One of the biggest challenges in e-commerce is maintaining consistency in data quality. 

Data system stores a brand's product data including information such as price, color and size and other rich media--like images of the product.

When not aligned, retailers and customers will get inconsistent brand experiences across multi-channel and new age delivery channels.

A reliable and secure product content management platform is what you need to survive in the eCommerce market. 

If you cannot handle the product data, you will be out of the game in no time. 

But, what is the product data? What is a product content management platform? Is that even important?

Let's find it out!

What is Product Data?

The product data is the central hub that helps your business to build, launch scale and grow. 

Here are the essential product data that every eCommerce businesses have;

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• Title of the product: It helps the user to find your product.
• Image: The more appealing your image, the more users will love it. 
• Category: Comprises a group of similar products under one umbrella. 
• Product type: The group of products that shares the exact attributes. For example, digital products and physical goods.
• Description: A summary of your product that describes the features to the users. 
• GTIN: The numerical version of the barcode that helps identify your products. 
• Care instructions: The instructions that guide the user about handling the product. 
• Material: The data about the packaging materials and other components needed for manufacturing the product. 
• Style guide: A style guide is a document that provides guidelines for how you should present your brand from both a visual and language perspective.
• Sales performance: The database that shows the history of all the sales over a particular period. It helps in revising the sales performance. 
• Product attachments: It shows the additional information about the products to the end user. 

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In a nutshell, product data is data collected around a specific product. Solid research and robust product data will help you optimize your to maximizing revenues and reducing costs. So that you can serve your customers better - which ultimately translates into higher profits for your business. 

Importance of Managing Your Product Data

Most eCommerce businesses face a problem today: they have a bunch of products they sell, but they have no idea what to do with the data. If you have trouble with your product data, you will have trouble with your business. Each product has unique qualities that need to be described in detail to your customers.

For example, if you're selling jewellery, you'll need to include details about the material used to make the jewellery, the length of the necklace, the width of the bracelet, whether it's made of sterling silver, and so on.

This is where product content management (PCM) comes in. It's not just about managing the content of your products but also organizing them and linking them to your e-commerce platform.

What happens if you avoid managing your product data? 

• Titles and descriptions won't satisfy the user intent.
• If descriptions are not updated with keywords, people and search engines won't be able to find your products.
• Images become unoptimized.
• You can't analyze your customer data to enhance your product data.

To have a relevant product for as many potential customers, it's essential to regularly stay on top of the updates and modifications made to an item's standards and information. Any minor error on these variables can quickly frustrate customers, causing them to shop elsewhere for better deals. 

So, updating your product feed to cater to your customer's needs is always essential. 

Difference between PIM vs CMS

A PIM: 

A PIM tool is a PM software solution that helps retailers, wholesalers and manufacturers to control their products in a central place. It is the place to gather, optimize and distribute product content data. PIM solutions will help you make automated decisions based on your product data and organize your content. Hence, backup and recovery are more accessible, gain more visibility into what your competition's selling, improve your return process and much more!

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A CMS:

A CMS, or content management system, is software that allows consumers to manage and create their digital web page without writing any code. In a sense, the CMS acts as a virtual product manager for your web store: you provide the content it stores and displays as you choose.

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The difference? 

While you can use a CMS to place content on your website or an e-commerce store for visitors to view, that isn't its actual purpose. A CMS is usually a publishing platform and cannot process product information and relate it intelligently - only send content out. 

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And this is where PIM services come into play. Even in the early stages of updating a website, creating pages related to product information or adding new products while expanding existing ones, a PIM system is the fundamental tool brands, and marketers need.

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Why Should Companies Invest in a Product Content Management Platform to Manage Product Data?

‍Scalability 

A Product Content Management system makes it easy for a merchant to create a new product. The system performs bulk actions on the products, such as writing descriptions, taking pictures and tagging items with relevant information, all while reducing errors within the project management process.

‍Flexibility 

Whether you're a retailer, a wholesaler, or a service provider, eCommerce involves extensive amounts of data, including descriptions, images and prices that must be kept consistent across multiple channels. This is why it's so crucial for you to have ultimate control over your product descriptions. And that's what a PIM CMS brings to the table. 

‍Management cost 

Investing in the PIM CMS platform lowers the cost of maintaining your products in bulk and reduces errors. 

‍Lowers complexity 

A product content management platform eases organizing digital assets for your business by allowing you to store, manage and find valuable or relevant information easily.

Features to Look Out in the Best Product Content Management Platform

Before investing in any PIM CMS, you should consider some features that make the platform worth every penny spent. 

Here are the essential features to consider on any product content management platform; 

• You should select a PIM CMS platform with a bulk editing feature. It can lower the time to edit product data drastically. 
• It should provide effective catalogue management where you can create new catalogues, various pricing options, offers, and discounts specific to each product or group of products within a few clicks. 
• It should have the ability to present your content across multiple channels with ease. 
• It should offer product data modelling as Supplysail does. It enables you to create product models quickly and easily. 
• It should have a digital asset management system that lets you manage all the digital files like images, videos and more. 

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Wrapping up 

Now you would understand the importance of having a product content management platform for your eCommerce. It doesn't only helps in managing your product data with ease but also helps in catering for your customers with the information they need. 

If you're wondering how your business is doing against your competition, a PIM CMS system can help you measure the differences. That being said, if you want to manage your product data at a pocket-friendly investment easily, Supplysail would be the best option. Remember that your business can double its ROI with effective management in place.

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