“Can I use PIM to grow market share and improve sales?”
Let’s answer this question by discussing product pages. eCommerce success is mastering product information to build high-converting product pages and thus maximize visibility. Why is that?
Consider these facts.
Fact No. 1: As of January 10, 2018, Amazon sold 562,382,292 products. Is that number going to go up or down?
Fact No. 2: eCommerce expanded by 15% in 2018 to $517.36 billion. By 2040, as much as 95% of all retail sales could be online.
These two statistics help us understand two truths. First, the digital retail world is getting bigger and bigger. Second, a product page represents a piece of real estate in this world. The better its build, beauty, and structure, the higher its value and the more offers you will receive.
To reiterate, how will you sell products in a market that continues to grow?
Here is your answer — with beautiful product pages full of compelling product content. Many people already know this. However, it takes more work to actualize this fact into action. Sellers online still struggle to achieve a high level of product page quality that sells products effortlessly. In other cases, they may underestimate the need to invest in the orchestration, with a software tool like PIM.
Product information management (PIM) is the foundation of product pages that convert. It allows easy ecommerce product catalog management. Because it ensures centralization and optimization of product information, PIM compels completeness, accuracy, and consistency across sales channels.
In this post, we’ll examine six ways PIM simplifies eCommerce so you can create the high-converting product pages you need to maximize revenue.
- Powerful Product Pages
Product content makes up the elements of a product page. Product content is any information a visitor requires to become a customer. So the more powerful a product page is, the better the conversion rate. To create one such page, it’s essential to embed an exhaustive amount of diverse content.
Content can include any or all of the following:
- Specifications
- Descriptions
- Reviews
- Images
- Videos
- Guides
Here’s a pro tip: The best way to make product pages ready to convert is to optimize their content. What does that mean? It means cutting out the fluff and directly targeting specific buyer personas. Targeted content better draws in and maintains visitor attention.
How do I build buyer personas?
Creating buyer personas means sketching out representations of any type of potential buyer. To be as accurate as possible, you must know every critical detail about them. Gathering as much information about your potential customers as possible will help you better serve them.
- Interests
- Demographic specific
- Preferred media
And you have to speak to them in a language they understand.
Social media gathers a massive amount of data. That data can give you insight into the lives of your buyer personas and allow you to customize and personalize your product pages with the content your customers find meaningful and compelling.
Localize Content
Content must speak directly to your target audiences, regardless of where they exist online and physically live.
Optimal localization starts by targeting the following:
- Language
- Spelling
- Area-specific context
- Units of measure
- Currency-specific prices
PIM tailors product pages by persona and includes location information.
Use PIM to configure product pages to display varying content automatically, so the language, units, and spelling used in a given target market convert automatically.
Because when tailored to the wrong market, even the best content is virtually as useless as no content. Remember that 22% of returns are due to customers receiving products they didn’t expect. This means that products look very different from what they see or read online. Even more, 34% of abandoned shopping carts result from visitors who don’t feel ready to buy or who are turned off.
Quality product pages simultaneously increase sales conversions and minimize returns. They do this by making a compelling promise and delivering.
- Complete, Accurate Product Information
Online shoppers do more research than ever these days. Poor-quality product pages will tell your customers you can’t fulfill their needs.
According to the 2018 Online Shopper Research Statistics…
- 62% of customers who don’t know what they’re looking for start with a search engine
- 50% of customers who DO know what they’re looking for start with a search engine
- 25% of customers visited at least five popular search or retail websites before buying: Amazon, Best Buy, Google, Target, and Walmart
Your product pages must be full of complete and accurate product information that customers want across all these channels. Optimizing your product pages with quality information requires ongoing effort. With quick responsiveness, you must update product information in real-time.
Enrich Supplier Information
Collecting information from suppliers manually involves near-constant communication.
Instead…PIM provides an improved flow of product information between suppliers and e-commerce management, increasing efficiency and collaboration. Information obtained from suppliers exists in fragmented subsets, but PIM makes those confusing spreadsheets unnecessary.
PIM manages information flow, allowing for…
- Data enrichment
- Detailed descriptions
- Rich images
- Compelling videos
Ultimately, PIM is where you optimize content. PIM makes editing, modifying, and exporting product information easier. It simplifies supplier onboarding, eases integration, and increases productivity. It improves product information quality. Consequently, it removes the need for constant information transfer from one spreadsheet to another.
Reduce Errors
Product information from multiple decentralized systems compromises consistency. As a result, many have used spreadsheets. As a solution, retailers have traditionally used spreadsheets to store product information manually. Unfortunately, this method has a drawback.
In effect, using Excel increases the risk of human error and time spent.
Instead, a better solution exists. A tool like PIM eliminates manual data entry errors by providing a central product information database. As such, teams can collaborate to input and update all product information centrally. This unification produces beautiful product pages, so you can:
- Increase brand confidence
- Ensure a seamless customer shopping experience
- Convert more visitors into buyers
- Maximize revenue
- Grow your market share
Simply, PIM is the solution for managing product pages and keeping product information accurate and fresh. Accurate and fresh product information leads to conversions.
3. Unify Syndication
Customers want product information on your site and on their preferred platforms. Even when product page design varies across platforms, customers who see information that isn’t identical will become confused.
As we all know, confused customers don’t convert.
The current average shopping cart abandonment rate is 69.57%.
With more customers researching online, it’s no surprise that sites suffer from abandoned shopping carts. This is especially true when their product pages don’t display matching information across channels. Manually updating product pages across platforms after you’ve updated your website is a total waste of time.
With PIM, product information automatically goes out across all your distribution channels.
Only when information is accurate and syndication is coordinated can you deliver a truly excellent digital shopping experience.
PIM is a central hub of quality product information, which…
- Enables product page updates.
- Ensures product content consistency.
eCommerce businesses tend not to operate on a single channel. Consequently, PIM ensures customers see the same product information regardless of which channel’s product page they’re looking at.
Expand to Sell Across Multiple Channels
Want to grow but not sure how? Because product pages vary by sales platform, product information has to be configured explicitly for each channel’s requirements.
What has to be configured?
- File size
- File type
- Image size
- Description length
- Required information
- Unit Value Length
- Conditionally required information
Anything not appropriately set will detract from the overall appeal of your product pages. Ultimately, this will turn off potential customers and reduce revenue. Selling on more channels requires a robust organization and management of existing product information.
With PIM, you can create subsets of information from your master catalog. These can be automatically tailored to each platform’s requirements.
International Growth
What is eCommerce’s single most significant value to you?
Selling online levels the playing field. It allows small businesses to compete against massive companies in the global market, unlocking the potential for tremendous growth.
But there’s a problem. With expansion comes the need to sell in multiple languages with specifications to meet customer needs worldwide. Adding new languages and converting units manually is nearly impossible.
PIM provides transparent processes for all data and language translation to combat this. Remember that time saved equals money earned.
4. Efficient Management
Supervising manual processes is dull, time-consuming, and complex. For that, you need automation. Management requires a consistent overview of ongoing processes to increase efficiency. PIM automation speeds up processes, providing quick answers to important questions.
- Approvals
- Launches
- Updates
- Translated text
- Information changes
- Product discontinuation
PIM systems come with built-in workflows. Each workflow provides a visual overview of processes and project progress and completion. PIM keeps management on top of everything so nothing gets lost.
Enhance Team Productivity
Product pages populate with information generated by and spread across your entire operation.
- Images from your design team
- Feature bullets are written by marketing
- Specs from product managers
- Shipping details from logistics
- Warnings from legal
- IT techs upload everything according to channel specifications
Storing this information centrally supercharges efficiency.
Remember: New product launches compound existing inefficiencies exponentially, resulting in accuracy taking far longer than it should. When multiple individuals hold dozens of critical product information, emails fly back and forth, causing accuracy to be lost in the shuffle. Don’t sacrifice your product pages for miscommunication.
PIM centralization eliminates hassle, safeguarding accuracy.
Teams spend far less time managing existing product attributes, freeing them to devote themselves to acquiring new ones. PIM facilitates brilliant work over hard work.
Synergize Marketing & Sales
eCommerce companies wage a war to win customers; this war is called marketing.
Good marketing is good messaging. PIM allows you to consistently supply target markets with accurate information about products and services. Say goodbye to the marketing promising one thing and sales delivering another. PIM makes managing sales channels effective and efficient, ensuring consistent messaging is much simpler than traditional methods.
5. Reduce Time-to-Market
Time-to-market is the time it takes to go from conceiving a product to being ready to sell it. No retail business can disregard its importance.
Using PIM, different teams and departments can work to improve efficiency simultaneously. Having a single data repository speeds up teamwork. Product information can be updated from that repository, and it becomes available immediately.
Workflow automation allows the following tasks to be effortless.
- Assign tasks to multiple employees automatically
- Manage progress at a glance
- Automate reminders
- Ensure tasks are completed in the correct order
- Set permissions so critical data is protected throughout processes
For example, PIM automates time-consuming tasks like working with vendors. Imagine how much less time your internationally sold products would take to market if you automated collaboration with your translation services.
Produce Catalogs Faster
Product catalogs remain a big part of omnichannel marketing. Digital or print, PDF, or on the web, catalogs provide another entry point into your product pages.
Aside from being of great use in direct marketing, catalogs guide customers through the digital landscape. Robust and consistent catalog content presents the opportunity to upsell and cross-sell customers. PIM organizes eCommerce product information into a central reference point for merchants and buyers. Hence, this ensures consistency and drives ecommerce conversions.
6. Drive Innovation
As new technologies fill the digital landscape, the information filling your product pages must be flexible and responsive. The most cutting-edge digital technologies, like virtual assistants and chatbots, require precisely structured data to work correctly.
This data is complicated to produce manually.
You need a system that ensures smooth updating transitions and supports as many channels as you want to syndicate. PIM centralization makes product information available for quicker integration with new solutions, so you can easily create customized and personalized customer experiences.
Integration
As e-commerce businesses expand, so does the number of services vital to ensuring continued sales success.
PIM works with:
- ERP systems
- Procurement systems
- Suppliers
- Data suppliers
- Legacy systems
- Print channels
- Digital customer channels
- Source systems
- 3rd party channels
Centralization of information is nothing if it isn’t complete, because it comes from a system you can’t integrate.
Enhance the Growth of eCommerce by Updating Product Pages.
A properly optimized product page helps boost online sales and directs how a customer moves through the buying process. Let’s discover how, with the manufactured in Page (mIP) page strategies and PIM software, you can improve your e-commerce business.
How Important Is PIM for eCommerce Success?
Digital retailers must manage thousands of items across multiple platforms to keep up with the competition. That’s when PIM helps eCommerce businesses reach their goals. A PIM system helps collect, organize, and publish product data on various platforms.
Managing product catalogs in a more intelligent way
Well-handled product catalogs ease the workload and the process of updating products manually. It concerns following a logical process to keep product information consistent, including its titles, pictures, product details, and descriptions.
With PIM technology, you can manage a much larger catalog. E-commerce product catalog management is effortless with PIM. Regardless of how many products you handle, automation helps you maintain an up-to-date catalog.
Benefits include:
- Consolidated product features
- Bulk edits are possible.
- Updates are automatically made on all sales channels.
- Simple process for introducing new products
- Quick and Flawless Distribution to Channels
Regular work and attention ensure a thriving multi-channel commerce approach. With PIM syndication, product information can be automatically published on Amazon, Shopify, and Google Shopping.
These changes also boost the quality of the information and improve how products are found on all markets.
Workflow Automation Can Lead to Improved Productivity
When your catalog expands, your processes must become even more efficient. When a PIM workflow is strong, teams manage every stage of creating, reviewing, and publishing products.
Marketing, compliance, and other steps are performed in the same place, which ensures faster approval and fewer delays.
What Makes Smarter Product Pages Important for eCommerce?
Achieving better product pages depends on planning, using technology, and executing the plan. Entities that employ PIM tools and plan their online catalogs smartly tend to:
- Increase the rate at which people complete an online purchase
- Decrease time-to-market
- Increase trust from your customers.
- Manage operations without difficulty.
You should pay more attention to insights and strategies that boost eCommerce sales, such as smart, data-backed product pages.
The Goal: eCommerce Success
Today’s eCommerce leaders know the role that quality product pages play in the success of their businesses.
In a bid to differentiate their brands from the competition, their product content is overflowing with:
- Rich description
- Beautiful images
- Precise information
- Interesting videos
- Compelling presentation
- Exhaustive completeness
For a brand to succeed, it must keep its product details the same, accurate, and appealing on all its platforms. PIM software is necessary at this point as it makes product catalog management easier, helps send catalogs to different channels, and streamlines the PIM process. This assists businesses in expanding rapidly and better reaching customers. Furthermore, utilizing PIM tools also allows you to drive e-commerce success.
Ultimately, e-commerce thrives on the digital exchange of information, which PIM facilitates. Hence, using PIM for e-commerce success helps.Now that you know how a PIM empowers you to increase revenue by optimizing your product pages, click here to see what Catsy can do for you today.