WORKWEEK

It’s no secret that blogs are dated. When was the last time you went to a blog homepage? Or even to a publisher’s homepage? 

It’s just not how people find and read content––and it hasn’t been for a while. Housing your content under a blog is no longer the best option. 

Many brands are finding success with long-form editorial on other parts of their site, and they have been seeing this success for years. Back in 2017, my team at BigCommerce noticed what Oracle was doing to rank for high-volume, non-brand terms. And guess what? They weren’t doing it with content on a blog. 

One company I’ve been looking at recently is Shopify. They are housing content in several interesting ways that I’m personally taking note of––and thought I’d share. 

First, check out their navigation. It’s simple. Clean. Until you click on one of those dropdowns, and holy cow, it’s clear immediately they are a big, serious business with a lot to offer. Let’s break it down:

Under resources: 

• They prioritize their help center and support content first
• Then, their “guides,” which are long-form blogs. Since they were one of the early inbound content players, they have a TON of these. It looks like they are updating them regularly, even if that’s just with new creative, messaging / product alignment, and then updating the pub date.
• Next is their “business courses,” which is their academy content.
• And finally, they link to their blog. 

Their blog:

• Their blog has a sub-navigation. Little else on the site does (though Shopify Finance does).
• The subnav makes it clear that their audience is the entrepreneur. This isn’t Shopify Plus afterall. “Find an idea,” “Starting up,” “Marketing,” all topics highly relevant to founders and start-ups.
• They’ve been at the SEO game a long time. To a large extent, they can (and likely do) update their existing library and call it an SEO day. That library is thousands of assets large, of course, so it’s not such a simple task. 

The what’s new section:

• But the part of this site that has me so intrigued is their “What’s new” section. This entire what’s news section feels like flawless thought leadership and branding.
• Their edition product launches are beautiful and engaging––even when the product updates are just updates that matter to core users (i.e. not innovations that reporters much care about…but reporters don’t pay Shopify’s bills…sooo).
• Their newsroom is a publication in and of itself. Their press releases live here. Their product news lives here. And their thought leadership lives here. All of it is side by side in a blog-like fashion, but separated from the actual blog and housed under “news.” 

Enterprise:

• Now, over to the enterprise site (Note that this is not Shopify Plus…). Start at their navigation again.
• Wow — organization. Their marketing team seems to really understand their target customer.
• Browsing solutions by specific commerce industries (B2C, B2B, and Retail).
• Customer stories with the name of that custom clearly visible in the navigation (I haven’t seen this before and I… like it a lot!). 

• The Resources section calls out the most important things content needs to communicate: “Why trust us,” “What we care about,” and “How we support you.” I’m obsessed. 

• Now, their blog? I found that by clicking on “Shopify Plus” in the navigation (which looks like their older website designs, and like a portion of their brand they may be deprecating), and then on “blog” in that navigation.

The point of this is that content is a critical part of the prospect and customer journey on the website. And you need to guide your user to the right assets, and rarely is sending them to the blog carte blanche the right way to do that. 

Information architecture matters. A lot. 

Questions to ask yourself:

• How are you re-thinking where your content lives and how it is organized to answer the biggest questions and concerns of your prospects?
• How are you leveraging your product to create thought leadership experiences, and showing your prospects you get them within minutes of them landing on the site?
• How are you creating website funnels from top to bottom for specific solutions, products, and industries?
• How would you rebuild your content library if you couldn’t use the blog at all?