As with many things in ecommerce, the key to product information management is constant vigilance. It’s a long road to success but with a consistent focus on improving your practices and hardwiring processes, you should see results pretty quickly.
This year
This year, US e-commerce reached a new landmark with online business overtaking brick and mortar merchants for the first time in history. As retailers move into the e-commerce sector en masse, it’s never been more important to have a solid way of keeping track of an inventory that is being sold via a range of outlets. Businesses lose sales when there are issues with supply chain information with one recent article concluding that out-of-stocks are more costly than losing sales.
PIM
A means of storing, analyzing, managing and distributing product data, product information management has become a vital way of combating supply chain misinformation. But more than this, the explosion of product information management software (PIM) reflects its success in fomenting customer loyalty, creating quality web traffic, and improving conversion rates. All of these things can mean an increase in revenue.
Consolidation
Your first step is to centralize and standardize your data. You want to set up a single database to be the control center of all your operations with consistent formatting and comprehensive product information.
The best product information management software will reduce listing and inventory mistakes by eliminating some of the element of human error, also offering you better transparency for identifying supply chain issues. A final benefit is that you can easily incorporate new sales channels, improving your business scalability.
Process building
Every business is different and its product information management processes should reflect this by being tailored for efficiency. One major advantage of proper product management is that it can seriously increase your capacity to release new items onto the market by freeing up time. Automating a part of the process will obviate the need to manually update your product information, while also making any updates much quicker. With the right processes and software, your listings should always be consistent with your central database.
Data enrichment
Product information management is not just about streamlining these kind of processes to make them quicker. It’s also about repurposing some of the time you’ve saved to do things that will increase your revenues. Enhancing your product descriptions will ensure you’re not leaving consumers guessing about any of the specifics of your items. This will reduce your drop-out rate, meaning you’re losing out on fewer sales. Having a heavily automated process that allows you to edit product information quickly will also help you to test new tweaks to your website.
Optimization
When it comes to e-commerce, there are two KPIs that everyone should focus on: creating high quality traffic and converting casual browsers into continuous buyers. With constant monitoring, you can optimize your product information management system to help you achieve these goals.
With thoroughly illustrated, SEO-optimized, rich product information, you should draw together better traffic and quality shoppers who are more likely to purchase with you. Customizing your product information for different sales channels should help you increase your conversion rate. Conducting A/B testing will quantify which kind of listings are driving your conversions across the web, and inform how you put them together in the future.
