With the constant growth of the e-commerce environment, businesses need to develop better, more efficient strategies to gain a competitive advantage. Surprisingly, many companies overlook the basics of online marketing and sales—product data.
How poor data affects your business
One of the major challenges businesses face in the e-commerce world is managing vast amounts of product data. As product catalogs expand and more sales channels are added, maintaining accurate and up-to-date data becomes increasingly difficult. Inconsistent or incomplete product information can lead to lower visibility, reduced customer trust, and missed sales opportunities.
Accurate, detailed information about each product allows you to make informed decisions that ultimately lead to better results.
Types of e-commerce product data
Basically you have three types of product data:
- Product information data
- Performance data
- Business data
All three of these are important. But most companies usually end up focusing just on the first one, because these are usually the standard requirements of many advertising channels such as PPC, Social performance, Comparison sites and Marketplaces.
But performance data and business data are as important as the product information data. Why and how? This is something we’ll explain here.
Product information data
Product information data includes key details for each item, like titles, descriptions, technical specifications, pricing, images, and anything else that helps customers identify and understand the product. This data is essential for accurate display and good performance on various sales and advertising platforms. Follow these basic guidelines to get the most out of your product information data:
- Meet platform requirements. Each marketing platform (like Google Shopping, Meta, or Amazon) has specific rules for product data. If your data doesn’t follow these rules, your products may be hidden or may not perform well.
- Give each product a unique identifier, like a SKU or MPN code. This helps prevent errors during data imports and makes tracking easier.
- Enter standardized codes such as EAN (European Article Number) or GTIN (Global Trade Item Number). These codes allow platforms to recognize and sort products faster, which improves visibility.
- Proper categorization helps place products in the right searches and increases the chances of being found by interested customers.
- Regularly update product data to reflect the latest information, including features, availability, and pricing. Accurate data helps build customer trust and reduces returns.
Additional tip: Use exact stock data in your feeds
Instead of showing only “in stock” or “out of stock,” giving the exact stock quantity can be very useful. Some channels can identify the low-stock products and display the “last piece left” label, adding a sense of urgency. Or you can create this urgency by yourself.
Product performance data
Understanding how your products perform across different marketing channels is essential for optimizing your campaigns and guiding future product decisions. By tracking product performance, your marketing team can refine campaigns, while your product team can quickly identify which products to add to your shop. The last thing you want is to add products that will simply gather dust on the shelves without generating sales.
Key performance metrics:
- Clicks, impressions, and CTR (Click-Through Rate): These metrics indicate how well your product is capturing the attention of your audience.
- Conversions and revenue: Tracking these metrics allows you to gauge how effective your product listings are at driving actual sales.
- CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) and ROAS (Return on Ad Spend): These two metrics tell you how efficiently your product is driving sales relative to the marketing spend.
Important: Don’t forget to consider retail data. Combining data from your online marketing activities with physical store sales can significantly impact the overall performance of your products.
Product business data
Product business data is derived from your company’s CRM (customer relationship management) system and includes metrics related to various internal processes associated with each product.
Key metrics include:
- Cost of Goods Sold (COGS): This represents the direct costs involved in producing the goods sold by your company.
- Gross profit margin: Indicates how much profit is earned from a specific product after production costs are deducted.
- Handling and storage expenses: These are additional costs associated with storing, handling, or managing the product within your supply chain.
- Shipping costs: These may vary based on the product’s size, weight, or destination.
- Return rate: The percentage of total orders that customers return.
- Failure rate: The percentage of total orders that required repair or replacement during the warranty period.
Using all these metrics for reporting will help you make data-driven decisions. But having these metrics in your product data feeds will make those decisions come to live. You can create a formula that can easily take all these metrics into account and then set different strategies for each product.
Why using Feed management tool is a must
Managing product data manually can be time-consuming and can lead to many mistakes. This is where a Feed management tool like Dotidot can help. A feed management tool makes it easier to keep your product data accurate, fresh, and optimized. It works across different platforms, whether you promote products via PPC, comparison sites, social, marketplaces and other channels. It works for all types of e-commerce businesses, big or small.
Benefits of using a feed management tool
- Easy updates: Dotidot helps update your product data automatically, so you don’t have to do it manually. This ensures your product information is always up-to-date across all platforms.
- Better visibility and performance: The tool helps optimize your product data to meet the specific requirements of each platform, which can improve your product’s visibility and sales.
- Saves time and money: By automating many of the manual tasks, a feed management tool reduces the effort needed to manage your product data. This allows your team to focus on other important tasks, like marketing or product development.
With a feed management tool, you can ensure your product data is always accurate, well-organized, and optimized for the best results.
***
