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A PIM (Product Information Manager) is a software extension that tracks all the data in real time corresponding to a company’s catalogues and inventory. It helps businesses to organize all the product information and additional content (like media assets) by:
Enriching it
Finding mistakes and omissions
Sending the product information updated and synchronized to all channels
Making changes in real time and connecting them to e-commerce platforms, marketplaces and catalog design programs
Importing and exporting spreadsheets.
When is a PIM necessary
A PIM system becomes essential when a business grows and starts developin some aspects and sales of a considerable volume and the teams can’t cope with.
For example, large retailers, distributors, manufacturers and companies that handle a complex multichannel marketing mix will definitely need a PIM system.
As bigger becomes a catalogue, will be more exposed to mistakes and inconsistencies between sections of the team that continuously perform catalogue updates. The product information that a PIM coordinates avoids those situations totally automated.
In short, a PIM is an essential tool for your business if:
The information of your products has frequent changes
You manage a large number of products or references, groups and subgroups
There are different departments and/or sales channels involved in product information
You don’t have time to invest in expanding sales channels
You want to open new markets and languages
You’re using more complex sales strategies and want to simplify them
Which kind of PIM is better for your business
They exist two different kinds of PIM systems, which adapt to various aspects of a business:
Open source: those PIM softwares allow users to access to the source code, let them make changes, additions or any connections they want. Customization is possible, but they use to mean also additional costs and external IT teams needs for changes or new extensions.
Saas/Cloud: Cloud or SaaS PIMs providers offer their clients help in all the integration process. Some of them also make companies to only pay for those services they need, personalizing each case.
What can a Product Information Manager do for you
PIM is key for ecommerce success for several reasons:
It helps to reduce cart abandonment
One of the main causes for leaving a shopping cart online is poor product content, besides price and delivery times.
Giving rich product information to users and complementary materials that provide a good experience (videos, tutorials, user reviews, AR…) is key to convince the shopper to not leave your e-commerce.
Makes your sales increase
Product information has a huge impact on conversion rates and sales for any e-commerce business. The better the product information, the better your sales will be. This is related to the previous point, because more than 80% of users who can’t find some product data lose trust in a brand and abandon their shopping cart.
Reduces number of product returns
It is logical: if a product page and e-commerce store has all the information that the user is looking for, the probability of finding the correct product increases. Product information is the best gateway to find a reliable way to buy things online and be happy when they arrive.
Improves the brand image
The best investment for any e-commerce is to have happy customers that spread the word about their products and to appear in the first positions of any search engine.
Listen to your users, improve your e-commerce content to help them and make they trust and be happy with your brand, and stand out.
Gives valuable data about the business
A company can also learn a lot about their strategy if they analyze their product content, the trends in the market and the preferences of online shoppers in your niche.
Compare your metrics with your competitior’s localize the keywords you are using in your product information and look for new SEO and SEM opportunities, perform online surveys and focus groups with real or potential customers to try new products before launching or improve your catalogs, and choose automation tools to save you time in these analysis tasks.
Product content is much more than aSKU, a price and a product title. It can help you to gain better traffic and conversion rates, and it’s also a must-have for successful marketing strategies.
A PIM software saves costs, resources and hours of work thanks to a synchronized management of all product content and assets in a single repository that will be the source of truth for all your e-commerce channels.
If you ensure zero mistakes you will have more satisfied customers, which means more traffic, which results in more benefits for your business.
