moment.

If you are a train company it is no good telling me how you are transforming the customer experience while I am sitting on a broken down train. Or a bank telling me how friendly you are, when you just closed down my local branch. You need to have deep empathy for my life not just as a demographic or customer archetype but for what is happening for me right here, right now.

The successful brands of the twentieth century were based on aspiration – they created fantastical stories they hoped people would aspire to. The successful brands of the twenty-first century are those that actually stand for something that their customers identify with, that appears authentic and real.

Today my life is a series of interactions and moments, touch points with people and brands though a series of channels and mechanisms.

The story I will build about you will be the sum of all those parts.

The Art of Storytelling in the Digital Age The Art of Storytelling

Hibbett Sports“Agility in publishing content was a

critical requirement for Hibbett Sports, and one of the reasons Amplience stood

out from other providers. Our imagery and other content is an essential part of our ecommerce strategy, and optimizing

this collateral efficiently across all platforms is imperative. Amplience helps

us achieve this goal and, in so doing, provide a high-quality experience for our

online shoppers.”

Bill Quinn – VP, Digital Commerce

Vince Camuto“Our partnership with Amplience has been wonderful. Their team

has been responsive at every stage of the process—from evaluation to implementation to helping us make better use of the product. There is

only so much time in the day and we haven’t been able to take advantage of

everything the tool has to offer, but we’re excited to work closely with Amplience

and reap further ROI from the Retail Engagement platform.”

Diana Takach - Vice President of Ecommerce

Heritage Parts“Our new ecommerce environment was a significant undertaking for Heritage

Parts, and Snap36 and Amplience were instrumental to its success. The sheer

number of parts we sell can make it difficult for our customers, technicians and support

staff to ensure they have the right one without the ability to examine the items in detail. Amplience makes it possible for our site visitors to interact with the products as though they were physically present, which

is a tremendous benefit.”

Steven Suddarth - Ecommerce Manager

Shop Direct“

“Since deploying Amplience Dynamic Media, we’ve seen distinct

improvements in speed and agility in content sharing across our brands”

Sam Barton - Head of User Experience, Shop Direct

1-800-Contacts“We’ve been incredibly pleased with our

Amplience implementation. We went live in just four weeks and, throughout the process, were impressed with both the

company’s technology and its dedication to customer care. We’re just beginning to reap the rewards of their technology and I know the ROI will multiply in the months

ahead.”

Chris Rushton - Director, Ecommerce

Customer TalesAmplience now serve some of the largest retailers and most recognized brands in the world.

The goal of Amplience Professional Services is to provide new customers with a seamless onboarding process onto the Amplience platform, enabling them to drive maximum business value quickly.

We’re very proud of our track record, but please don’t take it from us, listen to our customers.

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Boohoo.com“The Amplience solution is unique, has given us great results, and has improved our ability to merchandise

our products.”

Rebecca Smith - Former Head of eCommerce, Boohoo

Speedo“Innovation in the sportswear market is

something customers continue to expect. We’ve looked at our online presence to see how we can enrich the experience for customers. Amplience went above

and beyond to deliver not only a fantastic product itself, but an unparalleled experience throughout the on-boarding process in both

time and manner.”

Rob Hicking - Brand Director at Speedo

Dave BrewisCMO, Amplience

Are Your Product Images Ready for

Mobile?

Often overlooked, the product ‘hero’ image is an essential element of retailing online.

When used effectively, it conveys essential, purchase-influencing information often appearing towards the end of an online customer journey. The product hero image pops up at a crucial moment in a customer’s potential conversion from browser to buyer.

However, getting product hero images right has long proven a challenge for retailers, especially on mobile channels. This should be a major cause for concern. Mobile commerce is no longer the fringe activity it was a few years ago. In fact, mobile has become the key channel for retailers as consumer behaviour and buying habits continue to change.

Mastering how product hero images appear on mobile remains elusive. A recent study by Cambridge University and Unilever found that generic pack shots, widely used for product hero images, fail to communicate basic, essential information to mobile customers. Shoppers cannot immediately find or indeed recognize the products they are looking for, and tend to scroll aimlessly and frustratingly. For the retailer, this means fewer conversions and poor sales performance across their mobile channel.

The problem is much greater than one might think. Similar-looking and similarly-packaged products fill our store shelves, and swamp our search pages. To illustrate the problem, consider a range of bottled shampoos: Within that single brand, different products will share the same basic bottle shape, and the pertinent

Are Your Product Images Ready for Mobile?

Mobile is the new front door

and the current generation

of shoppers expect product

information to be conveyed

immediately and on-demand.

Mobile Ready Hero Images

outperform pack shots both

in shopper experience and

in driving overall sales...

information which differentiates product variant generally appears only in small type on the actual packaging. Mobile shoppers rarely have the time to squint at miniscule text appearing on pack shots, or indeed the patience to manually zoom into these images.

The problem therefore is simply defined: When standard packshots are used as

hero images, critical product information is not visually conveyed across your

mobile channel.

Retailers simply cannot afford to deliver these deeply compromised shopping

experiences in a mobile-first world. Fortunately the Cambridge study presents

solutions. The solutions lie in a set of standards named ‘Mobile Ready Hero Images’.

Developed according to specific design principles, Mobile Ready Hero Images

describe a set of visual standards which are rapidly becoming the ideal thumbnail

alternative to pack shots.

Mobile Ready Hero Images (MRHI) are essentially product pack shots embellished

with clear off-pack information, conveying product weight, size or variant. When

tested side-by-side, MRHI outperform pack shots both in shopper experience and in

driving overall sales, and the case for adopting these standards are clear.

However retailers should be aware that generating MRHI can involve considerable

post-production time, due to the likely numbers of products and variants necessary.

This is further magnified when trading in international markets, where off-pack

information needs to be localized.

Amplience Dynamic Media for MRHI solves these complex production challenges

by automating their creation, delivering the required crop, zoom, brand color,

category label and pack size information required to create effective product

images for your mobile channel.

Watch the video for more information.

Creative Operations & Amplience Diagnostics

Chapter Three

For most brands, the content production process is broken.  Typically no one knows what the process is, or who owns it.  There’s often mystery around what content already exists, or how to access it.  Meanwhile brands uniformly struggle to efficiently create, share and manage content.

And what’s more, budgets are decreasing, timelines are shortening, and the volume of content and assets that are required are skyrocketing.   This is the new retail math – it’s all about the “content”. 

For brands therefore, getting a hold on their creative operations is the first step in improving the situation.

Brands need to adopt a more strategic approach to the creation of content, one that looks at the entire lifecycle – from initial brief to pushing content live. Achieving increases in variety and velocity requires content production processes which are efficient, scalable and agile.

So where to begin? The initial answer lies in understanding your current content production system - people, processes, tools and technologies – and gaining insight into the root causes of low productivity and long content production SLAs.

An Amplience Diagnostic is the first step in the journey towards creating lean, agile and scalable processes fit for today’s retail engagement challenge.

Creative Operations & Amplience Diagnostics

AMPLIENCEDIAGNOSTICS

Process Maps & Descriptions

A series of snapshots of the individual tasks in the content production process with associated issues and impact.

Time Value Map

An illustration that reveals wasted effort in the end-to-end process.

Value Stream Map

An illustration that depicts inefficiencies in the end-to-end process by highlighting task effort, queue time, re-work and errors.

Business Case

Estimates of the incremental value that can be achieved by improving productivity by introducing lean, agile processes and tools.

Implementation Improvement Plan

Proposed phases of incremental improvement that allow you to address the identified issues and scale your production process at low risk and high return.

AMPLIENCEDIAGNOSTICS

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The Method

Amplience Diagnostics are carried out on site with content production teams, conducted through a series of on-site stakeholder interviews in which team members share details of the process, along with the indvidual challenges they face. Interviews are conducted anonymously to ensure that everyone feels comfortable, so that together we can uncover obstacles as content flows through the system.

Furthermore, we conduct desk-side observation to determine how software and tools are used, and attend team meetings and stand-ups in order to develop the entire picture.

Amplience Diagnostics make use of Agile, Lean and Six Sigma tools. In summary, we analyze what is and what is not working, before delivering our report, which of course includes recommendations on how to implement agile content production processes and utilize tools which will help you achieve your strategic aims.

Regain Control

Amplience Diagnostics are designed for those retailers and brands who understand that the imperative lies in adopting a content strategy with variety and velocity at its core, but who need help and guidance in delivering it.

An Amplience Diagnostic is the first step in regaining control over content production.

Through the Lens of the Shopper: Content Audits

Chapter Four

How effective is your content? Does it tell your brand story? Does it provide the information shoppers

need in order to make purchasing decisions? Does it perform on mobile devices?

How often do you look at your content through the eyes of your customers and travel those shopper journeys?

Amplience are committed to helping our customers solve retail engagement

for a mobile-first world. True to that commitment, we now have the capability

to serve you with independent and objective analysis on how your content

performs. We are very excited to bring you Amplience Content Audits.

Content Audits analyze your retail content  through the eyes of the shopper,

and analyze your content strategy at product category level. Audits are carried

out across the mobile, desktop and app experiences. Audits typically include

scores from competing retailers, in order to facilitate comparison at category

level.

In carrying out Content Audits, we use a methodology born of a deep

understanding of today’s shopper behaviors, and a forensic understanding of

what comprises best-in-breed content.

AMPLIENCECONTENT AUDIT

BrandScores how effectively the brand

is communicated across the retailer’s site and within category

level content.

Product Information Quality

Scores the quality of the product information and the consistency

of that information across the product range.

Rich Media ExperienceScores the volume and variation of content, and the use of rich media

across the customer journey.

AccessScores the signposting of content

and the number of links.

Content is audited using 90 data points and 4 dimensions

AMPLIENCECONTENT AUDIT

How does your content score?

Content is audited across 90 data points and scored across each of the four

dimensions, quoted in percentage terms. Detailed reports carry insightful data

based on shopper experience, and summary tables at product category level

provide powerful ‘at-a-glance’ benchmarking against competitors.

A framework for improvement

The deliverable from a full Content Audit is a report which not only scores

content at category level but provides recommendations designed to improve

shopping experiences for your customers.

Many of those recommendations will be based on what competitors are doing

better across those same categories.

In retail engagement, key perspectives can only be gained by viewing your

content through the eyes of the shopper. Going forward, Content Audits

provide a framework to enable retailers to define and develop a more effective

content strategy.

Watch the video for more information.

Moral of the StoryAnd that’s it folks.

So what’s the moral of our story?

Well you’ve learned how Dynamic Content solves the management, production

and delivery of content for retail. You’ve learned how Content Audits provide a

more intelligent framework for devising content strategy. You’ve learned how

Amplience Diagnostics spotlight the real issues embedded within your current

content production process.

The moral of our story is simple: The path to better performance starts

with a clear understanding of the problem, and the cause and effect of poor

content production performance is not always obvious. We’ve built tools to

help provide clarity and direction, and engaging with us means we tackle this

problem together.

Recognize that within Amplience we look at the Retail Engagement problem

through the lenses of everyone involved: content planners, marketers,

merchandisers, producers, CTO’s and retail executives.

Know also that we see content through the eyes of the shopper. We travel those

journeys, we understand those missions, and we measure those experiences.

The Amplience team is exclusively focussed on the future of retail, and we

exist to design solutions to enable your success. Ultimately it’s your story

which matters most.

Let’s make the next chapter a big one.

Amplience Inc.Contact Us or Request a Demo