Creating Better Customer Experiences With PIM

Implementing a PIM solution into your data management process doesn’t just help to streamline your team’s workload – a PIM allows you to create better experiences for your customers too.

At the centre of this is making sure that all of your product data is as enriched and clean as possible, to help customers find exactly what they’re looking and make it incredibly easy for them to commit to making a purchase.

Furthermore, it’s been proven that enriched data converts better.  Akeneo found that customers who interact with site search convert 400% more than those who do not.

This promotes the need for clean, accurate data to be fed into your website from your PIM and helps to build confidence in the brand and enhance your customers’ buying experience.

6 Benefits of Creating Better Customer Experiences with PIM

1 – Quicker purchasing decisions

Whether or not you believe in the urban myth that our attention spans are decreasing, it’s incredibly important to help your customers reach their decisions quickly and efficiently to avoid losing their business.

By enriching your product data with a PIM, you can quickly and efficiently answer common queries that your customers may have about your products, even if it seems obvious.

You can swiftly show which colours, sizes or styles are available, highlight dimensions or technical product data and allow them to make a considered purchase without having to navigate to another website to find the desired information.

2 – Fewer returns

For ecommerce businesses returns can prove to be one of the biggest threats to the bottom line, affecting customer confidence, reducing margins and causing additional overheads.

Whilst returns may not always be avoidable, Akeneo have reported that using a PIM can lead to a 40% drop in return requests for merchants who ensure their product data is complete.

3 – Purchase through the marketplaces they love

Some of your customers might love your website – find it easy to navigate and trust in your levels of service and your products.  Despite this, there’s no getting away from the sheer clout that some of the larger marketplaces like Amazon and eBay have on the ecommerce sector.

If you’ve listed across these marketplaces before then you know that managing product data can be a time-consuming and sometimes ineffective process, often resulting in marketplace experience that pales in comparison with your own website.

With a PIM, your product data is easily standardised across every platform and the centralised system allows you to quickly and easily update any changes required without the risk of product downtime or increased admin.

4 – Serve them in their language

Another key benefit of a PIM solution such as Akeneo, is the ability to serve content to multiple audiences.  Whilst it’s estimated that over 50% of pages on the internet are in English, there are plenty of opportunities for serving content in your customers native language.

If your business is not limited by location then you can easily reach new markets or improve your reputation with non-English speakers by serving product information in multiple languages.

Your PIM should allow you to provide localisation at this level and ensure that any locale specific product attributes are including too.

5 – Get items on sale quicker

Although it’s arguable that this might be more of a benefit for your overall sales goals, using a PIM will allow you to expedite the publishing process of new products across multiple platforms.

This is ideal for new releases or products with limited runs or availability as you can easily serve enriched descriptions, imagery or detailed product information straight from the off and, if required, update with new information at a time when the initial rush has calmed down.

6 – Improve service

Throughout 2020, we’ve seen a huge reliance on ecommerce, home delivery and ensuring that customers can still complete purchases (for essential purchases and those less essential ones) from the safety of their own home.

Whilst many couriers have adapted and hired legions of new drivers to ensure that merchants can get their goods out on the road, there’s always a risk that services can be disrupted or products become unavailable.

Rather than have to disappoint your customers, you can easily update your PIM with revised lead times or availability on stock so you can manage their expectations.

This is crucial to building customer confidence and ensuring that your business can react to sudden changes quickly and efficiently.

Akeneo Gold Partner PIM Consultancy

If you would like to learn more about the Akeneo enterprise features, take a look at our ‘9 Key Features of Akeneo Enterprise Edition”blog.

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.

Contact us to find out more