A Product Information Management (PIM) is a clear differentiator when it comes to customer experience. Don’t believe us? Take it from Jorij Abraham, author of Product Information Management (Management for Professionals): A PIM system…
- Reduces time-to-market by up to 400%.
- Increases sales from 15% to more than 50%.
- Results in up to 23% fewer product returns.
- Results in up to 27% fewer customer inquiries.
If you want to figure out how to lead your business to that kind of success, continue reading for five ways a PIM can boost your ecommerce website results.
A PIM Enhances Product Filtering
A recent study shows poorly maintained and synchronized product data causes roughly 3.5% loss in total sales each year—which is significant when you consider the total annual sales revenue your company earns.
When shopping online, a customer’s number one priority is to get exactly what they want, quickly and easily. That’s where a PIM solution comes into play. A PIM enhances product filtering by keeping consistent style and variants for your products.
Put yourself in the position of a men’s clothing retailer that sells a wide range of products online. If you are running your company in an effectively managed PIM environment, “shirt” would be the category name, “dress shirt” would be the product, and a size large in the color blue would classify the item. The category, product and item fields can all be used as keywords and titles.
With a well-thought-out product filtering system and when this information is made available, your business will experience:
- Improved site navigation.
- Optimized customer experience.
- Organized data management.
A PIM Heightens Website Search Capabilities
At Convergence Data, we always say your ecommerce website is only as good as your product data. The same rings true for search capabilities—any good search experience is only as good as the product information that is shown on the ecommerce website.
A product directory (taxonomy) structured with the help of a PIM solution makes it simple for the search function on your ecommerce website to guide customers in the right direction during their shopping journey.
Even more, heightened search capabilities allow for faster search times, meaning your customers will be able to find what they are looking for quickly. Studies have shown redirect links that take longer than three seconds to load increase abandonment rates—which leads to lost sales.
When your organization has a logically built product taxonomy, search engines gain the ability to read the classification of categories and subcategories—this provides improved ecommerce search results and makes product enrichment a lot simpler.
A PIM Supports Your SEO Strategy
Search engine optimization (SEO) strategies are a vital component of any digital marketing campaign. If your organization is making SEO a priority this quarter (as they should be), then it's best to have all the right tools up front—most importantly, a PIM.
The goal of a PIM is to generate leads by giving potential customers fully optimized product pages. As long as your team is fueling your PIM system with the right keywords, product data and detailed images, your customers will have all the information they need to convert on your site.
A PIM provides the digital foundation your SEO strategy needs to accomplish that goal. It helps you keep track of product information, keep it consistent across systems and optimize it for your business's ecommerce website presence.
A PIM Allows for Competitive Intelligence
When it comes to standing out in a crowded ecommerce marketplace, your parts and product data is the backbone of your strategy. Without a solid foundation, your competitors will earn more market share. Knowing how your competitors are finding success is some of the most important information you can obtain, regardless of your industry.
A PIM allows you to do more than optimizing your own pages for the keywords you’re already ranking for—diving deeper into your research will show you which keywords your competitors are outperforming you with. Your PIM system gives you the ability to then plug them into your product pages.
While blog and pillar page content is valuable to your business initiative, before you start drafting your next one, take a step back to identify where you can outrank your competitors. Find areas where potential customers can start seeing your products alongside your competition—because depending on the details you’ve implemented into your PIM, there’s a chance they click on your search result instead.
A PIM Can Cater to Unique Platforms
There is one item you can always count on someone having in their back pocket—a mobile device. For many people, phones and tablets are their primary means of accessing the Internet. That said, consider how heavily mobile compatibility impacts your search results.
Studies show search engines have started to rank websites higher if their content is optimized for mobile. To be optimized for mobile, each of your product pages must display content uniquely regardless of the device being used.
While the text on your ecommerce website will transfer more easily to a mobile device, that’s not always the case for photos and videos. Luckily though, the functionality of a PIM automatically resizes multimedia elements to cater to platform-specific requirements.
So no matter where potential customers are browsing your ecommerce website, your product images and text will tell the story of your brand you always intended it to.
Discover More PIM Benefits
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