The Way You Manage Product Information is Affecting Your Sales

Over recent years, there have been many researches conducted that proved what the e-commerce professionals had already noticed – the quality and completeness of product information has a direct impact on the company’s sales.

As the online marketplace evolves, so do the ideas and knowledge about what kind of content has the most impact on customers’ purchasing decisions. There are many discussions among professionals about the optimal length of product descriptions and which information they should or should not include, the number of product images or videos to be displayed, what kind of suggestions and recommendations generate the best response and so on.

However, what is certain; more accurate and completed product information equals better sales.

The opposite stands true as well, however. Inaccurate or incomplete product content can damage customers’ trust in the brand or the retailer.

The research presented by Shotfarm in 2016 has shown that roughly 95% of shoppers consider product information an essential factor when making a purchase decision and expect retailers to provide comprehensive and quality product content to accompany the sales item they are looking at.

“Products are purchased from retailers and brands whose product information makes shoppers feel confident in doing so.” – concludes Shotfarm.

By the beginning of 2018, we can assume the importance of this is even higher, and no doubt, failing to meet customers’ expectations would impact retailers in the most negative way.

The most common effects of product content quality in digital sales are apparent in the field of brand reputation and trustworthiness for shoppers. Incomplete or poorly presented product information may lead to:

• Cart abandonment. While the most common reason for shoppers to abandon their carts is the cost, product info plays a large role as well. Consumers are more likely to abandon a shopping cart if product descriptions are not comprehensive or complete or if the images provided are too few or poor quality.
• More returns. If you look at customer reviews under almost any online store product, especially it applies to clothing and apparel brands (they are affected the most) most negative reviews will state, “The actual product did not match the description,” as the reason for customer’s dissatisfaction. Not only are consumers likely to return an online purchase if the product information did not match the product they received, but this will also generate a strong negative emotional response that may hurt your brand’s or store’s reputation.
• Ruined brand/store reputation. This one is probably the most significant effect of customers having negative experiences that can affect a retailer long-term. Most customers would not want to deal with a retailer again after having a negative shopping experience because of inaccurate product information. A single inaccuracy in your PIM can lead to losing customers forever, so presenting shoppers with accurate product descriptions and images is critical.

Although the majority of vendors in established e-commerce markets are very much aware of the negative impact that poorly managed product information can have on sales, it is still often hard and very time/labor consuming for them to monitor and track their product content accuracy.

It is obvious that high-quality product information is key for companies looking to increase sale performance. But what can they do to improve their content creation, management and sharing processes?

Luckily, modern PIM technology has created opportunities for retailers to automate and streamline their product information processes. Here are some important steps you can take to set your PIM on the right track:

Many companies up to this day are still holding on to the practice of using excel sheets for their product content tracking. While spreadsheets are undoubtfully a great general-purpose solution for many tasks, managing your product information in excel is pretty much the opposite of efficiency.

There is literally no good way to automate and streamline the task of keeping your product content up-to-date when spreadsheets are your primary PIM tool. This means endless cutting and pasting and a huge space for errors.

Use a Product Information Manager instead. There is a variety of these products on the market and they are a tool that has been purpose-built to simplify this otherwise annoying and time-consuming task.

A good PIM system will automatically update your catalog items when needed and easily share the current info with all stakeholders. One of the most impressive features any decent PIM will offer is letting you connect to your partners’ and suppliers’ data sources, ERP, media and internal data servers, and even import the spreadsheets you might receive from the less progressive partners.

Once you have a PIM solution that can automate your product content management processes and keep all the product details up-to-date, your team would have more time and resources to focus on what matters most:

• Enrich your product descriptions with more accurate and detailed information.
• Customize the content per channel or geographic region (currencies, languages, measurements, etc.).
• Display all sizes, colors, and other specs.
• Add more high-quality photos, videos, and other media.

Your PIM system will ensure that all these new updates are correctly implemented and distributed without you having to copy-and-paste.

No more human error factor! A good PIM software can be set up to automatically detect any missing information in the required fields for every product record. You can configure it to serve your specific needs and mark certain fields as “required” or set a minimum percentage of information that needs to be filled in. This helps to avoid incomplete product content items from being published.

Product information management can be a complex and resource consuming process, but the new generation PIM systems make it a whole lot easier for brands to adhere to retailer requirements and for vendors to provide the most comprehensive data to the consumers. With the right technology at hand, retailers are getting more and more opportunities to offer high-quality product information and increase customer satisfaction, which leads to better digital sales.