Shopping online has transformed the way we purchase goods and services, offering us the comfort of shopping from the convenience of our own homes. However, providing a top-notch online shopping experience entails much more than just convenient access to products.
An ecommerce study found that 20% of purchase failures are potentially due to missing or unclear product information. That said, having a product catalog enriched with accurate and updated information is a must for today’s modern online retailers. It helps equip prospects with the knowledge they need and convert them into buying customers.
In this blog post, we will delve into the concept of ecommerce product data enrichment and the advantages it can bring to your ecommerce business.
What is ecommerce product data enrichment?
Ecommerce product data enrichment refers to the process of adding additional information to a product's existing data to make it more comprehensive and informative. This can help in improving the product's searchability, discoverability, and overall customer experience.
Some examples of ecommerce product data enrichment include:
- Adding product images, videos, and 360-degree views
- Providing detailed product descriptions, specifications, and features
- Supplementing product data with customer ratings, reviews, and Q&A
- Adding product categorization, taxonomy, and attributes
- Enhancing product data with contextual information, such as trends, popular products, and best-sellers
How does product data enrichment benefit ecommerce?
Employing product data enrichment solutions to your ecommerce store can yield positive results, including but not limited to:
Improved product descriptions
Ecommerce businesses can provide more detailed and informative product descriptions to customers, which can help customers better understand the features and benefits of a product. This can lead to increased customer satisfaction and reduced return rates.
Enhanced product images
Better product images can help customers see the product more clearly and make it easier for them to visualize what they are buying. This results in increased customer engagement and a higher likelihood of making a purchase.
More accurate pricing information
Providing more accurate and up-to-date pricing information to customers can help ecommerce businesses avoid confusion and dissatisfaction caused by incorrect pricing information. It also helps ensure that customers can make informed purchasing decisions.
Increased customer trust
Showcasing customer reviews and ratings on a product page can help potential customers make informed purchasing decisions by seeing what other people think about a product. This can increase customer trust in the ecommerce business and lead to higher sales.
Better SEO rankings
By providing more comprehensive information about a product, ecommerce businesses can improve their visibility in search engines, making it easier for customers to find the products they are looking for.
Improved sales and customer satisfaction
By providing customers with more information about the products they are interested in buying, ecommerce businesses can increase sales and customer satisfaction. Customers are more likely to make a purchase if they feel they have enough information to make an informed decision.
Better inventory management
Accurate product information, including information about product availability, can help ecommerce businesses better manage their inventory and ensure they have enough stock to meet customer demand.
Gain competitive advantage
By providing customers with more comprehensive information about their products, e-commerce businesses can stand out from the competition and differentiate themselves. This can help them attract and retain more customers, leading to increased sales and profits.
What are the best tools for ecommerce product data enrichment?
Here are five popular tools for ecommerce product data enrichment you should check out today:
Algolia
A cloud-based search and discovery platform that enables businesses to enhance their e-commerce site search with product recommendations and autocomplete.
Rich Relevance
A SaaS platform that provides real-time personalization and product recommendations for e-commerce websites.
Lexalytics
A cloud-based NLP platform that provides data enrichment for e-commerce websites through sentiment analysis and entity recognition.
Insights One
A cloud-based product content enrichment platform that provides businesses with detailed product information, including images, descriptions, and pricing, for e-commerce sites.
DataTheorem
A cloud-based product data enrichment platform that provides businesses with real-time product data from a variety of sources, including e-commerce websites, marketplaces, and social media platforms.
Amplience
A cloud-based product data enrichment platform that enables businesses to quickly and easily create high-quality product content, including images, videos, and descriptions, for e-commerce sites.
What are the key elements of enriched ecommerce product data?
1. Product Name: The name of the product, which should accurately and concisely describe the product and be easy to understand.
2. Description: A detailed description of the product, including its features, specifications, and benefits.
3. Images: High-quality images of the product from different angles, providing a clear representation of what the product looks like.
4. Price: The cost of the product, including any relevant discounts, promotions, or special offers.
5. Availability: Information on whether the product is in stock and when it will be available for purchase.
6. Categories: The categories or tags that the product belongs to, allowing customers to find similar products more easily.
7. Reviews and Ratings: User-generated content such as reviews and ratings, which provide valuable insights into the product's performance and help to build trust with customers.
8. Variations: Information on product variations, such as different sizes, colors, or materials, allowing customers to make more informed purchasing decisions.
9. Delivery and Returns Information: Information on shipping and delivery, including costs and estimated delivery times, as well as information on returns and exchanges.
10. Technical specifications: Detailed technical information about the product, such as size, weight, materials, and compatibility with other products.
What are the challenges in ecommerce product data enrichment and how to overcome them?
High-growth ecommerce stores are bombarded with challenges on enriching product data. Here are some of the challenges and how an online retailer like you can overcome them:
Inaccurate or incomplete product information
Retailers often struggle to keep up with the vast amount of information required to fully describe a product. This can lead to missing details or incorrect information, which can harm the customer experience.
To overcome this challenge, retailers can implement automated data enrichment tools that can fill in missing details or correct errors. These tools can extract data from various sources, such as the manufacturer's website, product databases, or other e-commerce platforms.
Retailers can also set up regular product data updates to ensure that the information remains accurate and up-to-date.
Keeping up with changes in product data
Products change over time, with updates to features, specifications, and pricing. Keeping track of these changes can be challenging for online retailers, who must keep their product information current to remain competitive.
Retailers can overcome this challenge by integrating real-time data feeds that provide up-to-date product information. They can also monitor market trends to keep track of product developments and updates.
Managing product data across multiple channels
Online retailers often sell their products through multiple channels, such as their own website, marketplaces, and social media. Keeping product information consistent across all channels can be difficult, as different platforms may have different requirements for product data.
Retailers can overcome this challenge by using a central repository for product data and using APIs to ensure consistency across all channels. This helps ensure that all product information is accurate, up-to-date, and consistent, no matter where the customer is shopping.
Enriching product data for international markets
Retailers that sell products internationally must cater to local customer preferences and regulations. This requires in-depth product data that takes into account local market trends, languages, and regulations.
Retailers can address this challenge by partnering with local companies to gather market-specific data, and using machine translation for foreign language product descriptions. This can help retailers understand the needs and preferences of their international customers and provide relevant, accurate product information.
Balancing product data quality with cost
Enriching product data can be a costly process, and retailers must balance the cost of data enrichment with the value it provides. Retailers can resolve this challenge by prioritizing the most important data points and using cost-effective data enrichment solutions.
For example, they can focus on enriching data for high-value products, or use a tiered approach to data enrichment, where basic information is enriched first, followed by more detailed information for popular or high-value products.
Ensuring data privacy and security
With the increasing amount of personal and sensitive information being collected and processed, protecting customer data privacy and security is a top concern for online retailers.
Retailers can overcome this challenge by implementing data security protocols, such as encryption and access controls, to protect customer information. They can also regularly audit data usage to ensure that privacy is maintained, and educate their employees on data privacy and security best practices.
How can ecommerce companies ensure high-quality product data enrichment?
Research customer needs and behaviors
Gather information about your target customers' needs, preferences, and behaviors. This will help you create product descriptions that are relevant and appealing to them.
Accurately categorize products
Proper product categorization helps improve the overall shopping experience and aids in searchability.
Use high-quality images and videos
Visual aids, such as images and videos, help customers understand the product better and make informed purchasing decisions. You can hire a product photo editor for your images and motion graphic designer for your marketing videos.
Obtain product information from trusted sources
Reliable and accurate information is essential for effective product enrichment. Obtain information from trusted manufacturers, suppliers, or industry organizations.
Utilize product attribute standards
Industry standards, such as GTIN (Global Trade Item Number) and MPN (Manufacturer Part Number), ensure consistent product information and improve discoverability.
Regularly review and update product information
Regular updates ensure that customers have access to the latest and most accurate information.
Encourage customer reviews and feedback
Customer reviews and feedback provide valuable insights into product quality and performance and can help improve product descriptions. You may consider outsourcing customer survey services for easier customer data collection.
Implement data validation and quality control processes
Validate and quality check all product information to ensure accuracy and consistency. Implement processes to catch and fix errors and inconsistencies.
How does product data enrichment impact SEO for ecommerce websites?
Here's a detailed explanation of how product data enrichment can impact SEO for ecommerce websites:
Improved Relevancy and User Experience
Accurate and detailed product information helps users find what they are looking for more easily, making their experience on the website more satisfying. This can lead to increased engagement metrics such as lower bounce rates, higher average time on site, and increased pageviews, which can signal to search engines that the website is providing value to users and therefore deserve to rank higher.
Better Content Optimization
By providing complete and accurate product information, including product descriptions, specifications, and images, websites can create better optimized content that targets relevant keywords. This can improve the visibility of product pages in search engine results and attract more organic traffic.
Enhanced Technical Optimization
Product data enrichment can also help improve the technical optimization of ecommerce websites. This can include fixing broken links, improving website structure and organization, and ensuring that the website is mobile-friendly, all of which can help improve the website's rankings in search engine results.
Increased Brand Authority
A website with high-quality product information can establish the brand as an authoritative source in its niche, increasing its credibility in the eyes of both users and search engines.
Should you outsource ecommerce product data enrichment?
Outsourcing ecommerce product data enrichment is ideal for online retailers with high-volume product data. If you’re planning to outsource it, here are the possible benefits your business can reap from it:
Save on time
Product data enrichment can be a time-consuming and labor-intensive process, especially if a business has a large product catalog. Outsourcing this task to a specialized provider can save time and allow a business to focus on more important tasks, such as marketing, sales, and customer service.
Improve data accuracy
Product information management (PIM) service providers have teams of experts who are trained and experienced in performing this task. These specialists can ensure the accuracy of product data, improving the overall quality of the catalog and ensuring that customers have access to accurate and up-to-date information.
Cut on costs
Hiring and training in-house staff to perform data enrichment can be expensive, especially for small and medium-sized businesses. Outsourcing this task to a specialized provider can save money, as the provider can spread the costs of technology and equipment over multiple clients.
Scale up quickly
As a business grows, the size of its product catalog can grow quickly, leading to increased data enrichment needs. Outsourcing this task allows for the seamless scaling of data enrichment services, ensuring that the business always has access to the resources it needs.
Access to specialized tools
Data enrichment providers typically have access to specialized tools and technology to improve the efficiency and accuracy of their services. This can include advanced data scraping and analysis tools, machine learning algorithms, and more. By outsourcing data enrichment, a business can access these tools without the need to invest in them itself.
Better focus on core business functions
By outsourcing product data enrichment, a business can free up resources and focus on its core competencies. This allows the business to focus on driving growth, improving customer experience, and developing new products and services. By focusing on what it does best, a business can drive success and achieve its goals more quickly and effectively.
Enhance Product Data Enrichment Operations by Outsourcing Customer Care
Elevate your Ecommerce product data enrichment process by outsourcing your customer care to ManilaPros. Our customer care expertise provides deep insights into customer preferences and needs, crucial for optimizing your product data strategy.
At ManilaPros, we offer full-service, five-star customer care for retailers. We'll provide you with vetted, trained, and certified agents for your brand. This approach ensures your Ecommerce offerings are aligned with customer expectations, enhancing both sales and conversion rates.
Book a call with us today to get started!
