Shopify is one of the most popular e-commerce platforms in the world today. Due to its flexibility and ease of use, it has become a fan favorite in the industry. With thousands of available tools on the Shopify App Store and plentiful opportunities to maximize sales, there’s little wonder why the number of sellers on this platform skyrockets every year. As of 2021, over 1.75 million merchants sell on Shopify, and over 1.59 million live websites also use the platform.
Alongside the immense amount of activity on Shopify, comes steep competition. Most marketers know the secret to conquering competitors is to work smarter, not harder. Luckily, PIM (product information management) is built to do just that. PIM is designed to drive product performance on Shopify, expand market share, and boost competitive value.
What is PIM? Short for Product Information Management, PIM is a catalog management solution. PIM solutions synchronize product data from suppliers and/or internal teams, unifying it into one source of truth. This simplifies data distribution to e-commerce channels like Shopify, all while combatting errors.
So, when it comes to the aim of maximizing sales, what does PIM offer? Let’s consider seven primary reasons to integrate PIM with your Shopify store.
1. Automation
Say goodbye to copying and pasting from clumsy spreadsheets. Automation is one of the main benefits of PIM integration. Time-saving data enrichment rules inject product pages with essential data, titles and descriptions, filters, auto-linked assets, variations, features, styles, collections, sale categories, URL keys, and brand logos, among other items.
Examples of PIM’s automated functionality include:
- Workflows for copy enrichment collaboration, including titles, descriptions, URL keys, categories, color families, material families, translated titles & descriptions, and other meta fields.
- Validation tools identify and flag inconsistent product dimensions.
- Completion scoring tracks required attributes and flags products with missing values.
- Recommended Actions allow you to discover gaps and solve errors quickly.
- Bulk Export tools enable users to bulk download digital assets in any file type.
- Synchronizing reference data (ERP to PIM, PIM to Shopify) for categories, colors, sizes, brands, styles, collections, and vendor codes.
Online retailers require a central location to keep their product data organized and manageable. With a principal view of product data on PIM, everyone in the company sees the same information.
Additionally, product data structures provide a world of possibilities for expanding product ranges. Customer service representatives, product design, merchandising, marketing, copywriters, photographers, translators, and sales teams all work together systematically towards a common goal, resulting in remarkable outcomes.
2. Product organization
As a single source of truth, PIM enables you to categorize products into a highly-intuitive taxonomy. Having standard naming conventions for products can smooth out the process of establishing multiple Shopify stores and connecting to multiple third-party platforms.
The primary benefit of categorizing products in PIM is for the purpose of fueling faceted search results on Shopify. Usually located on the sidebar of search results, faceted search exists as a roadmap for buyers to access the product they’re looking for as quickly as possible.
By arranging your products into categories, faceted search on your Shopify stores will produce more accurate, faster results than your competitors. Tags and attributes remain consistent, resulting in highly accurate databases that enhance searchability. Not only does faceted search create a satisfying experience for buyers, but it also increases conversion rates, driving revenue for organizations.
3. Faster time-to-market
The quicker your products go to market, the more successful they’ll be. Products with a longer sales cycle tend to out-perform products that are on the digital shelf for less time. Consumers are more likely to discover and purchase your product if you’re able to put it on the shelf faster than your competitors.
With the combination of PIM automation and workflow, getting through product launches and meeting deadlines can be faster and more efficient. Teams can collaborate over product content preparation (plus catalog creation, PDFs, spec sheets, etc.) on PIM, letting you build product pages and marketing materials faster than ever.
In highly competitive sectors, PIM integration moves Shopify businesses along quickly to their project goals, maximizing not only productivity but also product success.
Consolidating product data in a single source of truth makes it easier to manage continually developing product catalogs. PIM supports up-to-date, precisely organized product information that can be readily shared across departments, resulting in agile delivery to Shopify. PIM reduces the possibility of errors, duplications, and other irregularities by automating manual procedures. Even after launch, you can make bulk adjustments to further save time.
Automated tools in PIM have the potential to reduce product launches from months to weeks. Meaning, not only are your teams able to put products on the shelf faster, you’re able to do it on a consistent basis. Product catalogs can grow at scale.
4. Product catalog migration
If you are planning to migrate your e-commerce business to the Shopify platform to take advantage of its numerous marketing tools, PIM can make the move easier. Many e-commerce platforms have a limited set of product information management features, posing a challenge to a harmonious product data transfer. Especially if you’re dealing with potentially thousands of SKUs.
Chances are, if you’re on another eCommerce platform and you’re not utilizing a PIM, the data sources of your product catalog are compiled on various excel sheets and in numerous file folders.
Using PIM, aggregating all product content from many sources into one place is a very smooth process. Assimilating products from multiple suppliers with varying naming conventions is simple with PIM’s mapping tool. Following standardization, your team can intuitively categorize products, optimize according to Shopify standards, and push to Shopify stores using automated tools.
PIM enables a fast, seamless transfer to Shopify; no errors or delays. Such efficient data governance enhances your product content completeness. Thus, your product pages can better inform shoppers, increasing your sales and reducing product returns.
5. Shopify-specific tools
Use Shopify-specific tools like meta fields to their fullest capacity by creating fields for them straight from PIM. Doing so saves time while increasing brand awareness, uniqueness, and product findability. With meta fields, you can capture custom product information that does not have a default field on Shopify’s admin.
In essence, PIM integration enables you to add specialized information about your product(s) that make it stand out from those of your competitors. Automatically organize and input customer information, such as part numbers, launch dates, blog post summaries, and others into your PIM workflow to sync to your Shopify stores.
With PIM, you get to hone in on the Shopify meta field tool to enrich your product detail page(s). At the same time, you maintain consistent information across connected sales channels, edit meta fields, secure backup, and a cloud-based storage system.
6. Multi-store management
While Shopify allows you to open multiple eCommerce sites, PIM enables you to seamlessly manage and enrich product data from a central location. The sole purpose of opening more than one Shopify store is to cater to more than one buyer persona.
PIM simplifies the process of opening more than one Shopify store, especially if you want to cater to different audiences, while still storing all product information on the same platform. Create store-specific product content on the PIM, and avoid errors like content duplication or mismatched products.
An additional bonus of multi-store management is the ability to optimize product content for international markets. You can seamlessly expand your customer base to different geographical locations and maximize sales using PIM. Manage multiple languages, currencies, and dimensions for a single product in one location before pushing to prospective Shopify stores.
7. Enhanced visual experience
These days, visual customer experience is more important than ever. When your PDPs include enhanced content, engagements, product interest, and site traffic increase. High-quality digital assets are just as important as product information. Assets can greatly
Choosing a PIM with a built-in Digital Asset Management system can help with this. DAM creates a single source of truth for all digital assets, including images, videos, 360 images, and brochures. In addition, a built-in PIM/DAM solution means you can enrich assets with keyword attributes and link to coordinating product information.
For the visual experience, enhanced content sections (or layouts) can be just as important for optimizing the buying experience as digital assets. Many PIM solutions are now offering built-in enhanced content creation elements for simple drag and drop layouts. Enhanced layouts can be pushed to Shopify via high-limits API. This process minimizes the error-prone copy and pasting process used oh-so-often in product marketing.
Final words
Shopify is a platform that can be enormously profitable for your e-commerce business. If you are serious about running a successful e-commerce business, you cannot afford to be left behind in implementing the latest and most significant trends in the market.
And so far, Shopify is one “trend” that’s here to stay.
To leverage Shopify’s potential, consider integrating a PIM system with your store if you haven’t already. Do you want to make your site more appealing to potential customers and make sales? Start with taking control of your product data. Use a PIM solution to your advantage now, to pursue a successful Shopify business at scale.
