Great piece in the WSJ on how Target is adding content to it’s ecommerce site from DailyCandy to increase traffic.  Conventional ecommerce wisdom was that buyers only come to the site when they have an intent to purchase.  Therefore, content would only distract potential buyers and reduce conversion rates.  Sucharita Mulpuru from Forrester states this conventional wisdom well in the article, The idea back in the dot-com heyday was that you could use content to drive people to commerce,” Ms. Mulpuru says. “The reality is that never happens. People who are looking for content are looking for content. People who are looking for shopping are looking for shopping.

I think Sucharita is one of the best analysts in the space, but I disagree with her here.  Top retailers are realizing that content drives site traffic through organic search more cost effectively than affiliates and paid search – see Ecommerce Marketing Strategy.  There is also a very interesting Harvard Business Review study done of 1,700 ecommerce sites that found that ecommerce sites with content outperformed the SAP 500 by 12% from 2003-2006.

From the work we are doing with our clients, we see that those that use content and community on their commerce sites outperform those who don’t.  The days of commerce, content and community being separated are numbered.  Please share your thoughts on this topic and provide other examples of Retailers adding content and community to their commerce sites and Media companies adding commerce and community.  It is going to take 3Cs to win, not just one.