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Product Experience Strategy

Oct 30, 2020

3 Terrifying true tales of scary product experiences

Leaves are falling from the trees, jack-o-lanterns dot nearly every doorstep on the block, and a spooky fog has rolled into town. Yes, Hallo...

Keywords

Customer Experience

Digital Commerce

PIM

PXM

Retail Trends

Scary PXM

Leaves are falling from the trees, jack-o-lanterns dot nearly every doorstep on the block, and a spooky fog has rolled into town. Yes, Halloween is here again, and Ziggy, everyone’s favorite Hydra, is getting in the spirit of the season with some scary product experiences!

But these are no ordinary tales of ghosts, ghouls, or things that go bump in the night. No, Ziggy’s haunted Halloween tales are much more frightening than that. Her scary stories feature perhaps the most horrifying villains of them all — bad product information and the terrifying (and terrible) product experiences they create!

So if you’re brave enough, get ready to be terrified by these three true tales of scary product experiences from Ziggy the Hydra.

The Curse of Incomplete Product Information

Once upon a time, at a company quite like yours, there was a marketer named Julia with a bright idea. “I know what we can do to find new customers and sell more products,” she said during a meeting one dark and stormy Friday afternoon. “Let’s try out some new sales channels — how about Amazon?”

The idea was a hit, so the small but eager team of product marketers got to work preparing to syndicate product data to their new sales channel. But this was no ordinary Friday afternoon — it was Friday the 13th! And so, unbeknownst to the poor product team, a curse took hold, one that foredoomed the employees, forcing them to toil for hours upon hours without a solution to help them manage and enrich product information.

The result? These poor souls were eventually forced to use spreadsheets and other outdated or ill-suited solutions to manage product information, solutions that did not help contextualize product information, and left details out of product descriptions and data. At first, it seemed to be a minor setback — after all, what’s a little incomplete product information? Surely some information is better than none.

But soon, the impact of the curse was clear. Conversions on their new channel failed to appear as confusion about the company’s products caused customers to abandon carts and flee to the safe haven of another merchant. The expansion project was doomed — and all because of the curse of incomplete product information.

The Werewolf of Wrong Product Data

Sometimes, things aren’t quite what they appear to be. That’s the case for the subject of our next scary story, Wally.

On the surface, Wally appeared to be a pretty normal guy — by day, he managed product information for an appliance manufacturer. By night, he enjoyed a good book, classical music, and a glass of wine. But on certain nights, when the moon was full, and the conditions were just right, Wally would transform from a lovable, quiet man into a hairy, bloodthirsty werewolf.

But Wally wasn’t the only thing that changed. When he mutated into a werewolf, the product information he managed would transform as well, breaking out of its spreadsheet prison, crawling all over his employer’s website, and filling it with incorrect product information. Now, when customers would search to find specific products — like top-loading washing machines — their search results would be filled with errors, including incorrect images and faulty product descriptions as the scourge of incorrect information wreaked havoc on the company’s product experience.

Then, one full-moon-lit evening, something changed forever. When the moon finally fell, and the sun rose, Wally typically transformed from a werewolf back to his minor-mannered self. However, on this evening, Wally stayed frozen in his feral form —  and so did his product information. This forced customers to wander around looking for the products they need and sealed the fate of his company, as those customers walked away to another manufacturer that had a more organized (and less wolf-like) product information management process.

The Missing Data Monster

While werewolves and curses are certainly chilling thoughts, there’s one product experience beast so truly terrifying that most merchants, manufacturers, and other businesses shudder at the mere thought. Who is this horrible beast?

It’s the Missing Data Monster.

The Missing Data Monster can pop up anywhere — anywhere that a product team lacks a dedicated solution for managing and enriching product information. He feeds on these overworked employees yet manages to leave their customers wanting more — more product information, that is.

That’s because wherever the Missing Data Monster goes, he leaves a path of destruction in his wake, wiping out product information from sales channels and locales near and far. By the time he’s done, customers have lost faith in the businesses that have been attacked by the Missing Data Monster and find another option, lest they become the Monster’s latest victim.

Akeneo PIM — the bad product information slayer

By now, you’re probably shaking in your product information boots and wondering why Ziggy felt the need to scare you so much. But there is some good news. There’s an easy way to avoid falling victim to the Curse of Incomplete Product Information, The Werewolf of Wrong Product Data, or the Missing Data Monster — by implementing Akeneo PIM. 

It’s got all the capabilities you need to stop these villains in their tracks, from features to help put your information in the proper format and context for marketplaces like Amazon and other channels to tools that can help you ensure only correct and consistent data reaches your customers, even governance and validation mechanisms to make sure you’ve got no missing product data haunting your product experience.

So, if you’re ready to face these product information challenges and villains head-on, get in touch with our team of product experience experts. They’ll make sure you have all the weapons you need to avoid becoming the star in our next edition of scary product experiences.

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