In e-commerce, we live and breathe product data. But not just any old product data; it has to be clear, educational, and accessible. How? A good first step would be putting in place an effective product information management (PIM) system. In a nutshell, it’s the central hub for your product data. And the market is booming: According to recent studies, the PIM market is projected to be valued at $59.25 billion by 2027. The hype is real. Let’s get into why…
A PIM system is what will help you collect, manage, and organize product information from various sources, ensuring consistency and accuracy. On a global level, many businesses utilize PIM systems to centralize their product data. This makes it easier to streamline and distribute goods across e-commerce platforms, retail partners, and digital marketing channels.
While this has its many advantages, you should keep in mind that integrating core product data still requires substantial manual effort. After all, you need detailed descriptions, specifications, illustrations, and photos, and all of it needs to meet the unique requirements of each of your sales channels.
Clear and rich product data can have a significant impact on both customer decisions and business performance. Google found that 85% of consumers find product information and pictures incredibly important when deciding to buy. What’s more, bad product data can cost you up to 25% of your revenue. So it stands to reason that product data enrichment—the process of refining and enhancing product information—is essential to improving the online shopping experience. It’ll empower your customers, giving them a better understanding of the product, leading to greater satisfaction and reduced return rates.
It’s also important to mention a few words about standardizing product data. It’s integral to effective product comparisons and thus a prerequisite for a properly functioning guided selling system. Standardized data helps precisely match customers’ needs with the products being offered, elevating the shopping experience by facilitating informed decision making via personalized recommendations.
Product data enrichment involves aggregating data from multiple sources, from the manufacturer’s specifications to proprietary databases and even user-generated content. Once it’s all collected, it is then standardized and enriched. But what happens when crucial parameters are missing?
Our approach at Outfindo involves parameter extrapolation and clustering, whereby products are grouped to identify similarities, helping to fill missing data points by leveraging known information within these clusters. We use expert knowledge to estimate values for missing specifications, like phone camera features, ensuring comprehensive, accurate, and unified product information.
The unification and standardization of diverse data sets into one coherent format can be challenging, especially when you’re dealing with varying measurements. Take bikes, for example, where some sizes are listed in inches and some in S/M/L/XL, depending on the brand. Generating new data for information gaps or mismatches like this requires exact algorithms and expertise. For instance, at Outfindo, we can compute phone battery life and score component quality in bikes via data extrapolation and clustering. This involves gathering and analyzing expert-level data to calculate accurate values for intricate specifications.
You might be thinking, “All of this sounds really technical!” And you’d be right. That’s why a key step in data enrichment is translating all those technical specifications into language the average consumer can understand. Simplifying that complex jargon requires you to highlight the most relevant benefits and features of your products.
At Outfindo, for example, we can score bike components and explain their ideal usage. Or we can review phone cameras by megapixels as well as by the effect of the hardware and software on image quality. Going further, we can even show customers which camera is best suited for professional use and which is fine for day-to-day use. In the end, these are the kinds of insights that customers are really looking for.
So what does this mean for your e-commerce business? We’ve found that enriched product data can make a significant impact on your success. For instance, products with enriched data see higher conversion rates because of improved customer understanding and confidence. Moreover, enriched data facilitates better cross-selling and upselling opportunities by accurately matching related products and accessories.
The effort it takes to manually manage all this is immense. It’s often impossible for businesses to maintain and sustain core data, let alone update and improve it. But the journey from manual data management to automated enrichment marks a significant leap forward, positioning PIM at the heart of e-commerce innovation. Automated PIM solutions streamline these manual processes, allowing businesses to focus on growth and customer satisfaction without getting bogged down by data management complexities.
When used together, data enrichment and automation can bring you unparalleled product data clarity and accessibility that can meet the ever-evolving needs of the digital consumer. These solutions are critical in enhancing the online shopping experience and driving business growth.
