To convert prospects into buyers and expand market presence and online revenue, product information needs to be high quality, complete, and always available.
Today, customers expect to access the right information needed to make an informed buying decision. As a result, the amount of product information required to sell through digital channels is becoming more complex and difficult to manage, especially when using spreadsheets which are still common today.
The result is outdated, incomplete, and incorrect product data being pushed to prospective customers.
Product Information Management – A Better Way with PIM for eCommerce
Implementing a Product Information Management (PIM) solution is a simple and more efficient way to manage product information.
PIM solves the problems that spreadsheets can’t because it is built specifically to manage product information in a single, centralized place, across websites, e-commerce platforms, print catalogs, points of sale, mobile applications, and more.
The result is significant ROI for your business through greater operational efficiency in managing and maintaining product information and higher conversion rates.
Expansion Requires Centralized and Structured Product Data
For companies looking to expand, the lack of a real solution to manage product information severely impedes the ability to grow.
Without a PIM solution, growth becomes much more difficult as you struggle to maintain compelling, complete, and up-to-date product information – and additional channels, localizations, and product categories only multiply the problem. In other words, moving away from spreadsheets to a PIM solution not only improves day-to-day efficiency but enables the efficient scaling of your product and localization teams across geographic and organizational boundaries that can truly transform your business.
Expanding a company’s business into other locales and sales channels results in a massive amount of data that simply cannot be managed without a PIM solution.
It is easy to understand this complexity by realizing that each new localization and each new channel results in an exponential effort and cost because every product attribute will have multiple values based on the number of locales and channels that exist.
The amount and complexity of product data can be even greater if your business has any of these characteristics;
- Constantly changing content/product listings require companies to ensure that all new collections, pricing promotions, and other changes are up to date across all markets.
- Specialized industry content for sectors like fashion, electronics, jewelry, etc., require industry specific attributes and terms that sometimes don’t translate across locales.
- Adapting to different markets requires localizing product information and content and managing different languages, currencies, measurements, etc.
With a PIM solution that maintains a central repository of all product data, each new localization can benefit from automated content translation and attribute transformation (inches to centimeters) resulting in a significant reduction in cost – and each new channel is almost cost-free except for setup costs.
Increase Conversion – Reduce Returns
We all know from personal experience that we want to be well informed when buying online. We expect to have all of the information that we need to make the right buying decision.
The result is that companies implementing PIM typically experience increased conversion rates of up to 50% because they can manage and support more products and make sure that those products have the highest quality of data so that their customers have what they need to make a buy decision.
Likewise, these same companies also experienced reduced return rates because better product information resulted in less customer disappointment and thus fewer product returns. Having accurate and complete product information prevents customer confusion and can significantly reduce return rates which can have a dramatic impact upon profitability.
Delivering ROI to your Business
Managing and maintaining quality product information efficiently is vital to a successful online sales strategy. The vast amount of product information and content that customers require to make a buying decision simply cannot be managed in spreadsheets or ERP systems that were never intended to perform this function.
Akeneo PIM provides a centralized, easy to use solution that enables product teams to manage product information more efficiently and with higher quality. Since product information exists in one place, spreading that out to other sales channels is simple and quick. Payback periods range from 3 to 6 months and result from efficiency savings, increased revenue from higher conversion rates, and reduced costs associated with product returns.
The post How to Improve ROI with Product Experience – Product Information Management for eCommerce appeared first on Demac Media.