An ecommerce content strategy sets out what shoppers need to know to choose, fit and keep using a product, and where that content sits from search results to the product page to the emails after delivery. It is owned by the head of content and agreed with merchandising, ecommerce trading, customer service and the returns team.
This is the Ecommerce version of the content strategy template.
A complete content strategy for a fictional organization: online retailer of bikes, cycling parts and apparel.
| Organization | Online retailer of bikes, cycling parts and apparel (500 staff) |
|---|---|
| Ambition | Move the content team from covering the sport to helping riders choose, fit and maintain what they buy, lifting product page conversion and repeat orders while cutting returns for fit. |
| Horizon | 1 year |
We sell $180 million a year across 1.1 million orders. Complete bikes are 30% of revenue; parts, apparel and accessories carry the better margin. The 14-person content team publishes 20 articles a week, mostly race news, which brings 55% of the blog's 610,000 monthly organic visits and converts at 0.3%. Our 85 buying guides bring 12% of visits, convert at 2.4% and produce 64% of the $580,000 a month in content-attributed revenue. Of 31,000 product pages, 64% carry the supplier's copy unchanged. Apparel and footwear are returned at 24%, mostly for fit, and 9% of bikes are returned or exchanged at $140 each in freight.
Challenges| Audience | What they need | Where they look |
|---|---|---|
| First serious bike buyer | Which type of bike, which size, what else is needed on day one | Search, YouTube reviews, friends who ride, category pages |
| Enthusiast upgrading parts | Compatibility with the current drivetrain, weight and price against alternatives | Search by part number, forums, product page specs and Q&A |
| Apparel and footwear shopper | How this brand's sizing runs and what suits the season | Product page, size chart, customer reviews |
| Recent bike customer | Assembly, first service, what wears out and when | Order emails, YouTube, the box insert |
| Home mechanic | Step-by-step repairs with the right tools and torque values | YouTube, search, how-to pages |
| Pillar | What it covers | Example topics |
|---|---|---|
| Choosing the right bike and kit | Buying guides, model comparisons and range explainers by riding type and budget | Gravel or endurance road bike; what changes between three price tiers of the same frame |
| Fit and sizing | Frame sizing, shoe and apparel fit by brand, saddle and bar choices | Measuring inseam at home; which shoe brands run narrow |
| Compatibility | What works with what across drivetrains, wheels, brakes and mounts | Cassette and derailleur capacity tables; axle standards by frame |
| Maintain and repair | Assembly, service intervals, wear parts and repairs with shoppable parts lists | Checking chain wear; first service at six weeks |
| Format | Channel | Cadence | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| Product page copy, spec table and fit note | Product pages | 150 products per month | Answer size and compatibility questions at the point of purchase |
| Buying guide | Website, linked from category pages | 12 new or rebuilt per month | Rank for choosing queries and send shoppers to in-stock ranges |
| Fit finder and brand size chart | Product pages and a standalone tool | One category per quarter | Reduce returns for size |
| How-to video with parts list | YouTube and how-to pages | 8 per month | Bring home mechanics back for parts and tools |
| Post-purchase series | Email and box insert | Built per bike category, reviewed twice a year | Drive the first accessory and service-part order |
| Customer review prompts and Q&A | Product pages | Sent 21 days after delivery | Collect fit feedback shoppers trust more than our copy |
| Planning | Planned monthly with merchandising against the buying calendar, stock depth and margin. A guide is not commissioned for a range with less than eight weeks of stock. The model-year changeover in late summer is planned a quarter ahead. |
|---|---|
| Production | Copywriters work from a product brief template with required fields for sizing, compatibility and what is in the box. Guides are written by staff editors who ride that discipline. The video crew films in the workshop with a staff mechanic. |
| Review and approval | A workshop mechanic signs off every torque value, compatibility claim and repair step. Merchandising checks range and price claims. Brand guidelines from suppliers are applied to product pages only, not to guides or comparisons. |
| Maintenance | Guides are tied to product IDs, so a discontinued or out-of-stock product flags the guide for an update within five working days. Discontinued product pages redirect to the successor. Customer service tags contacts by product so the pages causing questions are fixed first. |
Priorities and measures
These pages take 70% of revenue and most still carry supplier copy. Shoppers who cannot find size or compatibility details contact us or leave.
| Outcome | Baseline | Target | Due |
|---|---|---|---|
| Conversion rate on the top 2,000 product pages | 1.9% | 2.4% | Q4 2027 |
| Pre-purchase customer service contacts per 100 orders | 14 contacts | 9 contacts | Q4 2027 |
A returned bike costs $140 in freight before any markdown, and nearly a quarter of apparel and footwear comes back. Fit is the most common reason given in both categories.
| Outcome | Baseline | Target | Due |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apparel and footwear return rate | 24% | 19% | Q4 2027 |
| Complete bikes returned or exchanged | 9% | 6% | Q4 2027 |
Bikes carry our thinnest margin, so the sale pays off when the rider returns for pedals, lights, tools and wear parts. Today 78% of bike buyers do not order again within three months.
| Outcome | Baseline | Target | Due |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bike buyers who order parts or accessories within 90 days | 22% | 35% | Q4 2027 |
| First-time customers who order again within 12 months | 34% | 39% | Q4 2027 |
Buying guides are 12% of visits and 64% of content-attributed revenue. Stopping news frees eight editors to rebuild the guides and keep them current.
| Outcome | Baseline | Target | Due |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly organic visits to buying guides | 73K visits | 180K visits | Q4 2027 |
| Content-attributed revenue per month | $580K | $1.1M | Q4 2027 |
| Buying guides that list a discontinued or out-of-stock product | 47 guides | 5 guides | Q2 2027 |
The same structure with a prompt in every field. Copy it, or download it as a Word or Excel file.
| Organization | [Describe your organization in a few words, with its size] |
|---|---|
| Ambition | [One sentence on where you want to be at the end of the plan] |
| Horizon | [How long the plan runs, for example 12 months] |
[Where things stand today: the facts that make this strategy necessary]
Challenges| Audience | What they need | Where they look |
|---|---|---|
| [Audience] | [What they need] | [Where they look] |
| [Audience] | [What they need] | [Where they look] |
| [Audience] | [What they need] | [Where they look] |
| Pillar | What it covers | Example topics |
|---|---|---|
| [Pillar] | [What it covers] | [Example topics] |
| [Pillar] | [What it covers] | [Example topics] |
| [Pillar] | [What it covers] | [Example topics] |
| Format | Channel | Cadence | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| [Format] | [Channel] | [Cadence] | [Purpose] |
| [Format] | [Channel] | [Cadence] | [Purpose] |
| [Format] | [Channel] | [Cadence] | [Purpose] |
| Planning | [Your planning] |
|---|---|
| Production | [Your production] |
| Review and approval | [Your review and approval] |
| Maintenance | [Your maintenance] |
Priorities and measures
[Why this priority matters now, in one or two sentences]
| Outcome | Baseline | Target | Due |
|---|---|---|---|
| [Metric you will track] | [Where it is today] | [Where it should be] | [When] |
| [Metric you will track] | [Where it is today] | [Where it should be] | [When] |
[Why this priority matters now, in one or two sentences]
| Outcome | Baseline | Target | Due |
|---|---|---|---|
| [Metric you will track] | [Where it is today] | [Where it should be] | [When] |
| [Metric you will track] | [Where it is today] | [Where it should be] | [When] |
[Why this priority matters now, in one or two sentences]
| Outcome | Baseline | Target | Due |
|---|---|---|---|
| [Metric you will track] | [Where it is today] | [Where it should be] | [When] |
| [Metric you will track] | [Where it is today] | [Where it should be] | [When] |
[Why this priority matters now, in one or two sentences]
| Outcome | Baseline | Target | Due |
|---|---|---|---|
| [Metric you will track] | [Where it is today] | [Where it should be] | [When] |
| [Metric you will track] | [Where it is today] | [Where it should be] | [When] |
| [Metric you will track] | [Where it is today] | [Where it should be] | [When] |
Rank products by revenue and find how few of them make up 70% of sales. Start product page work there and say plainly what the long tail will not get.
Pull return reasons and pre-purchase customer service contacts by product. The questions shoppers ask and the reasons they send things back are the content brief.
Compare conversion and revenue by content type, not total visits. Shift people toward the type that sells, even if it is a small part of traffic today.
Plan with merchandising. Content for a range that is about to sell out or be replaced is wasted work.
Map the weeks after delivery for your main product and write the emails that lead to the natural second order.
Tie guides to product IDs or build another way to catch discontinued items before a shopper does.
A plan only works if it is reviewed on a rhythm. This is the cadence the example assumes.
| Check-in | Outcome owners update progress and confidence weekly. |
|---|---|
| Review | Priority owners review outcomes and unblock initiatives monthly. |
| Reset | Leadership revisits priorities and targets quarterly. |
Tability keeps this cadence for you. Each priority becomes an objective, each outcome a key result with its baseline and target, and each initiative a tracked task. Owners get a check-in reminder and the plan shows what is on track.
Track this plan in TabilityStill comparing tools? See the 10 best strategy software tools.
It should include the shopper types and the questions each one needs answered, the content pillars, the formats from product page to buying guide to post-purchase email, and the workflow with merchandising. Measure it on conversion, return rate, repeat purchase and content-attributed revenue instead of visits alone.
Yes. For an online store, product pages are where most buying decisions are made, so they are the most valuable content on the site. This example puts product page copy, spec tables and fit notes first and limits the work to the 2,000 products that produce 70% of revenue.
Content reduces returns by setting accurate expectations about size, fit and compatibility before the order is placed. Useful pieces include measured size charts by brand, a size finder, fit summaries drawn from customer reviews and how-to-measure videos. Start with the categories and return reasons that cost the most.
Only if the articles help someone choose, use or maintain what the store sells. In this example, news brought more than half of blog traffic and almost no orders, while a small set of buying guides produced most content revenue. The team stopped news and put the editors on guides.
Count orders from sessions that included a content page within a fixed window, such as seven days, and report it by content type. Keep the rule the same all year so the trend is comparable. Pair it with product page conversion and return rate so the content team is not judged on one number.
Make content the main source of agency trials and the reason those trials activate, so content-sourced signups add $19,000 in new monthly recurring revenue each month by the end of 2027.
Fill our classes, recruit and keep enough tutors to shorten the waiting list, and turn one-time donors into regular givers, using content a two-person team can sustain.
A content strategy sets out who your content is for, the topics you want to be known for, and how each piece is produced, distributed and measured.
Reach $28 million in revenue with a first order that makes money, by winning full-price buyers and earning their second purchase within 90 days.
Have one strong page for every part and model family we sell, so organic search earns $6.3 million a month and growth no longer depends on raising paid spend.
Content strategy example
Horizon: 1 year
4 priorities · 9 outcomes
Targets are illustrative. Adapt them to your baseline before you start.