Content strategy for Esntial Commerce™
A Cox Automotive initiative
Cox Automotive Inc.
A division of Cox Enterprises, whose 26 brands include Autotrader, Kelley Blue Book and Dealer.com
In early 2020, I joined the team building Esntial Commerce, a groundbreaking vehicle e-commerce platform, as their only content strategist/UX writer. Launching as CarShop with Penske Auto Group as the pilot “tenant,” the platform is now being white-labeled for other large retailers as well as OEMs.
What a ride it’s been!
I support information architects, interaction and visual designers across the entire user journey: from the home page to search, pre-qualify, buy, trade-in, checkout, finance, digital contracting, and after-market products.
Beyond collaborating with the UX team, I also worked closely with
Legal: to ensure we complied with the many regulations governing the selling/financing of cars and to translate legalese into easily consumed content.
Research: to not only test content, but also shape screener and participant questions
Product: to work through the many complex user flows throughout the user experience
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Tone of Voice Guidelines
Our brand was unknown in a sea of established e-commerce players such as Carvana, cars.com, CarGurus, CarMax and others. So striking the right tone was integral to building credibility – while providing users with moments of delight to keep them engaged. I developed this simple Is/Is Not table to define our voice.
Excerpt from tone of voice document
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Error Messages
(it’s not the user’s fault)
First and foremost, error messages should tell users why they can’t get to the information they’re seeking. But why not take the opportunity to reinforce the brand voice (if appropriate). After working with designers and developers to identify global errors, I created the car-themed concept, wrote the messages and helped users avoid dead ends.
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Marketing Placements
As an unknown brand, we had to educate users on who we are and why we’re better than our more established competitors (like Carvana). Having to do a lot of heavy lifting in a digestible way, I worked with visual designers to make the copy easily scannable so the benefits pop.
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Form field validation
Whether users fat finger a character or type an invalid format, they need to understand how to correct their error before they get frustrated and abandon the site. I worked through 10,000 use cases* and wrote microcopy for each of the form-driven work flows shown below to keep users moving forward.
*maybe it was less, but it felt like 10,000.
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Keeping them engaged
Users who had not yet pre-qualified for a loan still had the ability to estimate their monthly payments based on various down payments and credit scores. I called it, “Play with the numbers” – a phrase that was tested and universally understood.
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Content governance
All the screens and content shown to this point are for CarShop, the pilot site developed by Cox Automotive for Penske Auto Group. Having proven its effectiveness, we had to strip out the branding and determine how to govern the content for future “tenants” of the Esential Commerce platform. For every content bucket on the site, we determined:
Whether or not to impose a character limit
What that limit should be
Whether or not to be make the content editable
Spoiler alert: We set character limits for most sections, made all marketing text editable, and locked the content within the buying funnel and core features (which had been vetted with users).
Excerpt from content governance document
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