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With great buying journeys becoming synonymous with compelling product experiences, there’s no room for broken product data in successful sales. For this reason, a cookie-cutter approach to product data management will no longer work. Instead, companies need to provide buyers with rich information and exclusive experiences to positively influence their buying decisions.
Low-quality product information sometimes manifests as conflicting and outdated data across multiple channels. It can discourage customers from completing their purchases as they may not find the necessary information in some (or any) of the channels.
Not surprising at least 40% of consumers returns a product due to low-quality product content, and 30% abandon shopping carts because the product description does not meet their standards. With multiple options available, it’s easy to lose customers to rival brands that provide compelling, updated and accurate product data and ensure delectable purchases.
Bad product data is a widespread problem that companies need to identify before it gets out of hand. Insufficient or insufficient data entered into systems can directly cost a company its revenue, reputation and customer loyalty.
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As a result, companies are constantly looking for alternative methods to deal with ever-increasing product data. Depending on the type and size of an organization, it often has multiple systems for managing product data, digital assets, inventory, accounting, order information, and shipping information. And therein lies the real challenge. Too many systems can create multiple conflicting versions, adding to the chaos.
Well-managed product information is therefore not only the basis for an excellent shopping experience, but is essential for departments such as sales, marketing and customer service. In short, it is in everyone’s interest that product information remains correct, complete and consistent.
Here’s how correcting product data and turning it into pristine product information drives compelling sales:
Building a single reliable source of product data is essential
Multiple teams work together to bring smooth product experiences to life for successful conversions and satisfying purchases. But even when different teams use best-of-breed applications to perform their tasks perfectly, data silos arise, creating inconsistent and duplicate data that confuses customers and leads to wrong conclusions.
A single and reliable source of product information can help minimize these errors. Merge data from multiple sources and store it in a central location accessible to all teams so that any changes made are automatically distributed to different departments, translated into multiple languages, and can be syndicated across channels. This can streamline brand communication, and composed messages can be sent across multiple digital touchpoints.
Every product needs clean, complete and updated data
As businesses grow, product data becomes unmanageable, outdated and unsuitable for new systems. It also often lacks consistency due to the introduction of newer versions of products – which, if not updated in the final product offering, can negatively impact buyers’ decisions. Updating relevant information in a central location prevents confusion over different versions. This contributes to a smooth, immersive and error-free product experience that drives sales and differentiates your product from competitors.
With affordable smartphones and readily available product data, consumers can learn about different products and their specifications and make an in-depth comparison with other options before purchasing the product. So it’s essential to provide accurate and up-to-date information – because nothing influences customer purchasing decisions more than clean, comprehensive and engaging product data.
Simplifying omnichannel merchandising
Marketing and product merchandising are arduous tasks that require the most up-to-date product data (product descriptions, pricing details, and digital assets) to be disseminated across multiple channels to positively influence customers’ purchasing decisions. Therefore, brands need to respond to buyer needs in real time by providing accurate product data across multiple channels and streamlining it across multiple touchpoints, making marketing and merchandising simple and effective.
Today’s advanced data management systems allow users to schedule content to be published by smoothing out the process from product creation to organization and publication. Moreover, when publishing data, the newly created categories are taken into account with appropriate SEO metadata, descriptions and banners.
CX driven by seamless data strategies
With several channels pulling product data from a central database to keep customers up to date with the latest changes, high-quality information becomes the foundation of customer experience, which ultimately turns into customer loyalty. By ensuring that data is exported harmoniously to different marketplaces and social media platforms where customers are, companies can quickly change marketing and customer experience strategies in real time, escalate or de-escalate focus on certain items, and introduce new products or product lines when they want . need. Therefore, with reliable product master data, companies can access and use data according to market demand.
Shortening the time-to-market for new product launches
In a fast-paced environment, speed-to-market is vital for almost every business in every industry, especially retail, manufacturing, and e-commerce. Reducing time to market is a critical factor that keeps brands ahead of their competitors and helps to increase customer loyalty. In addition, launching a product earlier can give brands the first-mover advantage, helping them position themselves as market leaders.
With multiple teams making as many changes as needed and notifying other teams quickly, product information is enriched through automation and streamlining of processes, reducing manual tasks and increasing productivity. Everything comes together to speed up the product launch process.
Conclusion
Product data has taken on a new meaning among companies across industries. It has grown exponentially in recent years (much of this can be attributed to the pandemic). The projected growth of the global retail e-commerce sales market — $7.4 trillion by 2025, or more than 50% — testifies to the importance of data. As online shopping continues to expand, the effort required to meet this demand will only increase.
In the past, companies didn’t have the right tools to ensure the uniformity of their data, but companies are now finding ways to resolve data discrepancies by streamlining processes and eliminating silos.
Companies also need to work on developing data literacy within the enterprise. A wide range of product data, such as technical data (color, size, dimensions and weight), usage data (description of how the product is used), and marketing and sales data (using emotional language to make a connection between the product and potential buyers) must be administered on an ongoing basis. Extensive and detailed efforts in managing different types of data reduce the likelihood of product returns.
For successful sales, brands will need to pay more attention to personalizing products and helping customers buy effortlessly in the coming years. They will also need to prioritize partner collaborations, as adding additional products or services to the purchase is one of the successful ways to drive a company’s growth. All this promotes data complexity.
Brands should also see data as a means to get their products to market faster. It should help them keep products competitive and make collaboration easier by refining content, enforcing security, and fixing disparate systems. In short, companies need to take full control of their data to pave the way for future scalability across multiple systems.
Dietmar Rietsch is CEO of Pimcore.
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