How does PIM Optimize Your Ecommerce Business?
The product-based market is growing at a faster rate with the tremendous increase in the competition. There has been a drastic change in the way the customers shop for their choice of product as they prefer searching for the product across the different eCommerce channels and then comparing them based on the various product-based details like its description, technical specifications, costing, etc.
These product details help the potential customers to select the product and make their purchases. The Product Information Management (PIM) platform allows the enterprise to manage all these product-related details and keep them updated across the different sales channels.
PIM For Ecommerce – A Brief
The PIM platform plays a very important role in the digital eCommerce strategy. This system helps in managing all the product-related information that is essential to the market and for selling the product through the different sales channels. This also includes the physical market places, digital branches, locations, etc.
The different functionalities that are essential in PIM eCommerce include:
- It should be scalable for handling millions of SKUs,
- It should provide unlimited fields for including the details for product specifications, attributes, and other product-related details.
- It must have the ability for managing the accessories, substitutes, alternatives, and replacements.
- It should provide strong taxonomical management for delivering a personalized experience to different types of customers.
- It must have the workflow that enables the content flow from the stage of product engineering to its post-sales services.
- It should have the capacity for managing the various catalogs including the built-in data quality system.
- It should provide deep interoperability with the applications like CMS, site search, commerce, etc.
To explore the essence of PIM for eCommerce business. visit Why is PIM Solution Considered an Essential for Modern eCommerce Business?
The different tools that are essential along with PIM in eCommerce include
Digital Asset Management (DAM)
This tool allows for organizing, storing, managing, searching, retrieving, and sharing of all the digital files related to the product. These assets include the files like images, documents, videos, graphics, spreadsheets, etc. Read An Ultimate Guide to Digital Asset Management (DAM) to get insights into the contribution of DAM in implementing a successful PIM.
Product grouping/ Family
This tool allows the grouping of the product into the class of similar and present as one product with different options on the website. This product grouping tool allows in streamlining the product pages and allows quicker search of the product.
Master Data Management (MDM)
This tool helps in capturing all the essential product information for creating the product catalog. This assists in adding, editing, deleting the items from the list. It contains different attributes for building the product database with details like brand, costing, description, availability, keywords, alternatives, accessories, shipping, etc.
To explore more about the MDM, check out All You Need to Know About Master Data Management (MDM) [Steps & Roadmap to Create Strategic MDM]
Taxonomy management
This tool allows in setting up the hierarchy by defining the attributes and assigning the items to the different categories using the drag and drop function.
Do you want to discuss the tools in detail and get a better understanding of the role of these tools in PIM for eCommerce?
Importance of Having PIM Solution For Your Ecommerce Business
Implementing the PIM in eCommerce is important and can help the organization in reaching out to more customers with all the essential information required for making the purchase decision.
1. Establishment of a single source of product information
The product information is gathered from various sources like different departments providing different details. Pulling out the details manually from the different spreadsheets and multiple systems can become tiresome and confusing.
The PIM system allows in bringing all the details from the raw product specifications, marketing copy, and other digital assets together.
2. Bring Automation
PIM allows in automatically collecting all the data from the different sources and then formatting it uniformly for consistency. These details are then exported to the eCommerce websites, social media shops, marketplaces, etc. Any changes, corrections made through the PIM are applied immediately across the different channels.
3. Reach market at a faster pace
While launching a new product or while entering the newer sales channel, the manual process needs time and effort. This defines the time required by the product to reach the market and start generating revenue.
By using the PIM software, the time required for the launching of the product decreases and provides the updated details quicker. It also allows easy integration by reducing the work. This allows new products in the various sales channels at a faster pace.
4. Improved quality and consistency of product details
The quality of the data provided at the different sales channels defines the reputation of the brand or the company. Providing incorrect or incorrect or incomplete product data can affect the company sales drastically and can reduce the overall profit.
The use of the PIM system allows in ingesting, adding, and reviewing the data this leads to the improvement of the data quality. Any changes made using the PIM system centrally are reflected across the different channels thus maintaining the data consistency.
5. Using effective marketing strategies
The sales and marketing of the product depending on the customer experience. If the customers gain confidence in the product or the brand then that leads to an increase in the sales of the product. With the increasing competition, the product is made available across the different channels and the customers can reach the product through the different touchpoints.
PIM enables enhancing the user experience by ensuring that the customers access the accurate and updated product details while making the purchase.
How does PIM Improve Your Ecommerce Business Visibility?
In this competitive world, it is important for making use of good search engine optimization (SEO) for product data. The enterprise can make use of the in-build PIM system in their eCommerce website for enriching and expanding the product data to their potential buyers.
For the enterprise having multiple products, optimizing the SEO for different products can be challenging but making use of PIM can make this task easier. The different steps involved for PIM in eCommerce include:
1. Working of the search engine
It is important to understand the trend of search in the market. The customers search the product based on the function or the purpose and not the product name, brand, etc. It is essential to identify the crucial keyword used for searching; the different search engines like Google can pair with the searcher for inferring the search intention.
The customers tend to search for the product based on its functioning or efficiency so for the energy-efficient refrigerators the customers can have the alternate search option as the energy star refrigerator.
2. Refine product data SEO strategy
Having rich product data is very important in the competitive world. If two different sellers are providing the same product, the seller providing maximum product details will gain more trust from the buyer. Thus PIM plays an important role as it will help the company to provide maximum accurate product information to the potential customers.
3. Collecting product data
There are numerous product details available with the company from the different departments involved in the various processes of its manufacture. All these details are important but the end-user requires only the essential ones that are critical for the audience.
PIM helps the company to manage all the product details and categorize them. The Details required by the product vendor are different from the details needed by the potential buyer. All this data can be easily compiled and stored centrally by using the PIM system and can be shared with the different users based on the requirement.
4. Replace the spreadsheets using the PIM system
Managing the business data using spreadsheets has been the traditional, tedious and time-consuming technique. As the competition increases, the company launches its product through different channels, and the number of the products also increases.
Managing these spreadsheets with time becomes difficult and the chances of incorporating errors also increase.
Using the PIM system for eCommerce will help in capturing the rich details along with the spreadsheet data more efficiently without errors. PIM can also include the details like images, videos, documents, reviews, etc. to improve the data quality.
5. Enrich product data
The customers appreciate the products that are supported by the important specifications, graphic images, accurate details, etc. This helps in building trust over the brand and the company thus improving the sales of the product.
Based on the geographical location, PIM also helps in incorporating the local details like the use of local language and currency data for the product. These improved product details will keep the customers engaged and also encourage them to make the purchase.
6. Publishing and distribution of product data
The eCommerce store allows the company to distribute and share the product details with a larger crowd. Taking the help of a third party, the company can make efforts to reach out to the larger crowd and attract more buyers for their products. PIM allows publishing the product details on the different channels with a variety of content.
Do you want to develop a tailored Product Information Management for your eCommerce business that addresses your specific business needs and challenges?
How does PIM Improve Your Ecommerce Growth?
PIM is a very powerful tool that helps online retailers improve their eCommerce websites. Making use of this PIM system allows in lowering the manual work of adding, editing, organizing the product details across the different sales channels. This process helps the company by saving time, money, and effort.
The company can use these important resources for different important tasks. The different ways by which the PIM implementation can help in boosting the eCommerce business include:
1. Reduce time-to-market
As the competition in the market is increasing, the company needs to get its products in the market at a faster rate. It is important to reduce the time required for the product life cycle. PIM includes all the data provided by the different teams involved in the organization for the product development.
As all teams can access these details, they are well coordinated thus the process of product development and reaching the market decreases drastically. This allows the product to reach the market faster.
2. Increased automation
Implementing the PIM system has the added advantage of allowing automated processes for the previous manual work. These PIM systems make use of logical engines that can configure rule-based operations. This helps in saving time for the marketing team. This automation process makes the scaling easier.
It also provides consistency for the data provided across the different channels. Categorization is also made possible using automation. PIM provides scalable workflows for supplying the data to the different users through the enrichment process and can be published with reduced manual efforts.
3. Localization, translation, and personalization
For expanding the business and reaching out to the larger crowds, the company must provide the details to the customers in different geographical regions through different channels. Every location, country channel has its requirements based on the location like the language for communication, the local currency details, etc.
Implementing a PIM system ensures that the customers have the product details in their local language with the cost mentioned in the local currency. PIM allows translation of the product information into the required local language for easy communication with potential buyers.
4. Improved conversion
PIM allows enriching the product information while maintaining the accuracy of the data. PIM ensures that the high-quality information reaches the customer and they can search for the right type of product based on their requirement. It makes sure that all the keywords are incorporated in the attributes that allow in proper searching of the desired product.
PIM also makes sure that the correct information reaches their end-users and the customers can easily understand the details for the products and services. The different product information in form of descriptions, images, and graphics adds value to the product. This helps to build brand confidence and trust in the company. This helps in improving the loyalty of the customers to the company and also attracting the newer ones.
PIM also provides access to the customers for their reviews, tutorial videos, warranty certificates, return policies, etc. which help to increase transparency thus improving the customer experience and satisfaction.
To explore more benefits of Product Information Management, don’t miss to read What Are the Benefits of PIM (Product Information Management) Systems?
Do you want to discuss the benefits of PIM for your eCommerce business that provides your operational and revenue driven benefits?
Bottom Line
PIM is a very essential and handy system for the improved eCommerce of the product. It allows in simplifying the process of providing the product details to the different sales channels in an efficient way. PIM also allows combining the different tills that play a crucial role in product eCommerce. PIM ensures that accurate product details reach potential customers across the globe through the different channels.
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