As suppliers and retailers enter 2018, they should be aware of the staggering numbers generated by online sales during the 2017 holiday season. Online shoppers spent over $5 billion on Black Friday, nearly a 17% increase year-over-year, and another $3.45 billion on Cyber Monday.
While Black Friday and Cyber Monday are known as the two largest shopping days of the year, the effort needed to set a supplier and retailer up for sustained success should start now, at the beginning of a new year.
With new products ready to release and others pending integration into a data model for display on-site, it can seem overwhelming to have to navigate through the end-to-end process of manually securing product data and then inputting it into an existing data schema. The solution is simple – Virtucom Group.
Your Product Data Management Solution
Virtucom Group's managed data service eliminates the need for manual data entry by suppliers into a retailer’s current data model. Whether your team is currently reliant on a costly data feed subscription or the manual effort needed to load product information into a portal, item setup sheet or product information management (PIM) system, Virtucom Group reallocates the task from you and leaves it in the hands of our team of trusted content specialists.
Our dedicated team personally reviews each of the products contained within an assortment. We ingest the raw product data you provide to us in any format, and normalize each asset to fit within an existing data model. Each product is then vetted for completeness, eliminating any holes found in the product data. If missing features are identified within the supplied information or discrepancies are found, we'll work with a supplier to fill any gaps so it's inclusive and ready to display on the retailer’s site. This data cleaning and quality control are crucial components to the life cycle of a product that can negatively impact sales if not done properly.
After the supplied data has been cleansed, our creative team will provide the retailer with robust product descriptions, formulized product names and enhanced feature/benefit statements, all tailored to the requested style/tone and containing best practices for search engine optimization (SEO).
Why Should I Consider Virtucom Group For My Product Data Management?
We understand the amount of time required to provide accurate product data to display online. Instead of incurring that effort internally, rely on us to do it for you. There are many benefits to outsourcing this work with Virtucom Group, including:
- Speed – Our committed team works daily to ensure the product data you have provided is completed in a timely manner. Time to market is imperative in today’s online marketplace. Displaying the latest consumer electronic available for sale ahead of your competitor could mean the difference between a sale and a potential customer looking elsewhere to make their purchase.
- Accuracy – Poor product data displaying on your website can lead to decreased credibility in the online marketplace, bad reviews and fewer conversions. Don't entrust your product data to an internal resource with other responsibilities. Leave it to our team of experts who complete this work for a living. During the course of our 15-year history, Virtucom has partnered with dozens of retailers and thousands of suppliers to develop best practices surrounding product data management. Our 100% accuracy rating is built upon the relationships we have cultivated with our partners over the years. Thanks to those relationships, our dedicated item onboarding team has experience working in numerous industries across every product type. The result? They're able to focus their full time and experience on completing your assortment of products – and only that.
- Simple Setup – With Virtucom Group, IT integration is not necessary. The managed service comes complete with technical capability and a straightforward setup process, so you can begin providing us with your product data right away.
How Is Product Data Management Beneficial For Suppliers And Retailers?
Because Virtucom Group provides a fully managed service solution that eliminates the workload for item onboarding, it's valuable to both suppliers and retailers.
Suppliers are able to move more products, and therefore more accurate data, forward in an accelerated manner without placing a burden on internal resources. If you have a repository containing your entire data catalog, we'll access that to gather the information we need. If you have an inventory of digital assets that need to be culled for text and product copy, we can work through those as well. No matter the file or format, we take what you have available and transform it into ingestible content for the retailer to display and for the consumer to review, understand and trust.
Retailers can increase conversion rates by providing potential customers with the latest products featuring quality-controlled data, fully normalized to fit your schema. Unique product copy, populated product attributes that meet defined requirements, digital assets that can be used as further collateral and more are all included within our service.
If you’re a supplier or a retailer becoming dissatisfied with your product data management process, consider partnering with Virtucom Group today. Be rewarded with accelerated delivery times, accurate product data and higher conversion rates.
