Charlie Bell
Senior Director, Solution Engineering, Contentful
Learn why modernising content operations is vital to increasing efficiency and providing the personalised experiences customers want.
Retailers are under immense pressure to do more with less. Rising operational costs, fierce competition and cost-conscious consumers are straining marketing budgets — but shoppers are demanding more from their digital experiences.
Consumers’ digital expectations
Consumers expect instantaneous page load speeds, relevant information at every touchpoint and personalised experiences tailored to their needs and preferences. If someone’s searching for end-of-season savings on winter boots and you show them swimsuits, they’re going to bounce.
It can feel impossible to keep up with customer demand for an endless stream of fresh content when you’re bogged down with legacy tools and convoluted processes. Retailers must rethink content operations to provide the experiences customers want at scale.
Customers want ecommerce personalisation
Personalisation can transform retail experiences, but only when it’s done right. Personalised experiences drive results when they deliver value to customers, rewarding them with more relevant content at each touchpoint. This requires a data-driven approach supported by technology and processes that let retailers act quickly on insights.
During a panel discussion at our Contentful Bake-Off, we heard how Nails.INC aimed to bring the one-on-one feel of shopping at a salon to their digital experiences. The British beauty brand started small and layered in more personalised content as they collected more customer data, enabling them to delight customers with recommendations that fit their style.
Successful omnichannel retail
isn’t just about content or
tech — it’s about people.
Personalisation shouldn’t require a year-long integration
While the benefits of personalisation are clear, achieving them at scale requires better content operations. Poor integrations, siloed content and overreliance on developers continue to slow teams down. For many, the term ‘personalisation’ brings flashbacks of clunky legacy tools, fragile setups and never-ending implementation roadmaps. Retailers need solutions that let them get started immediately, integrate easily with their existing commerce platform and enable existing teams to do bigger things faster.
Ruggable, known for its washable rugs, is an excellent example of how the right technology empowers teams to deliver results. Using a modern platform and marketer-friendly personalisation capabilities, a small team increased conversion rates by 25% and click-throughs improved by 700%.
Efficient content operations accelerate ecommerce personalisation
Modern platforms like Contentful — a next-generation digital experience platform (DXP) with personalisation capabilities — make results like this possible. Structured content, modular components, visual editing and integrated personalisation empower marketers to build digital experiences faster without developer support. Application programming interfaces (APIs) integrate with any commerce platform and connect silos to streamline operations and ensure consistency across regions, channels and touchpoints.
AI increases efficiency, reducing the manual effort required to optimise and manage hundreds of variants at scale. This is how retailers get closer to one-to-one personalisation without sacrificing quality or brand consistency.
Empowering people helps retailers do more with less
Successful omnichannel retail isn’t just about content or tech — it’s about people. When digital, product and marketing teams are siloed, the customer experience reflects this fragmented working environment. An effective retail strategy brings these functions together and supports them with tools that balance brand governance with local and channel-specific flexibility.
For instance, cycling brand Rapha unified content creation across regions, empowering their teams to move faster and connect more deeply with customers worldwide. The result was a 3.5x increase in browsing sessions and a seamless journey for customers from research through purchase.
Turning content into a growth engine
Investing in scalable content operations, personalisation and AI-enhanced workflows transforms content into a lever for growth, not just some passive words and pictures we put in front of our customers.
Retailers that embrace this shift are seeing results today and building more agile teams that can continuously respond to changing customer demands. Those who wait will continue to struggle, missing opportunities to connect with customers, lift conversion rates and drive revenue. What choice will you make?
