Q&A: Chris White, Partner Manager of Styla GmbH
Styla’s no-code Content Experience Engine enables the eCommerce and marketing teams to bridge the gap between content and commerce.
What does your company do? / What is your USP?
Styla helps retailers create unique digital experiences to connect with their audiences and inspire them to buy more! Our SaaS platform helps create and publish rich shoppable experiences without the need for any code or agency, helping retailers and brands deliver inspirational, engaging content in record time.
With so much choice for consumers today, retailers need to cut through the noise and differentiate themselves by telling their own brand and product stories. All retailers want to run these smart campaigns but very few have the IT resources or big budgets to outsource to an agency. Brands need to act much faster than they have had to in the past. Social media has created endless, fast-paced global conversations and changed the way we communicate today. To be part of these conversations and stay relevant brands also need to move at the same pace.
Styla’s no-code Content Experience Engine enables the eCommerce and marketing teams to bridge the gap between content and commerce. Our platform removes the need for IT or an agency so companies can create and publish content faster with Styla than with any other content solution on the market.
We work with over 130 customers across Europe who create content at scale including JD Williams, Thomas Sabo, and Jack Wolfskin.
What’s special about the platform and your approach?
Styla is all about speed and simplicity, giving brands more agility when it comes to content.
Clients can get up and running on the platform in no time. Our easy to use, no-code platform empowers the business user and removes the need for IT. This means marketing and eCommerce teams can create and publish engaging digital experiences in seconds not weeks!
Great digital experiences and speed are the most important capability for companies that want to engage and stay relevant. Brands that can’t get their messages out immediately and respond instantly to world events won’t be able to take part in fast-paced global conversations. For example our customer North Sails created 7 new digital experiences and published to 7 different countries across all devices in under 1 week. This is much faster than conventional marketing processes used to allow.
How does a product/service implementation actually look and how do you measure success?
Implementation is simple and can be completed in under 5 days, we have standard integrations to all the major shop systems that come out of the box and if the retailer has a bespoke site, all we need to do is place a line of code on the site and our professional services team can help you get up and running with minimal effort. Our team of content marketeers, digital designers and technical consultants, will then work with our clients to integrate their style guide so all content created with Styla looks on brand. Our team of content experts helps clients identify what type of content will deliver the best results and work with them to create a range of experiences to get started. Once set up, our dynamic layout algorithm works with your site to automate the design layout based on design best practice and performance data to bring to life your content in the best format for all devices.
Once up and running clients are keen to measure two elements;
- Workflow ROI – how much more content they can build/publish in less time. Our customers achieve an increase in content production between 27 and 82%.
- Sales metrics – In 2018, we analysed over 60 retailers to identify the impact from rich content and on average, we saw a 10X increase in time on page, 74% reduction in bounce rate and a 3X increase in conversion rates compared to site averages.
How are retailers using your systems to gain competitive advantage and what does best practice look like?
Retailers’ desktop and mobile sites are their digital shop window. This is where consumers are going to discover, explore, buy and engage with your services. It’s key your shop window stands out from the crowd with relevant and exciting content that catches the attention of today’s customer.
Retailers can stand out from the crowd by telling unique product and brand stories and weave rich digital experiences right across the customer journey to help consumers make that purchase and keep them coming back for more.
Retailers that are able to create these rich digital experiences will see significant increases in engagement time, reductions in bounce rates and increases in conversion. Brands that are producing a regular mix of relevant, rich content like guided selling tools, lookbooks, UGC, video and blogs/micro sites are seeing the best results.
What advantage does it add?
Every retailer and brand wants to publish more content and in 2018 brand storytelling was the number 1 topic for CMO’s.
We help retailers transform content into a new sales channel by combining storytelling and commerce. With every product being assigned the Add To Cart label, brands and retailers can reduce the steps to checkout, convert with more ease, and keep the inspiration element alive throughout the whole customer journey.
What challenges and opportunities do you see in UK retail for 2019 / What challenges are retailers facing in 2019?
One of the biggest challenges we hear about from customers is around personalisation. All brands recognise how important personalisation is to improving the online customer experience, but what a lot of brands struggle with is the increased demand in content production needed to offer truly personalised experiences across the whole customer journey, not just on the home page or a few banners.
Customers tell us they need to produce 10X more content once they implement a personalisation engine and want to create 20X more content to really meet the demands from consumers. The problem is this type of content production is often not scalable for internal teams and too expensive to outsource to an agency.
How will you address these challenges and turn them into successes?
Based on the principles of graphic design and the fundamental power of data, Styla automates content design in accordance to user behaviour, thus being 100% focused on delivering the best user experience possible. Styla’s design automation technology intelligently adapts to every device in real-time and is proven to boost retention rate, time spent on site, and engagement. Styla’s Content Experience Engine also integrates with personalisation engines like Dynamic Yield and enables brands to easily scale up content production to keep up with today’s demand for rich, personalised digital experiences across every step of the customer journey.
This puts the power back into the creator’s hands to build key personalised customer journeys, quickly.
What is on the horizon for you as a company?
Styla is revolutionising the CMS market by democratising content and empowering the business users which is a huge trend we see across lots of other tech in our ecosystem and is really exciting!
We are doubling down on development over the next 12 months to continue innovating the products with a focus on analytics, workflow management and partner integrations.
We will also be hosting our 2nd annual conference, the Styla Xperience, in June. This is the only conference focused on content experiences and delivered by our customers and partners.
Any final thoughts?
If you want to find out more about how we are revolutionising the CMS market and how we are working with Dynamic Yield to tell personalised 1 to 1 product and brand stories at scale, then join our webinar on the 29th May. Register here!
