Four out of five shoppers won’t buy a product online if there is missing product information.
Companies spend huge amounts of money, time, and manpower to get customers onto their website, only for the customer to leave at the last step because they cannot find the product information that they need.
At that single touchpoint, you can lose 80% of your potential customers.
Why? Because you didn’t focus on the basics.
Complete product data is key to converting viewers into buyers. Providing clear, accessible, and accurate product information is essential across everything from the title and description to the videos and images.
A major issue for many companies is returned purchases. Returns are costly, and bad news for your carbon footprint. The most common reason for a return is the product not meeting customer expectations. These expectations are set by the information the customer sees prior to the purchase. Returns are often due to misleading information being received, but rather a lack of or incorrect information that is provided.
Break it down to the basics: Make sure you have enough product information, and make sure that information is accurate.
A non-ideal customer lifecycle goes something like this:
- Customer orders a product online
- Customer receives a product that is not what they expected
- Customer returns the product
- Customer churns and acquisition start overs
Many companies that sell physical products are still working with Excel. Their product databases can have over 80 people working within them at any one time. This results in duplicate versions of files being shared, across multiple repositories. It’s ineffective and adds stress to teams, but still, 70% of physical product commerce companies work like this.
Often, companies try and solve the issue with new software that doesn’t do the job properly, and the team ends up reverting back to Excel.
So how should you be managing your product data?
Having a product information management platform (PIM) is the answer. One single source of truth where you can collate all of your product data into one system. From here you can enhance and enrich your data to create a positive customer experience and distribute your product information across all connected sales channels.
Discover for yourself with a free 30-day trial of Sales Layer.
Download the full presentation from IDC’s European Retail Summit with Sales Layer’s own Andre Pons.
