Last time we left our friends Ake and Julia, Ake was desperately trying to find a replacement to his Goupil time travel controller so he can return to his home time period — but he’s having some difficulty. After initially hoping to find the object of his desire by communicating with a home shopping assistant, Ake discovered that Goupil’s product information was poorly referenced, leaving his voice assistant “Timmy” unable to locate the product he needed. In this latest episode of The Goupil Experience, we rejoin Ake and Julia as they turn to social media after failing to find the Goupil controller via voice assistant. Will the pair have more success by turning to Twitter and Facebook, or will they be lost in a web of poor product information and internet conspiracy theories? Check out our latest video to find out! Get your product information and product experience ready for the future! Learn how PIM and PXM can help your team conquer these new sales channels with relative ease by reading our blog on Turning A New Commerce Channel Into A Success or get in touch today!

Q: What are the key questions your customers typically ask when evaluating a systems integrator? The best systems integrator is the one who can deliver real business value, effectively design the technology solution to map to the business needs, and whose experience closely matches the specific requirements of the customer’s project.   To that end, customers should ask:

• How does the integrator align with my business drivers and pain points consistently throughout the effort?
• Does the integrator have extensive experience in your industry?  Do you have examples or use cases we can review?
• Does the integrator have expertise in data and digital strategy, demonstrate thought leadership and offer strategic consulting?
• Does the integrator have dedicated consultants on the team with project management experience and knowledge of all the latest technologies, trends, and best practices?
• Has the integrator worked with companies of a similar fit? Examples may include: companies with a similar level of integration complexity, those with data sourced from external vendors/suppliers, or those with a geographically dispersed user base.
• Is the integrator an organizationally and financially stable company?
• Does the integrator provide post-implementation services and support?

Q: At what point does a systems integrator get involved, and how can the systems integrator help Akeneo with sales process? A:  A systems integrator such as Infoverity can enter at various times in the cycle. Sometimes systems integrators get involved very early in the sales cycle, particularly if the client is in need of guidance around solution best practices, business process, change management or project delivery/phasing approach. This could take the form of an early discovery phase to help frame the program. Alternatively, the client may desire a more formal and in-depth strategy and roadmap exercise to lay out a longer-term vision for the data and systems landscape and evolution. The system integrator being evaluated should have significant experience to support the strategic needs of the specific client. Other times an integrator comes in to support the RFI/RFP process. We work directly with a vendor like Akeneo to complement the technical tool capabilities and cost responses with a solution methodology for project planning, execution and post go-live hypercare or extended production support. Finally, an integrator may be brought in after the vendor/software has already been selected and the client is seeking a partner for program strategy and/or implementation. We certainly prefer to be involved as early as possible, in order to gain a deeper understanding of the specific use cases that are being addressed in the initial phase. Plus, we need to understand the longer-term vision, to ensure the first phase establishes a solid foundation to build upon. Q: What are the typical business challenges faced by companies seeking a PIM/PXM or data governance solution? A: The typical business challenges include the need to:

1. Evolve their web presence to deliver an enhanced customer experience, beyond a transactional commerce focus
2. Create an intuitive, clean interface for data management, product categorization, and copy editing
3. Provide a clean, consistent, easily-searchable product catalog
4. Customize the catalog to the customer segment – geography, role/purpose (B2B distributor versus the B2C consumer), branding, product offerings by market

And for Data Governance I would also include data quality. The major challenge is in getting complete, accurate and timely data to drive the digital experience. As much effort that goes into creating an intuitive, seamless site experience should also be spent in the authoring and enrichment of the data that serves as the bedrock for successful customer experiences. Product information authored by multiple product lines or geographically-oriented teams can often follow their own standards (or none), and make data aggregation more challenging. We partner with the client to drive governance and quality processes as early in the product data life-cycle to more easily support the desired customer experience. Q: Are there industry or regulatory standards that must be supported? Can you give an example of something that has become more of a challenge for integrators over time, due to the evolving nature of PIM/PXM implementations? A:  Yes, and a quality systems integrator will understand the standards that must be supported. They will have policies and procedures in place to help guarantee adherence to these tenets, and design and implement solutions and systems that comply with them. Some examples include:

• EPA/regulatory requirements for companies with consumer products that have safety regulations
• Ingredient labeling requirements (e.g. for beer companies)
• EPA manufacturing requirements (e.g. for nail polish, detergent, etc)
• Appliance consumer-testing and safety-labeling data
• eCl@ss, a cross-industry product data standard for classification and description of products and services, emphasizing compliance with ISO/IEC industry standards, both nationally and internationally.
• ETIM, a worldwide uniform classification for technical products attributes or “features” that are needed for a product with a given classification.

Maintaining industry standard categorization/classification is critical to driving customer experience. Q: As a systems integrator, what tendencies is Infoverity seeing in the PIM/PXM market recently? A: Clients are emphasizing the digital customer experience, and the need to ensure consistent brand experiences across channels, geographies, and sites. Digital marketing needs are also evolving, due to data-driven consumer demands and insights on buying behaviors. All of this is increasing the pressure to provide all the information to the fingertips of the consumer to support their buying decisions and create loyalty. Having a comprehensive data strategy to acquire, enrich and utilize product data is being seen as a foundational component to power the digital customer experience now and in the future. About Infoverity Founded in 2011, Infoverity is a leading systems integrator and global professional services firm that provides MDM and PIM Strategy and Implementation, Data Governance and Analytics, Content Management, Data Integration, Enterprise Hosting and Managed Services that help large enterprises in the retail, consumer goods, manufacturing, financial and healthcare sectors to simplify and maximize the value of their information. Infoverity, a 100% employee-owned company, is on the Inc. 5000, is recognized by IDG’s Computerworld as one of the Best Places to Work in IT, as a Wonderful Workplace for Young Professionals and as a Best Place to Work by Business First.  Infoverity’s global headquarters is in Dublin, Ohio, the EMEA headquarters and Global Development Center is in Valencia, Spain and additional offices are located in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Norway and Russia.  For more information on Infoverity solutions, visit Infoverity.com, follow @Infoverity on Twitter, or contact us today.  

  Commerce isn’t what it used to be. These days, it seems that all customers need to do to find and eventually purchase a product they want or need is to ask for it. “Alexa,” millions of shoppers can be heard saying, “show me…” While this constant connectivity offers plenty of opportunity to brands and retailers, it also presents a challenge. These companies need to make sure that consumers can easily find details on potential purchases — because if they don’t, consumers won’t be able to find their products on any of their devices — even if they’re from the future. Just ask Ake. As you can see in the video below, he desperately needs to find a replacement Goupil controller after his faulty futuristic device dumped him in our time period — decades earlier than his own. Now, he needs to search through a jungle of inconsistent, inaccurate, or just plain bad product information, along with the help of his friend Julia, if he wants to return home. Get your product information and product experience ready for the future! Learn how PIM and PXM can help your team conquer these new sales channels with relative ease by reading our blog on Turning A New Commerce Channel Into A Success or get in touch today!

Customers in the modern age crave information about products they are considering purchasing, particularly when the item in questions is especially important to this person’s day-to-day life or when prices are high. And while detailed product descriptions, accurate data and measurements, and even customer reviews can help your customers get a better understanding of your products, they often aren’t enough. Customers want to be able to see your products in action, being used in the same or similar manner to how they plan to use the item. Runners want to see other athletes jogging in your sneakers, fashionistas want to know how their latest look will go over in the real world, and even construction workers need to understand exactly how their materials will look on the job site. But you don’t have to take our word for it — take a look at these five stats that help demonstrate just how important visual product assets are to your omnichannel success — and stick around for tips on how to manage these crucial resources.

1. People typically remember just 10% of information they hear, but 65% of images they see

Let’s start with a big one — when it comes to retaining information, most humans are simply better at remembering images they saw than they are at storing words they read or heard. As we’ll discuss below, most humans are visual learners, and as a result, researchers believe that the average person retains 65% of visual image information as opposed to 10% of written or auditory info. Unlike the family dog, our sense of sight is far better than our sense of smell or hearing and is a crucial part of how we receive information from the world around us. As a result, the majority of us remember visual information well, and it has a big impact on what influences our thinking.

2. Video will account for 82% of internet usage by 2022

Maybe it’s because of our nature as visual learners, maybe it’s due to a shrinking attention span, or maybe it’s the result of another cause entirely, but there’s no debating that consumers and professionals alike are increasingly watching video when they log online. According to Cisco’s Visual Networking Index, video currently accounts for 75 percent of global IP traffic — a significant share to be sure, and one that has already seen a significant rise in recent years. But researchers predict that video consumption will continue it’s notable growth over the next few years, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 29 percent to reach 82 percent of all internet usage within just a few years.

3. Infographics lead to web traffic increase of up to 12%

Photographs and video aren’t the only visual assets that can help you communicate with customers, of course — they’re just the start. Infographics, for example, can help you communicate statistically dense or dry subjects in a fun, easy-to-understand way. What’s more, research shows that consumers like infographics — in fact, they like them so much that they’re more likely to interact with businesses that use them. According to research from OneSpot, infographics can improve web traffic by up to 12% — and for good reason. The average user reads just 20% of words presented on any given webpage, while 65% describe themselves as visual learners — a perfect audience to target with infographics.

4. Emails with “Video” in the subject line boost click-through rates by 65%

Email marketing has become an integral part of almost every company’s operations, and a crucial way of communicating with customers. There’s no better way to let your customers know about a new product, a special offer or promotion, or other brand news is to speak to them directly. But consumers are drowning in a veritable sea of spam emails these days (according to recently published research, nearly 270 billion emails are sent each and every day). That means it’s harder than ever to break through the noise and get consumers to click on, open, and read your message — but video can help. One study found that simply including a video in an email, and letting recipients know what’s waiting for them by using the word “video” in the subject line of that email — boosted open rates by 19% and increased clickthrough rates by 65%.

5. 72% of people would rather use video to learn about a product or service

We’ve saved perhaps the best example of the importance of visual assets for last. According to research, it seems that customers actually want to see more visual content from their favorite brands and retailers — 72 percent of customers in one recent survey said they would rather use images or video to learn about a new product or service, more than any other medium. What’s more, to a recent Hubspot survey of consumers in Colombia, Germany, Mexico, and the United States, more than half of consumers want to see more videos from brands and businesses they support. What’s more, other types of visual assets weren’t far behind — 41% of surveyed consumers said they want to see more images from these companies outranking both written articles and content delivered via PDF.

Give customers more of what they want with PIM

It’s clear that customers crave more visual assets, from infographics to product photos, and even and especially video. These multimedia assets help them better understand the products they’re considering purchasing and can help give them the confidence needed to complete the transaction. Product Information Management (PIM) solutions can help you take control over your visual assets and deliver a stunning and compelling omnichannel experience to your customers. Paint a better picture of your products with PIM! See how your team can use visual product assets like photo and video to take your omnichannel experience to the next level. Contact us get your PIM project underway, or check out our blog Winning the Battle of the Brands to find out how to make sure you stay on top of the competition.

That’s especially true in the world of modern omnichannel commerce. Offering customers a compelling experience across the full range of channels available requires teams that are able to collaborate seamlessly — sharing data and expertise at the drop of a hat, working efficiently, and moving quickly to ensure that no time is wasted. eCommerce executives, marketing managers, studio supervisors, and every other member of your team needs to be working together arm-in-arm if your company is to reach its true potential. But while many may like to describe our modern, tech-influenced world as one that allows, even encourages, cross-functional collaboration, that isn’t always the case. Many data management systems leave product information trapped in silos, inaccessible to many employees who need this information to do their jobs effectively. Storing and managing product information in spreadsheets, for example, often makes it nearly impossible for all members of your team to access and manage data effectively and efficiently, leading to slower time-to-market and inaccuracies or inconsistencies in product data. Even worse, your team could end up wasting time, working on the same tasks in parallel. That’s why it’s essential that brands and retailers alike in the omnichannel age rely on dedicated Product Information Management, or PIM, solutions. Applications like Akeneo PIM help your team work together more efficiently by liberating data from spreadsheets and silos, improving access to the most important tool in your omnichannel arsenal: product information. Don’t believe us? Take a look for yourself at these three ways Akeneo PIM can help your team rise to the top of their field.

Stop Relying On Spreadsheets and Avoid Silos

Outdated and inefficient data management systems like spreadsheets, which leave product information trapped in silos and inaccessible to many employees, are the natural enemy of productivity. When using these solutions, companies are typically relying on the outdated model of going to market with new products in new channels where each project is managed in a separate environment, with a separate process, by separate contributors working in silos. In the old approach, efforts are duplicated, opportunities for errors are multiplied, and man-hours are wasted on repetitive tasks. These solutions almost always lead to slower time-to-market and more errors or inconsistencies in product information. Akeneo PIM, on the other hand, is designed to help you achieve organizational excellence by revolutionizing and optimizing the process of taking new products to market, managing a new collection or range of products and updating product details by providing one centralized, trusted source for product information. It does so by providing a single source of truth for product information and assets, improving the accessibility of product data and liberating it from the silo of spreadsheets.

Automate and Accelerate Workflows

Managing product data in outdated and inefficient tools like spreadsheets means that your product enrichment team must waste hours each and every day on repetitive, low-value tasks. This means they don’t spend their time — and your time — writing creative and compelling product descriptions, producing top-notch multimedia assets, and making sure your customers are greeted with a compelling experience. Instead, they spend it to copy and paste descriptions, categorizing new products, and other time-consuming, repetitive tasks. PIM takes these tasks off your to-do list by using a business rules engine to automatically populate attribute values that apply across many products and product models. It also helps you manage product data in bulk. This can lead to much higher quality data by removing human error, as well as expediting the enrichment process.  

Jumpstart Expansion

Opening a new sales channel or expanding to a new market can put a particular strain on data management systems. When your company expands, more team members need to access and manage product information and assets quickly and efficiently, or risk delaying the expansion and losing valuable revenue in the process. If your product data is managed inefficiently or trapped in spreadsheets and silos, your omnichannel or international expansion will likely progress at a snail’s pace. Translators won’t be able to adapt content or data into new languages and units quickly, product enrichment teams won’t be able to optimize information or assets to fit a new channel, and your time-to-market — and the success of your new endeavor — will lag as a result. What’s more, as our customer Tarkett discovered, expanding to a new locale without giving local employees a chance to take autonomy of the enrichment process can weaken morale and slow down your processes even further.   But with the automated workflow and data management features above, Akeneo PIM helps alleviate expansion headaches and sets your team up for success. By giving employees local autonomy over the enrichment process and direct access to the data, information, and assets they need to complete their tasks and execute your team’s expansion plans and automating time-consuming and repetitive tasks, your team can work more efficiently while also improving the accuracy and quality of your product information.

Liberate your data

Liberate your data! Discover how PIM can optimize your product information management process, free product data from silos, and boost your team’s productivity. Contact us get your PIM project underway, download our eBook Scaling eCommerce to learn more about how PIM can help your business, or check out our blog Winning the Battle of the Brands to find out how to make sure you stay on top of the competition.

Rumors of the demise of industrial manufacturing may have been greatly exaggerated. While anyone who’s listened to media reports in recent years has heard tales of vanishing industrial manufacturing jobs, particularly in developed economies in areas like North America and Europe, the space still drives massive amounts of revenue. In the United States alone, industrial manufacturing produced $2.33 trillion last year, good for more than 10 percent of the U.S.’ economic output, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, and account for half of U.S. exports. But while there’s no shortage of rewards for companies in the space, challenges abound. Industrial manufacturers have a long list of hurdles they need to clear before they can find success. Large product catalogs and massive internal teams often mean these companies struggle with digitization and eCommerce efforts, tend to manage product data in ERP and PLM systems, and lack a logical place to manage marketing product data. What’s more, these companies typically exchange data regarding highly technical products in very specific formats. Fortunately for industrial manufacturers, Product Information Management (PIM) and Product Experience Management (PXM) solutions can help them clear these hurdles. PIM and PXM are designed to enable manufacturers to more efficiently and easily manage large product catalogs and prepare for a successful transformation to eCommerce. As a result, industrial manufacturers typically report increased conversion, reduced returns, and significantly increased marketer productivity after adopting PIM. But how do PIM and PXM help you and your company solve these industrial manufacturing challenges? Allow us to explain.

Go digital

One of the biggest sore spots for industrial manufacturers when it comes to digitization arises when the company decides to open up a digital commerce channel. While omnichannel commerce can have serious advantages for those who do it right, adding new channels can be particularly challenging for industrial manufacturers. The typically massive size of their product catalogs, for instance, often means extra time and effort when it comes time to update product information online or add a new channel. Making matters more difficult, these catalogs are typically filled with highly technical products, which require even more commitment and management. PIM and PXM, however, can make the enrichment process far easier. By using business rules engines and validation workflows, for example, you can easily eliminate tedious, repetitive tasks and ensure that only accurate, consistent, and contextual product information is presented to customers.

Scale sustainably

Simply enriching your catalog once is not enough, however. Product information also needs to be frequently updated to reflect changes in a product, better fit a new platform. Making these updates and changes can be just as daunting as initially enriching information, however. What’s more, as new products are added to existing catalogs, these larger catalogs are typically more difficult to manage efficiently and effectively, and the challenges grow even greater when dealing with the kind of highly specific and technical data that industrial manufacturers typically handle. By using PIM and PXM solutions, however, industrial manufacturers can transition to digital commerce successfully and sustainably. The scalable, flexible structure of PIM, paired with a visual enrichment interface designed for marketers and other tools and capabilities, allows your company to make updates and changes to product catalogs easily and efficiently.

Efficiently handle industry data formats and govern data

It’s not just the highly technical nature of product data that can cause industrial manufacturers to struggle with product information management, however. This data is also typically expressed and exchanged in unusual, highly specific formats. These formats do offer advantages to industrial manufacturers, such as better communication between suppliers and distributors, reduced costs, and accelerated time-to-market. However, they can also make it harder to manage product information and assets for omnichannel commerce. PIM and PXM, however, are specifically designed to manage data in these unusual formats. This will help your team more efficiently and easily manage product data and descriptions. What’s more, PIM can also help your team more efficiently and easily implement data government and management processes and procedures. Use your PIM to identify missing or incorrect data, establish governance policies, fix and correct incorrect or low-quality data, and maintain and update your data governance plan to ensure your customers are only given accurate, compelling, and consistent product information.

Integrate seamlessly

Efficiently handling data is only half the battle, however. In an information-heavy space like industrial manufacturing, your company also need to be able to seamlessly communicate and manage data across multiple data management tools and systems, including DAMs, ERPs, and more. It may sound simple, but managing your product information and specifications across all of the different data systems you have is often easier said than done. Fortunately, PIM can help your team simplify data management by integrating disparate systems and tools via our network of open-source connectors. This will help prevent errors or inconsistency in product data and help your team work faster and more efficiently. 

Boost productivity

In the digital age, speed is king. Your team needs to be able to move quickly, getting products to market as fast as possible, in order to keep up with ever-evolving customer trends and demands. Akeneo PIM speeds the product information management and new product introduction process so you can get your products to market faster — across all channels and regions — with a range of features designed to boost productivity. These include automation features, which help remove repetitive, tedious tasks from your team’s plates, validation features, which can ensure that enriched product information is approved and updated as soon as possible, and completeness features, which structure your team’s workflow across channels and locales, allowing them to focus on what matters most and become more productive in the process. Use PIM features like automation, validation, and workflow controls to eliminate unnecessary and repetitive tasks. That way you can manufacture and sell more products, more quickly, boosting revenue and improving relationships along the way.

Conquer Industrial Manufacturing Challenges

It isn’t easy to be an industrial manufacturer these days — but PIM and PXM can help. By using product information and product experience management solutions to enrich and manage your product data, your team can expand to new channels and locales more efficiently, handle industry-specific data formats with ease, and boost their productivity. Solve your problems with PIM! Discover how Product Information Management and Product Experience Management can help you conquer common industry challenges by registering for a demo! Want to learn more about the basics of PIM? Download our eBook Product Information Management 101 today!

But while expansion can lead to increased revenue thanks to the addition of new customers in these faraway markets, it’s also a stressful time for many brands and retailers and brings with it a huge amount of tedious and time-consuming new work. This is largely a product of just how much needs to be done in order to make these efforts successful. Product descriptions must be translated into local languages, multimedia assets like photos and videos must be made relevant and appropriate for new markets, sizes and measurements must be converted into the correct weight, and prices and taxes must be updated to meet new standards and regulations — and all that is just the beginning.

Expanding to new markets is often easier said than done

It’s enough to turn any expansion effort into a months-long marathon of complications, confusion, and pain. Unless, of course, you’re expanding with help from product information management (PIM). Akeneo PIM can help your company more easily expand to new markets by improving translation and localization processes, giving you product information that will make buyers in any market take notice of your offerings — and make a purchase. That’s critical, because brands and retailers who miss the mark on translation and localization often see their expansion efforts fall flat as they struggle to connect with new customers.   Don’t believe us? See how improving translation and localization with PIM can help your next expansion effort succeed with ease.

Talk the talk

The first, and perhaps most obvious step in expanding to a new market is translating product information into the local language. But this step isn’t as simple as it may seem. But it’s not enough to simply plug product descriptions or data into a translating software and call it a day. You also need to localize these descriptions in order to ensure that the content aligns with local dialects, norms, and slang. Expanding to new markets and tailoring product data is also a numbers game. European companies expanding to the United States, for instance, must ensure that they convert all measurements and numbers to local units. That means converting clothing sizes to their American equivalent, making sure that all measurements are expressed in yards, feet, and inches rather than meters, centimeters, and millimeters, and even converting prices from the Euro to the U.S. dollar. No matter what country they’re in, shoppers expect to do business in their native language, using measurements they understand and pay in their local currency. If you don’t give them these capabilities, they’ll simply find another seller who can.

55% of surveyed customers buy only from merchants who present product information in their native language.

Go global, stay local

Language differences are just the start of the subtle differences in product information expanding brands and retailers must master in order to find success. There’s no shortage to the amount of information that must be adapted when a company crosses borders — even something as similar as color can complicate expansion. In many countries, for example, purple is associated with royalty or nobility — but in Thailand, violet is more associated with death and mourning than the upper class. Getting these cultural differences wrong can result in disaster for expanding enterprises. And just like with translation and conversion, localization affects more than just words on a page. Marketing teams must also ensure that product images are relevant and appropriate for new markets and that measurements are expressed in a way that would make sense to a local. If these assets aren’t relevant to customers, they’ll likely move on to another merchant that’s willing to show them exactly how this product fits into their climate, region, and lifestyle.

56% of buyers say that finding product information in their native language is a bigger factor in their purchasing decision than price

Stay on the right side of the law

Customers aren’t the only group that your company has to please when selling cross-border, however. Expanding to new markets means complying with a host of new regulations, from tax codes and country of origin rules to labeling regulations and health statues. Take the European Union — when companies first start selling in the EU, they have to comply with some of the most stringent regulations in the world. These rules govern how products in seemingly category, including electronics, toys, textiles, and more, are made, labeled, and sold. What’s more, companies must also now contend with data privacy protections like GDPR. If your business finds itself on the wrong side of these laws, they could be fined, or see their products held or seized at customs, costing both time and money. Certain industries have even more regulations to worry about. Brands and retailers working in industries such as healthcare and pharmaceuticals, banking and financial services, and food and beverage are more highly regulated than many others, meaning that they must deal with even more changes to product data.

33% of firms say that complying with local laws and regulations is their biggest challenge in international commerce

How PIM can help

There’s clearly no shortage of product information challenges to contend with when expanding across borders. From simple language translation and unit conversion to more precise localization and even complying with the local rules and regulations, these roadblocks can slow down expansion efforts or cause brands and retailers to struggle in new markets. This is what makes it so imperative to ensure that product information is comprehensive, relevant, and accessible — and why expanding businesses would be wise to invest in product information management. By using PIM solutions to expand and enter new markets, your business can cut down time to market by as much as 300 percent, boost sales by 400 percent, and reduce returns, all while making your marketers more productive. Go global while staying local. Contact us get your PIM project underway, download our eBook Product Information Management 101 to learn more about how PIM can help your business, or check out our blog Winning the Battle of the Brands to find out how to make sure you stay on top of the competition.

According to recently released research, physical sales still outnumber online purchases, but the gap is speedily shrinking, with eCommerce making up more than 13% of all retail sales volume as of 2019. What’s more, that number is set to rise as the number of online shoppers — currently totaling 1.92 billion people and set to top 2 billion people by 2021 — continues to climb, with researchers expecting eCommerce to comprise nearly 20% of global retail sales by 2021. The proposed reasons for this online migration are myriad — some have cited convenience, while others have claimed price is the major motivating factor for the switch. But increasingly, it seems that consumers are making the move to eCommerce in search of better shopping experiences — 80 percent of consumers, in fact, said that the quality of a company’s customer experience make a major difference in whether they choose to shop with them.

In other words, when it comes to eCommerce, it’s all about the experience

But how can you be sure you’re providing the best customer experience possible to your eCommerce shoppers? The answer lies in your product experience. Product experience is the backbone of any compelling customer experience — it optimizes product data, information, and assets, creating a single source of truth for all of your products, and ensuring that customers who come to your eCommerce site find exactly the experience they were expecting. And, with Product Experience Management (PXM) solutions, your team can harness the power of product experience and use it to create a compelling experience for all of your eCommerce customers.

You don’t have to take our word for it, though. Here are three ways PXM helps make sure your eCommerce experience exceeds expectations:

1. Eliminate errors and cease customer confusion

No matter what they’re buying or where they’re buying it form, consumers like to be informed about potential purchases. According to researchers, a whopping 85 percent of consumers visit eCommerce sites to research potential purchases and help them make a decision — even if they plan to eventually make a purchase in-store. What does that mean for your eCommerce experience? It means that if there’s any sure fire way to guarantee your customers have an enjoyable experience when shopping online, it’s providing them with accurate, consistent, and emotionally compelling product information. But while that may sound simple enough, giving customers this information is often more challenging than it seems. That’s especially true for department stores like Myer, which often must manage massive product catalogs, or fashion brands like Kurt Geiger, which need to keep up with changing seasonal trends and product assortments. What’s more, most retailers aren’t handling this data efficiently — many still use inefficient legacy solutions like Excel spreadsheets, which often lead to errors or inconsistency in product data. PXM helps you eliminate these errors and accelerate time-to-market by creating a single source of truth for all product information. That way, your team can make sure online shoppers are able to find any information they’re looking for at the drop of a hat, simplifying and improving your customer experience while boosting sales conversion rates and reducing returns in the process.

2. Work faster, not harder

Tom Petty may have said it best — the waiting often really is the hardest part. These days, speed is of the essence, and if your team isn’t moving quickly enough, you’re likely to lose customers to a brand or retailer who is willing (and able) to meet their need for speed. Managing product information is often a laborious, tedious, and time-consuming process, one that forces your team to use energy and resources on repetitive tasks, leaving them little time to perfect product experiences. PXM, however, can eliminate some of these issues, and help your team work more effectively, by removing many of these repetitive tasks from your employees’ to-do lists using automated business rules engines. PXM also offers workflow, validation, and approval features. These tools are designed to help your team identify exactly what needs to be done to optimize product information and get new items online, what their role is in that process, and prioritize the various tasks that need to be completed. By helping your team work more efficiently, PXM unlocks their true potential and allows them to focus on what really matters — creating that accurate, consistent, and compelling content that turns shoppers into buyers. Help your team improve your eCommerce customer experience by giving them the tools they need to perfect individual product experiences efficiently and effectively.

3. Go glocal

As more consumers continue to head online when it comes time to make a purchase, they’re also increasingly buying products from brands and retailers based outside of their own country. Research shows that cross-border commerce now brings in more than $200 billion a year, a figure that has been on the rise since 2013 and accounts for one-sixth of global trade revenues. But while consumers are seemingly more willing than ever before to make cross-border transactions, they have some clear preferences when dealing with international brands and retailers. Most importantly, they demand to do business in their own language. Three-quarters of surveyed consumers told researchers that they prefer to do business in their own native tongue in one recent study. But simply speaking the language often isn’t enough. Your eCommerce experience also needs to ensure that consumers can find measurements and other product data in units that are familiar to them. Marketing teams must also ensure that product images are relevant and appropriate for new markets and that measurements are expressed in a way that would make sense to a local. If these assets aren’t relevant to customers, they’ll likely move on to another merchant that’s willing to show them exactly how this product fits into their climate, region, and lifestyle. PXM helps you effectively and efficiently localize your product information to offer the best cross-border eCommerce experience possible. It helps you translate information into new languages, and ensures all product information that needs to be adapted for your new locale gets a facelift, giving international customers a compelling and satisfying experience from anywhere in the world.

Perfect your product experience

Perfect your product experience! Discover how PXM can optimize your product information, and help your team create compelling customer experiences and excel in eCommerce by eliminating errors and inconsistencies in your product information, helping your team work together more effectively and efficiently, and easing the localization process. Contact us get your PIM project underway, download our eBook Product Information Management 101 to learn more about how PIM can help your business, or check out our blog Winning the Battle of the Brands to find out how to make sure you stay on top of the competition.

With that in mind, we here at Akeneo have come together to help you power your product experience, create a compelling customer experience, and win over shoppers in the experience economy. Check out our new infographic to find your must-have guide to product experience below!

To learn more about powering your product experience, visit our PXM page today!

To remain competitive, businesses must be on their toes. They need to adapt and innovate frequently in new and often unpredictable ways. It’s challenging, but with these challenges come opportunities. Those businesses able to offer customers valuable, personalized and engaging purchasing experiences will be rewarded through higher brand loyalty and customer lifetime value. To do so, it’s crucial to have stable foundations from which you can scale and succeed. Magento 2 offers exactly this. Designed for these rapidly changing times, Magento 2’s robustness, scalability and modern architecture allow you to deploy unified, compelling purchasing experiences across touchpoints, with maximum technical performance. We’re going to look at how migrating to Magento 2 can benefit various areas of your business immediately, and demonstrate how incorporating PIM into your M2 migration has the power to supercharge your success.

1. More than just an upgrade

If you’re currently operating on Magento 1, it can be tempting to think of migration as nothing more than a simple upgrade with maybe a few new features. But it’s so much more than that. Structurally, Magento 2 is completely different—there is a marked contrast in how it can affect your company’s performance. While M1 was mainly concerned with the performance of your online store itself, Magento 2 represents more of a suite of solutions including more functionalities and features. These allow for a truly omnichannel approach so that you can meet customers exactly where they are and in a manner that suits them. So, whether you’re a B2B store looking to combine your online store with multiple warehouses and distribution centers or a B2C brand with ambitions of offering personalized interactions, Magento 2 is your one-stop shop.

2. Native functionality

One major advantage of migrating to Magento 2 is the sheer array of powerful Magento features offered natively, out-of-the-box. These provide your business with the tools and flexibility to start delivering value for your customers immediately. Out-of-the-box functionality includes such key areas as Analytics, Merchandising, Checkout, Search, Order Management and much, much more, each designed to cover each and every one of your s commerce needs. What’s more, with Magento 2, you’ll have access to an increased number and diversity of extensions in Magento Marketplace which undergo quality assurance checks for consistently high product quality.

3. Unrivaled performance

If there’s one thing the modern-day shopper craves, it’s speed. Time and time again, research shows that slow-loading and poor-performing pages will see customers leave a site, unlikely to return in the future. Why would customers stick around when they can go to a competitor site which has the speedy and intuitive navigation they crave? Magento 2’s global content delivery network and secured cloud infrastructure offer unmatched speed in the industry (50% quicker than Magento 1) and is 99.99% SLA. This, combined with Magento’s software-hardware evaluations, means continuous, optimized, and consistent commerce performance for your site.

4. Deliver on customer experience

We already know that keeping customers engaged, entertained and delighted at every step of the purchasing journey is a major challenge for any business. Fortunately, with Magento 2, you’ll have the native functionality to address this head on. Here are just some of the areas in which Magento 2 is tailored to the often demanding needs of the modern-day shopper:

• Elasticsearch – Magento 2’s powerful search engine scales horizontally and vertically, allowing customers to navigate through search results with speed and ease.
• Experiences – Responsive themes and Page Builder allow you to easily create and edit engaging websites, and enrich them with content to provide immersive digital experiences.
• Check out – New two-step checkout, Instant Purchase option and PayPal integration provide your customers with quick and seamless checkout experiences for increased conversions and repeat-customers.

Maximize M2 migration success with PIM

Remember when we told you that PIM could be used to help your team maximize the success of your M2 migration? The key benefit of a PIM is that it consolidates, manages and enhances all your product information. It collects data from all your sources, enriches it, and then automatically publishes to your sales, marketing, and digital channels. This means that you have a single source of truth for product information, which increases efficiencies and wipes out errors in product data. To see PIM in action, check out our latest case study which shows how an Akeneo PIM implementation transformed our client’s operations. In the context of migration, you can also draw on a PIM to enrich and re-export your product information from Magento 1 to Magento 2! And then once you’re up and running on Magento 2, a PIM will complement Magento 2’s features by transforming your internal processes and providing the capabilities to expand to new markets and beyond. Combining a PIM solution with your M2 migration allows you to maximize your digital commerce success and see results! Make the most of your Magento M2 Migration! If you’d like to learn more about any aspect of an M2 migration, then get in touch with us today. Our team of commerce experts is on hand to provide a smooth M2 migration for long-term digital commerce success! Or Check out Vaimo’s blog for a guest blog post from Akeneo on PIM & M2!