Best practice for commerce content

Mumsnet is the UK’s largest network for parents, with over 12 million unique visitors per month clocking up over 128 million page views. It has a network of over 10,000 influencers. It regularly campaigns on issues including support for families of children with special educational needs, improvements in postnatal and miscarriage care, and freedom of speech on the internet.

James Smith, Head of eCommerce at Mumsnet, the UK’s largest website for parents, answers a few questions about their commerce content strategy and how they work with Skimlinks.

Tell us about the commerce content strategy at Mumsnet?
User-inspired product recommendations have been at the heart of Mumsnet since the beginning. Being able to create a revenue stream to help fund our business, in a way that was both unobtrusive and retains the trust of our users, was very important. This shared ethos is one of the reasons Mumsnet works with Skimlinks.

Can you tell us about how you historically managed your commerce content?
Mumsnet was managing 17 different networks, manually pulling numbers for reporting, and working with different payment methods. This became a serious time and resource pain point for us.
Once a user has clicked on your link, as long as you sent the last click before the purchase was made, anything they buy from the corresponding merchant will earn you commission.

What challenges did you encounter with this approach?
Managing multiple network relationships and having disparate data meant that Mumsnet had no clear visibility on what content was helpful to users and creating revenue, which meant we were less able to optimise our content.

Tell us about your decision to consolidate everything with Skimlinks
We needed more visibility on what was and wasn’t working. We wanted to see, in one place, what our users were engaging with and purchasing, and what pages they were purchasing from, so that we could then look at how we then build our content based on these insights. Our commerce editors now have access to actionable insights and go into the Skimlinks dashboard to look at data to help determine what commerce content to write.
Skimlinks provided us with a simple solution to convert all of our existing links and are providing support on communicating with our merchants around the consolidation process.
We didn’t just want a network provider; we wanted to have access to great tech and superior data. Skimlinks understands and cares about Mumsnet’s success. They focus on long-term opportunities and provide us with great account management.

How has this changed your relationships with the merchants you work with?
We receive lots of approaches each day from different merchants. We can now be data driven in deciding who we work with and ensuring that it’s a brand that our users want to see.

How does this change benefit your merchants?
Having all our merchants in one centralised system with Skimlinks makes managing relationships easier. One big benefit of this is that we are now in a position to provide our merchants with more in-depth and actionable insights into how their products are both resonating and performing with our users. This helps inform not only their revenue strategy and offers for Mumsnet users, but also their wider business.

What are your growth plans for commerce content over the coming year?
More commerce editors, more useful content, more growth. We are going to continue to create content that engages with and delights our users; they are at the heart of every decision we make.
There is a big focus on how we can optimise and personalise the user experience, from SEO and email to ecommerce and content. We want to ensure that this all ties together to create real value and strengthen our community.

What is your advice for other publishers who might be considering moving all their commerce content through Skimlinks?
It’s a great way to centralise everything in one place, which gives publishers a simpler view of their business. Being able to use the platform to share purchase behaviour, interest and trends across all departments of the business to help define editorial and commercial strategy is a big benefit.

Signup for Skimlinks today and start your commerce journey!

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