How to Increase Conversions with DAM for BigCommerce
- BigCommerce, like any other eCommerce platform, is largely driven by high-quality digital assets and it's important to ensure that you can manage these assets effectively.
- The right DAM for BigCommerce can increase conversions through optimized digital asset management.
- The key tools in DAM solutions include a single source of truth library, advanced search capabilities, direct API with BigCommerce, re-sizing & re-naming in BigCommerce format, and metadata management features.
In this Article
Digital Asset Management is crucial for eCommerce businesses and particularly comes in handy when managing assets for stores powered by eCommerce platforms.
For purposes of this post, we narrow it to BigCommerce, a robust eCommerce platform that offers merchants a wide range of functionalities to manage their online stores. However, when it comes to managing and organizing digital assets such as images and videos, BigCommerce, like all other platforms, can be quite challenging. How can DAM help?
One of the most significant benefits of DAM for BigCommerce is the ability to easily manage and organize large volumes of digital assets. With a DAM system, merchants can quickly search and access files, view usage rights, and easily distribute assets across multiple channels. This not only saves time but also helps ensure brand consistency across all customer touchpoints.
Another unique benefit of DAM for BigCommerce is the ability to leverage AI-powered features such as auto-tagging, auto-cropping, and auto-formatting to optimize images and other digital assets for different channels and devices. This can help merchants improve their stores’ load times.
The outcome is increased conversions. Let’s find out how this is achieved.
| In this article you'll learn: | |||
|---|---|---|---|
What is Bigcommerce: An overview
BigCommerce is an all-in-one eCommerce platform that helps businesses create and manage their online stores. It is a cloud-based software that enables merchants to create custom storefronts and manage their stores from anywhere. With BigCommerce, users can design their storefronts with a drag-and-drop builder, customize product pages and checkout processes, and manage their inventory and orders. Additionally, it offers integration with popular payment gateways and third-party apps, giving merchants the ability to scale and manage their businesses in one place. BigCommerce also provides users with robust analytics and reporting capabilities to understand their store performance, as well as marketing and SEO tools to help drive traffic to their stores. In summary, BigCommerce is a powerful eCommerce platform that provides merchants with a suite of tools to help them create and manage robust online stores.
If you use BigCommerce, then integrating DAM into your store (s) is one of the most strategic steps you can ever take, and it will have a great impact on how you manage digital assets.
What is DAM for BigCommerce?
DAM for BigCommerce is a solution that allows businesses to manage their digital assets, including images, videos, audio files, and other multimedia content, directly from a centralized platform. This integration helps eCommerce businesses streamline their content management process and improve the overall customer experience.
With DAM for BigCommerce, businesses can easily upload and manage their digital assets, organize them in a centralized location, and access them anytime, anywhere. They can also add metadata to their digital assets, such as tags and descriptions, to make them more searchable and accessible to their target audience. It is a valuable solution that can help eCommerce businesses manage their digital assets more efficiently and effectively. By streamlining their content management process, businesses can focus on growing their online presence and delivering a better customer experience.
How Digital Asset Management Platforms are Integrated with BigCommerce
The best way to connect a DAM platform is through BigCommerce API integration. This then allows the transfer of data between DAM and BigCommerce in a seamless way.
The API endpoint retrieves digital assets from DAM and adds them to the store. The API allows for the automatic syncing of assets, ensuring that any updates or changes made to the assets in DAM are reflected in real-time on the store.
The first step is to choose a DAM solution that provides a direct API with BigCommerce. You can then use the provided API to map your digital assets to corresponding products in the BigCommerce store and set up automatic syncing.
Benefits of using DAM for managing product images, videos, and other multimedia assets:
- Improved efficiency: DAM makes it possible to streamline asset management processes by centralizing all digital assets in one place. Users don’t have to waste time searching for assets in different locations.
- Consistency: All teams have access to the same high-quality assets and can easily find and use them.
- Increased control: DAM simplifies the control of who has access to which assets and how they are used. This is particularly important for businesses with multiple users both inside and outside, who need access to the same assets for different uses.
- Faster time-to-market: DAM automates tasks such as file organization, version control, and distribution, reducing the time and effort required for manual management. This allows businesses to get their products to market faster. This is particularly important for businesses that need to launch products quickly to take advantage of trends and market opportunities.
- Improved collaboration: DAM facilitates collaboration between teams by allowing them to access and work on the same assets simultaneously. This promotes teamwork, improves productivity, and reduces duplication of effort.
Best Practices for Using Digital Assets to Increase Conversions
There is no doubt that a good DAM system provides all the necessary tools to simplify digital asset management. However, if not handled well, certain aspects can be a letdown. For example, DAM may not help much if your assets are of poor quality.
To prevent frustrations despite using a top-notch DAM solution, you should adopt these best practices.
- Create high-quality, visually appealing content that showcases your products
Your content should be designed to be both aesthetically pleasing and engaging for the audience. There are several key principles that apply in this regard.
One important principle is to focus on quality over quantity. Rather than bombarding your audience with a large number of mediocre images or videos, for example, it’s better to invest in a smaller number of high-quality pieces that really stand out.
Another key principle is to pay attention to the details. This means thinking carefully about stuff like lighting, composition, and color when creating visual content. It also means ensuring that your product is the focus of the content and is shown in the best possible light.
When it comes to specific types of assets, there are some best practices to keep in mind. For videos, it’s important to create engaging videos that tell a story and capture the attention of your audience. This may involve incorporating motion graphics, animation, or other visual effects to make your videos more dynamic and interesting.
For images, it’s important to focus on high-resolution photos. This may involve using natural light, finding interesting backgrounds, or incorporating props.
Generally and regardless of the asset type, the key is to focus on quality, attention to detail, and audience engagement.
Finally, it’s important to optimize assets for different platforms and devices, such as mobile phones and tablets.
- Organize and tag assets for easy searching and retrieval
Organization involves arranging assets in a logical and consistent way, using folders, subfolders, and naming conventions that reflect their content and purpose. For example, if you have a folder named “Marketing Materials” and subfolders for each marketing campaign, it becomes easy to locate a specific file related to a particular campaign.
Tagging, on the other hand, involves assigning descriptive keywords or labels to files, so that they can be searched quickly and sorted based on their attributes. This makes it easy to search for and filter files based on specific criteria.
Tagging can be especially useful when dealing with large collections of files or when searching for specific types of content across multiple platforms or systems. For example, if you have tagged all your photos with keywords like “beach”, “mountain”, “city”, you can easily filter them based on these tags to retrieve photos of a specific category.
- Use metadata to improve search engine optimization (SEO)
In DAM, you can easily add metadata to assets. This should include relevant keywords that describe the product, such as product name, brand, model, and features. You can also include metadata such as alt text for images, which provides a description of the image for search engines.
Once the metadata has been added to the assets in the DAM platform, the next step is to sync with BigCommerce store. This will ensure that the metadata is associated with the product listings on your store, which can improve search engine rankings for those products.
It’s also important to regularly review and update the metadata for your assets in the DAM platform to ensure that it remains accurate and relevant.
Example: Let’s say that you sell a popular brand of dry cat food that is made with natural ingredients. You might have several product images on your BigCommerce store that showcase the packaging, the kibble itself, and a happy cat eating the food. You can use a DAM platform to add metadata and make them more SEO-friendly.
First, you might add tags to each image that describe the product and its features, such as “natural cat food,” “dry cat food,” “high-quality ingredients,” “grain-free,” and “made in the USA.” These tags can help search engines to understand the content of the images.
Next, you might add a description to each image that provides additional information about the product, such as its nutritional value, the types of cats it is suitable for, and the benefits of using this particular brand of cat food. This description can include relevant keywords that are commonly searched for by customers looking for high-quality cat food.
Finally, you’ll use the DAM platform to organize and categorize images according to their type, such as packaging images, product shots, and lifestyle images featuring cats.
The best part is that when you are done, you simply push the changes to your BigCommerce store.
- Optimize images and other assets for fast load times
Online shoppers expect fast and responsive stores, and are likely to abandon a site that takes too long to load. According to BigCommerce, even a one-second delay in page load time can result in a 7% reduction in conversions. A slow website can also damage a brand’s reputation, leading to negative reviews and reduced customer loyalty.
Fast load times can also improve search engine rankings. Search engines like Google prioritize websites that provide a good user experience, including fast load times. This means that websites with slow load times may be penalized in search rankings, making it harder for customers to find them online.
There are several ways to optimize assets for faster load times.
- Compression:The file size is reduced by removing unnecessary data.
- Resizing: The dimensions are changed. DAM can also help with batch resizing, which allows resizing multiple assets at once.
- Format optimization: With DAM, you can optimize image formats by converting them to other formats as needed – in this case to BigCommerce friendly formats.
- Lazy loading: Loading images only when they are needed. DAM can help with lazy loading by storing images in a central location and providing a URL for each image that can be used when needed.
- Caching: Storing frequently used assets in a cache can reduce the amount of data that needs to be downloaded each time a page is loaded.
- Content delivery networks (CDNs): These are networks of servers that are distributed around the world. Assets can be delivered from a server that is closest to the user, which can help to reduce page load times.
- Use A/B testing to improve the effectiveness of your assets
A/B testing, also known as split testing, is a method of comparing the performance of two different versions of an item, in this case digital assets. The two versions are randomly shown to different groups of users, and their engagement with each version is compared to determine which one is more effective.
Example: Let’s say you are a fitness products company that is powered by BigCommerce, and one of your newly launched products is a line of dumbbells.
You can use A/B testing to experiment with different images and videos.
First, you can test different images of the dumbbells on your product page. One version might feature the dumbbells in a studio setting, while another version might showcase them in a home gym setting. By tracking metrics such as click-through rates, bounce rates, and conversion rates, you can determine which version of the product page is most effective in driving sales.
Next, you can experiment with different videos of strength training exercises using dumbbells. One version might show a beginner-level workout using the dumbbells, while another version might feature an advanced-level workout.
You could also test different images and videos of people using the dumbbells in various settings. For example, one version might feature a person doing a bicep curl, while another version might showcase a person doing a full-body workout with the dumbbells.
The goal is to analyze the results of these tests and make data-driven decisions on where to use what version.
The Most Important Tools in DAM Solutions that Enhance Conversion
Each DAM solution is equipped with a myriad of tools designed to accomplish different tasks. With respect to DAM for BigCommerce, here are the top ones:
Single source of truth library from where all assets are managed
In a typical DAM platform, a single source of truth (SSOT) library is a central repository where all digital assets are stored and managed. This library serves as the primary source for all acceptable, high-quality assets that have been approved for use.
The SSOT library typically contains the master copy of all digital assets, including images, videos, audio files, and documents, and ensures that all versions of each asset are not only up to date but also accurate. This way, everyone in the organization, including approved third parties, has access to the same assets and can easily find the right asset they need for their work.
The SSOT library is often integrated with other systems, such as content management systems, marketing automation platforms, and creative tools. This integration ensures that all assets are consistently used across all channels and that there is no duplication or misuse.
Powerful search capabilities that make it easy to find assets
The search tool is a critical component of DAM software as it allows users to locate digital files among thousands or even millions of assets within a matter of seconds.
A variety of search criteria is used, such as keywords, metadata, file type, date range, and more. This makes it easy for users to filter their search results and locate the specific asset they are looking for. Many DAM solutions also offer advanced search capabilities such as fuzzy search, faceted search, and natural language search.
Fuzzy search allows users to find assets even if they misspell or mistype a search term. Faceted search allows users to filter search results based on multiple categories or facets, such as file type, date, location. Natural language search enables users to search for assets using everyday language, rather than having to use specific keywords.
In addition to these advanced search features, some DAM solutions also offer AI-powered search capabilities. For example, some use machine learning algorithms to analyze and tag assets with relevant keywords and metadata automatically.
The search tool works by indexing and cataloging all digital assets within the system. This involves extracting metadata from files. Once the assets are indexed, users can then search for assets using a search box or other interface. The search tool uses the indexed metadata to find assets that match the user’s search query. For example, if a user searches for “beach photos,” the tool will look for assets that have been tagged with the keyword “beach” or other related metadata.
Direct API integration with BigCommerce
Though most pure DAM platforms lack this tool, a few like Catsy come with it, allowing direct integration of DAM with BigCommerce via an API. No need for a middleware or connector.
This integration allows users to manage and distribute their digital assets directly from DAM to BigCommerce stores This can save time and effort for users who need to update their product catalog frequently, as the integration automates the process of uploading, syncing, and publishing.
Re-sizing and re-naming in BigCommerce format
As highlighted earlier, resizing is the changing of the dimensions of an asset. This can be important for several reasons. For example, if you want to display an image on a website, you may want to resize it to a smaller size so that it loads faster and takes up less space on the page. Alternatively, if you are printing a high-quality image, you may want to resize it to a larger size so that it prints at a higher resolution.
Renaming refers to the process of changing the name of a file to something more descriptive or meaningful. For example, instead of a file being named “IMG_1234.jpg,” you may want to rename it to “product-shot.jpg” or “team-photo.jpg” so that it is easier to identify and search for.
With a good resizing and renaming tool, you can quickly make changes to assets without having to use separate software or manually edit each file.
BigCommerce has specific guidelines on this. For example, product images should be in JPEG/JPG, GIF, or PNG format, and must have a minimum size of 800 x 800 pixels.
Metadata management features
A typical DAM solution includes a user-friendly metadata management tool that allows users to add, edit, and manage metadata associated with assets. The tool may have a user interface that resembles a spreadsheet, with columns representing various metadata fields such as title, description, keywords, date created, author, and more.
To add metadata, you would typically select the asset and navigate to the metadata management tool. From there, you can enter information into the relevant metadata fields, such as the title, description, and keywords. Some DAM platforms may also allow importation of metadata from external sources.
Why Catsy is the Best Solution for Your BigCommerce Store
Digital assets are crucial for driving sales on your BigCommerce store. However, it can be challenging to keep the assets organized when they are scattered across various locations, making it difficult to find the correct ones. This leads to a time-consuming and resource-intensive asset management process, creating a vicious cycle of challenges. To overcome this issue, Catsy allows assets to be worked on and uploaded directly to BigCommerce, where they are sync automatically to reflect the most current status.
The Catsy DAM platform can also generate versions of assets in the required BigCommerce format, saving you time and effort. Additionally, Catsy’s powerful faceted search and keyword search features make it easy to find specific assets.
To learn more, sign up for a free demo. Let’s show you how you can use Catsy to streamline the asset management process and boost sales on your BigCommerce store (s).
Conclusion
In implementing DAM for BigCommerce, it’s important to go beyond the basics and consider innovative approaches. This could include using AI to automate tasks such as metadata tagging, or creating immersive 360-degree product visuals.
Always make a point to audit all assets from time to time, not just for compliance purposes but also to identify opportunities for improvement.
Most importantly, take the time to find the right vendor for DAM, which must be easy to integrate with BigCommerce. Offer thorough training for users and remember to set the right permissions & roles.
DAM stands for Digital Asset Management, a software for managing and organizing digital assets like images, videos, and other media. DAM can increase conversions on BigCommerce stores by ensuring that all assets are of high quality, organized, and easily accessible. This helps create a better shopping experience for customers, which in turn leads to higher conversions.
DAM can automatically resize images to fit BigCommerce’s guidelines, compress images to reduce page load times, and tag images with metadata to make them easily searchable. DAM can also help you organize images into folders and collections, making it easier to find and use the right images.
DAM makes it easy to organize and manage assets. Second, DAM can automate many of the tedious tasks associated with managing digital assets, such as resizing images and adding metadata. DAM can also help with optimizing assets for BigCommerce, ensuring that they are of high quality and load quickly, which can lead to higher conversions.
DAM can help automate this process by automatically generating file names and adding alt text based on product descriptions. DAM can also help with organizing images based on product categories, making it easier for search engines to crawl and index them.
DAM provides a central repository for all your digital assets. All assets will have a consistent look and feel, which is important for building brand recognition and loyalty. DAM also makes it possible to enforce brand guidelines by providing a centralized location for approved brand assets, meaning everyone will always have access to the correct brand materials.
