Product Data Quality: 5 Steps to Improving Product Data

Having high quality and accurate product data is essential in converting customers, but just because the data is there doesn’t mean that it is performing as well as it could be. Great product data is the core of customer satisfaction, so getting this right is crucial in seeing those transactions grow.

So, once you’ve got accurate and high quality product data, how can you improve this even further? Let’s look at how PIM solution, Akeneo can help.

1) Collect and prepare your current product data

When you first use a PIM solution, you’ll need to collect all your existing product data and prepare to enrich it to post on your different channels. As this data can come from a variety of sources (ERP, marketing systems and external suppliers), a PIM system will help ‘clean up’ the data and choose which sources have the best attribute data.

Once your data is in the PIM, you have a wide range of powerful options including, data validation, editing, localisation and export. This provides you with the tools needed to quickly expand into new channels and locales which significantly speeds up the time-to-market.

2) Organise your products and attributes

A PIM solution helps to simplify processes by creating family and attribute groups, so when you have thousands of products to manage, you can easily organise them into appropriate groups. Products in a family share attributes, so when adding new products to the same family, they will automatically be assigned the same attributes.

Akeneo PIM also has the ability to set up attribute groups which allows you to group attributes together so you can organise related attributes. This feature also lets you give visibility to team members who are responsible for providing and validating those values. For example, you can group together name and description to a ‘marketing’ attribute group and size, weight and colour to a ‘technical spec’ attribute group.

These capabilities save time and can enable teams to better focus their enrichment activities.

Pro-Tip: Akeneo PIM allows you to set a completeness check for each product listing to ensure no product is published to a channel unless it is 100% complete and ready.

3) Classify your products

Another way a PIM solution can improve product data is by structuring your product catalogue into categories. These categories can then be broken down into groups that customers are searching for.

For example, we implemented an in-depth filter system on category sections for our client, Mountfield to allow customers to find a product to match their exact needs.

4) Write relevant and impactful product descriptions

Now you’ve saved time collecting, preparing and organising your product data, your team will now have more time to create inspiring descriptions that work for each channel and platform. Your team should be able to spend more time writing descriptions that are emotionally driven and stand out from competitors.

Akeneo helps to make sure the tone of voice is consistent in product descriptions across all channels. Here are some things to consider to ensure your product descriptions accurately represent your products:

have consistent editorial styles and tones
include more details than just technical specifications and usage information – try to tell a story about your product
optimise descriptions and metadata using SEO best practices so your products will appear in search results

5) Create associations among products

By using a PIM solution, you can add associations among products. For example, you can create sets of seasonal items ahead of actual seasonal sales meaning you can group together summer items months in advance.

Pro-Tip: Akeneo Enterprise Edition provides for unlimited numbers of collections—allowing your team to prepare for every holiday and every season.

Ready to improve your product data?

As Akeneo PIM partners, iWeb can help you consolidate all of your data into one easy to use solution. Better product information means more purchases and fewer returns.