E-Commerce for Brands

Let Product Data Work Harder for You

How to Use Enriched Product Data for One Platform on Another

Brands selling anywhere online have learned that the “new normal” of product catalog data requires a lot of work. It’s a demand of digital commerce that has created a burden never before seen. Understandably, brands are still figuring out how to rise to the task.

Decades ago, product data simply had to portray products in an attractive way without formatting requirements or SEO or anything else. Product data was dropped into each brand’s direct mail catalog, and if ever a description didn’t fit the catalog’s format, that format could be changed just as easily as the product description could.

In digital commerce, product data has to fit the mold of each channel’s requirements and to make products even remotely competitive that data also needs strategic channel-by-channel tweaks. These tweaks are required for each selling platform so that the product data can fit their format and the way consumers use their site.

On top of channel requirements, there’s a competitive need to continually enrich data, too. These types of enrichments include filling in blanks, improving copy, and adding or enhancing images, videos, and other audiovisual-rich media.

Brands spend all this time enriching product data as part of today’s product catalog management. Once all that time is spent enriching data for one platform’s requirements, shouldn’t there be a way to apply that work to the data requirements for another sales channel?

Yes, there should — and there is. Keep reading to learn how to use enriched product data across channels.

What is enriched product data?

Compare essential product data to enriched data and the difference seems easy to explain. In general, essential data refers to the text-based product information that’s required to sell that product on any channel. This data includes product titles, categories, dimensions, and more.

Enriched data, on the other hand, typically includes the audio-visual media that goes with a product listing. Think of the product videos, additional photos, 3D renderings, and the detailed visual dissections of product renderings to “look inside,” not to mention new AR and VR elements.

Enriched product data also refers to any product data that has been totally optimized. It’s the bare minimum to include a brief product description on a product listing. Once you optimize that description to include bullet-point lists, examples of use, additional imagery, and more, then your product description is optimized.

It takes a lot of work to get a product catalog with thousands of SKUs to that point of absolute data enrichment. The process is sped up with the right tools, but that’s not the question here. For a hard look at how to use enriched product data prepared for one platform on multiple others, take the following 5 steps.

Step 1: Cross-compare the data requirements

If you enriched your product data with one specific channel in mind, and now you have your eye on adding another sales channel, cross-compare the data requirements for the two platforms.

For example, if the first channel has a character limit of 400 on product descriptions but the new channel has a limit of 350, that will require additional edits before you load your product data to the site. Fortunately, it’s easier to work with an already-enriched description as a base than it is to start from scratch to write a totally new 350-character description.

Product data enrichment must be done for each channel brands sell on, so this first step is fundamental to speed the process up. Channel-by-channel customizations are still one of the top 6 wrenches that brands throw into their own digital commerce efforts, and by first cross-comparing the data requirements, you’ll be better positioned to make the most of the new channel with as little work as possible.

Step 2: Cross-compare the user experience

Channel requirements are one thing, and observations you make as a user are another thing altogether. Explore and cross-compare each channel as a user and take notes.

For example, perhaps each channel requires a certain number of photos, but the second platform has a side-by-side photo comparison tool. Users’ experience on the channel will be different as a result, and that gives you an idea of how to better enrich your product photos.

As another example, maybe one platform favors visual search and another channel favors text search. You can target your enrichment efforts accordingly.

Step 3: Add what you can add

Once you identify the different requirements and opportunities from the existing channel to the new one, dig into your product data and start by adding any new fields that are required.

Fortunately, adding data without losing the enrichment work you did before is easy. Just build new data fields into your product catalog management system. Any data fields that are exclusively just to one channel or another can simply be “unchecked” when you’re ready to export the product data to launch to another.

Step 4: Edit what has to be edited

Next, there are the existing product data fields where edits have to be made to already-enriched data.

Be sure to create a new field specific to the new channel; don’t edit over your previous product information or you’ll lose the database of enriched product information you worked so hard on for the first channel. For example, if you have to restructure product descriptions, create a new field in your product information management system and title it “Description — Channel X” or whatever will allow you to easily differentiate as you update and export data.

If you still use spreadsheets to manage product data, do not create versions of existing spreadsheets for this step. Instead, create new fields in your existing spreadsheet. Otherwise, with multiple versions of duplicate product data, your catalog will suffer inescapable and pervasive data discrepancies.

Step 5: Export your perfect data set

Once you have your new data added and new fields built to support existing data tweaks, select the data you plan on using on the new channel. Export that product data from your catalog in the format you need to upload to the new channel.

Exactly what this step looks like will depend on what you have in place to manage catalog data.

For example, a brand using a product information management (PIM) software can export selected lists or products in a few clicks. Anyone using an Excel file will have to transfer product data from internal spreadsheets to a template for the new channel.

Bonus: Repurposing Enriched Data

Talking about how to use enriched product data has focused on how to make your hard work pay off for more than one channel.

There is, however, another way you can use enriched product data on other channels. You surely already do this, but you can do more of it and leverage your catalog data more deliberately. The key: repurposing.

Repurposing content is a buzz in the marketing world because, once you have a long-form blog with accompanying graphics, it’s easy — and provides more consistent information for customers — to “harvest” bits and pieces of those blogs and images to use as social media posts or blurbs in email campaigns.

In the same way, you can take that enriched product data you have and use it creatively on marketing channels, too.

Think about how to use enriched product data from your catalog on:

• Social media
• Email campaigns
• Google My Business
• Blogs

All of these product data management processes are made possible today with the right technology. The new status quo for brands is such that data enrichment is a necessity, and this ongoing activity is what makes or breaks a brand working to get seen online and to sell successfully on multiple channels.

As it turns out, there’s been a long trajectory of product data management to bring us to where we are today. And now, with the next-gen product information management (PIM) software built specifically for the digital-first economy, you can test better data enrichment practices and then leverage those optimizations on every channel you market or sell on.