Growing Your E-Commerce Business? You’ll Need A PIM.
Product Information Management software, or PIM systems, are becoming a critical piece of the technology stack for any e-commerce operation. Here’s why you need one if you’re focused on scaling up.
Given the growing competition and the rapidly evolving industry, e-retailers must come up with solutions to overcome their operational challenges if they want to be more successful. As a tool for efficiently managing every detail in your product listings, the PIM is a must-have for e-retailers selling on marketplaces.
The 2020 challenges for e-tailers
In 20 years of e-commerce, some challenges have not changed. Offering a complete, up-to-date and precise catalog, along with the product information it contains, is a major concern for conversion. Thorough control over the data and its quality is crucial in order to avoid mistakes, which are the cause of too many products being returned (incorrect size, model or purpose, for example).
Internally, collecting the product information and writing the content is quite time-consuming: it’s therefore essential to optimize time and efficiency on these tasks.
But that’s not the most compelling force at play. These last few years have seen advancing developments in new technologies with a direct impact on e-retailers. Voice search capabilities or conversational agents like Voice Assistants is one example. Uses of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence are also vastly increasing the number of innovation and customization-related opportunities.
However, in order for these technologies to function properly and integrate the customer experience seamlessly, they require solid and structured product content. Using those technologies is relevant only if they are interconnected. The technology without any product content would be nothing more than an empty shell, and would alter the customer experience and the conversion rate.
Why a PIM is the answer
PIM systems were created to deal with the many sources of product information, and the increasing numbers of both sales and communication channels.
It’s a marketing tool which allows the user to centralize and standardize product information. Its purpose is to help with the management, enrichment and diffusion of this information (descriptions, visuals, customer reviews, technical data…) onto all channels.
The objective of a PIM is to maximize the conversion rate while offering reliable, thorough and precise information. With an error rate close to 0, it also helps to lower the number of returns.
For its users, the PIM helps save time and gain efficiency. Updating a product’s content, opening a new marketplace, or launching a new product is only a few clicks away. Thanks to automatic workflows, processes become easier and your time to market is optimized.
Shoppingfeed’s PIM Partnerships
Our teams here at Shoppingfeed are deeply convinced that the combination of a PIM and a feed management system is the key to optimizing performance on marketplaces. Shoppingfeed has forged a partnership with Akeneo for seamless, automatic product line expansions to any channels or marketplaces a user might choose. Akeneo is an open-source leader with a powerful and flexible PIM tool. PIM software offers the customer a unique experience on any sales channel, while maintaining full consistency with the product information itself.
