Product onboarding can prove difficult in and of itself, and without an efficient product data management system, you may find your e-commerce site is falling behind. Between misinformation, low-quality supplier data, duplicate content, sluggish time to market and ineffective quality control procedures, your item onboarding process faces a number of obstacles every single day. Here are five of the top challenges facing your product data management process.
1. Cutting Down On Misinformation
Misinformation is a huge challenge when it comes to product data management. According to a study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of UPS, 65% of e-commerce returns result from retailer mistakes. Of that number, 22% of online customers say they’ve returned products because they were portrayed differently online.
Inaccurate product content can lead to customer disappointment, and ultimately, lost loyalty. If you want to decrease the number of online returns, which can prove costly for both you and the consumer, it’s important to put out accurate product information, from the product image to the product description. And if you catch wind of product misinformation, make sure you act quickly to resolve the issue and prevent further problems.
2. Dealing With Supplier Data
Every product page should contain relevant product attributes, so potential customers can easily navigate your website and find exactly what they’re looking for. However, if product attributes are missing, incomplete or inaccurate, managing your e-commerce catalog can become quite difficult. Oftentimes, suppliers hand over product data with information that barely meets minimum requirements or is missing several important product attributes.
Besides providing limited information, suppliers may also submit content in the wrong format or rife with spelling errors. For example, perhaps they noted that the product was available in grey, but you spell the attribute “gray.” In addition to addressing missing and incomplete information, you’ll need to standardize their product information prior to publishing, which can take weeks, if not longer, for your company to clean up – especially if you’re dealing with an overwhelming amount of SKUs.
3. Publishing SEO-Friendly Content
Unlike regular web pages, e-commerce product pages often contain less content, meaning fewer opportunities to stand out amongst other retailers. And if your product descriptions are duplicated on other sites, you’re going to have a difficult time attracting potential buyers. In order to climb to the top of the search engine results, you’ll need purely unique content – even among SKUs possessing similar attributes that may only vary in pattern or color.
Going hand in hand with obtaining high-quality supplier data, producing unique content requires your team to write or acquire exclusive product information that’s accurate and consistent. Unfortunately, you’re likely to experience pushback from some suppliers that want product pages to deliver a consistent message across all e-commerce sites. In this case, you’ll need a product data management process that offers flexibility, especially when working with detail-oriented suppliers.
4. Increasing Time To Market
Between SKUs needing frequent updating and newly available products, your product data management process likely requires a lot of time and effort and can draw valuable resources away from other important tasks. To keep up with and maintain your product catalog, your item onboarding team requires a proper product data management system. Without one, you may find yourself falling behind, slowing time to market to a crawl.
Efficient product data management processes help speed time to market by eliminating delays due to incorrect, incomplete and missing information. A well-executed system also allows for instant data access, eliminating the need to sift through e-mails and other modes of communication for product information, letting you outmaneuver costly delays with simple data management.
5. Relying Solely On Data Feeds
While automated product data feeds can help you save time and increase productivity, it’s vital to have a dedicated team review the product images, titles, identifiers, product descriptions and product attributes to ensure fresh, relevant and comprehensive information upon publication. Since potential buyers will use this information to make a purchasing decision, your data must be accurate, and most of all, complete.
Reviewing your product data feeds helps ensure proper quality control procedures. Any discrepancies – be it weight, dimensions, colors, etc. – should be cleared up at this stage. One simple oversight could result in costly implications, ranging from lost sales to lawsuits and beyond.
The Solution
If your product data management process faces any of these challenges, your disorganized system could be costing you more than you think. Restructure your product data management strategy with a managed service from Virtucom Group. Besides collecting digital assets from suppliers, our managed onboarding service can help improve speed to market and help ensure accuracy.
Data integrity, time to market and increased conversions are vital to all e-commerce retailers. Our product data management and unique content creation program ensures consistent product names, robust product descriptions, complete and accurate product attributes and an array of digital assets are at your disposal, providing time to market and quality improvements that will outpace your fiercest competition. Contact our team and get started with Virtucom Group today.