eCommerce Archives | Page 7 of 8

4 Ways Market Share Benchmarking Can Boost Your eCommerce Strategy

Successful eCommerce strategy is based on data — but you can’t just rely on your own data when making decisions. To truly optimize your eCommerce market share potential, marketplaces must understand both their own performance and that of their competitors.

In this light, market share benchmarking becomes crucial for delivering meaningful insights that guide and enhance your overall strategy so you can build a stronger eCommerce brand.

Understand Historical and Category Performance

Two vital areas of market share benchmarking are historical and category benchmarks. Historical benchmarks look at your own historical performance. For example, how do sales for a particular product line compare to how they sold at this time last year? On the other hand, category benchmarks look at the entire market, and compare your results to the market as a whole.

Performance benchmarks can vary significantly based on product category. For example, while the online shopping conversion rate for luxury handbags is a mere 0.6%, haircare products have a 3.5% conversion rate. Ideally, your own conversion rates should be similar to (or better than) category benchmarks for competitors in your niche.

Market share benchmarking can also help you evaluate your total eCommerce market share, and how it has changed over time. Losing market share to a competitor is a clear indicator that something is amiss with your own product lineup or marketing — or that a new competitor is making an even more appealing offer to potential customers.

Such data can help you optimize your own site, whether that be through improving the quality of product listings or removing declining products that are no longer turning a profit.

Gain Insights Into Consumer Platform Preferences

When looking to expand and sell your product categories through new retailers, understanding where consumers want to shop — and which platforms have the best conversion rates — can help you make better informed expansion decisions.

Market share benchmarking can help you achieve this by identifying brand share changes across multiple marketplaces, so you can more easily identify which categories and SKUs are performing well and which are on the decline.

Geolocation data can lead to even more detailed eCommerce strategy insights. Gaining a regional understanding of shoppers and their behaviors can ensure more targeted decision making when trying to work with a regional marketplace or focus marketing efforts on consumers in a particular geographic location.

By conducting this level of analysis in advance, you can avoid wasting time and money by trying to expand to low-converting marketplaces.

Identify Needed Product Assortment Changes

Which items are your best-sellers? Which are the best sellers on competing marketplaces? How does pricing impact sales? How have these trends changed over time?

Digging deep into this market share benchmarking data can provide valuable insights into changes you may need to make with your own product assortment. For example, you could be losing market share to a competing brand because your own product listing isn’t fully optimized for SEO. Or, other competitors are able to offer lower prices than what you currently offer.

Of course, these insights can go beyond looking at market share for individual items. They can also help you with assortment planning for your entire marketplace. For example, if a competing marketplace has gained significant market share after introducing a new product category, it may be worth considering adding best-selling items from that same category to your own store.

Frequent market share benchmarking is key to your organization’s ability to respond quickly and effectively to changing trends fueled by customer preferences and competitor actions.

Adapt Marketing

Yes, market share benchmarking can also offer insights into the effectiveness of your marketing strategies. Linking historical market share data with your marketing campaigns can help you better gauge a particular campaign’s effect on web traffic levels and conversions.

Using this data can help you dig deeper into the reasons why a particular marketing campaign worked (or didn’t work) at enhancing your market share. Perhaps it was the type of messaging the campaign used, or a specific promotional offer. Market share growth could even be linked to the method you used to target customers, such as email, paid search ads, or social media ads.

By using market share benchmarking to correlate sales outcomes with ad campaigns, you can fine-tune future campaigns so they continue to focus on the elements that drove sales with previous marketing efforts. This will allow you to continue to grow your market share with messaging that is better tailored to the target audience for each product category.

Improve Your Market Share Benchmarking With Cluster

Quality data can make all the difference in achieving marketplace success — and Cluster can help. With a full range of data-driven solutions for marketplaces, Cluster can help eCommerce businesses and marketplaces better track and understand drivers of market share, and how they change over time.

By using market share benchmarking to fine-tune your eCommerce strategy, you will be better positioned to implement effective changes with your product lineup that drive sales and boost your digital reputation.

11 Common eCommerce Product Catalog Management Mistakes You Should Avoid At All Costs

eCommerce catalog management is one of the most important aspects of any digital marketplace. Without quality product catalog management, your customers will have a much harder time finding the products they’re looking for — and so will search engines.

You would hardly be alone in making eCommerce product catalog management mistakes that hurt your bottom line. In fact, it is estimated that of the 12 to 24 million eCommerce sites on the web, fewer than one million make over $1,000 per year.

By overcoming the following common online catalog management mistakes, you can help your marketplace stand out and start generating meaningful revenue.

11 Common eCommerce Product Catalog Mistakes to Avoid

Confusing Navigation

If your online catalog makes it hard for site visitors to find what they’re looking for, it’s not doing its job. Too many menu navigation options can make your site harder to browse, and customers will be more likely to leave in frustration. Instead, use a concise navigation bar with fewer visuals. Making the top-level category collapsible will help keep navigation menus from looking cluttered once users go into secondary categories.

Inaccurate Product Tagging

Product tagging has a direct impact on the discoverability of your products. Proper tagging ensures that what shows up in search results will match what the customer typed. On the other hand, inaccurate tagging can cause many catalogs to remain completely undiscovered. This often occurs when you rely on manual tagging for large catalog sizes. Automated tagging will eliminate such errors and simplify product catalog optimization.

Delayed Product Onboarding

Just like manual tagging can make some products undiscoverable, manually digitizing and creating metadata for new products can result in a lengthy process to get a new catalog item to market. Once again, automated tagging provides a more flexible and agile process so that new items can be made available to customers in as little time as possible. The ability to be “first to market” with a popular new item can provide a major advantage over the competition.

Inaccurate, Non-Persuasive Product Descriptions

The average eCommerce return rate is 20.8% — and quite often, inaccurate product descriptions are to blame. Compelling images and helpful, descriptive product descriptions make it easier for buyers to decide if an item is relevant and useful to them. This information should be accurate, though still persuasively written to get customers to buy. Quality information and pictures will boost sales and reduce returns.

No Real-Time Market Visibility

Without real-time visibility into your own data — or the market as a whole — it can be difficult to manage inventory, forecast sales, or identify new items that should be added to your eCommerce catalog. Using product catalog API tools that gather real-time data from across the web will provide accurate insights that help you make smarter eCommerce catalog management decisions. Quality product performance data helps you allocate resources properly to keep operational costs down while also improving sales.

Poor Inventory Tracking

Without automated tracking systems, it can become nearly impossible to accurately track eCommerce inventory across thousands of products. Without inventory alerts, it becomes all too easy for items to slip through the cracks. Inventory tracking and monitoring tools are crucial to prevent supply chain inefficiencies that could lead to shipping delays or popular items being out of stock for extended periods of time.

Inadequate SEO

If your product listings aren’t optimized for SEO, they likely won’t appear in Google Search — which 49% of shoppers use to find new products. Relevant keywords must be used in title tags, meta descriptions, product descriptions, headers, and even the URL. Tags should be as specific as possible, highlighting the product brand and other differentiating features a consumer might type in for their search.

Outdated Lists

A core aspect of product catalog management is ensuring that catalog lists are fully up to date at all times. Customers don’t want to add an item to their shopping cart, only to discover it is out of stock when they go to check out. Updated product lists help customers know if an item is in stock, coming soon, or on back order. Integrating with ERP software can enable automatic updates based on inventory levels to provide accurate information so that customers don’t experience any unpleasant surprises when trying to complete a purchase.

Not Accounting For Channel Differences

As we’ve written previously, eCommerce sellers must account for differences between sales channels like Amazon, eBay, Instagram, and so on. Each channel displays product details differently — even something as simple as one channel using “M” and another using “medium” for clothing sizes can impact whether a listing is displayed properly. Tailoring lists for each sales channel you use will facilitate smoother product updates and better performance with potential customers.

Irrelevant Product Recommendations

Amazon has made upselling and cross-selling of related products the norm for online shoppers. But if your marketplace recommends irrelevant products, you’ll have a hard time maximizing your sales potential. Upselling and cross-selling is most successful when recommendations are based on a user’s browsing history or what other customers have purchased along with an item. It can also be more effective when customers are only given a few options that are well-reviewed or top sellers.

No Competitor Pricing Analysis

eCommerce prices are constantly changing. With so much competition, you must be fully aware of what others are charging for items that are similar (or the same) as what you sell through your marketplace. Gathering pricing data from across the web will help you set competitive prices that drive sales while still enabling you to turn a profit. This data could also be used to help you time sales and promotional events based on competitor activities.

Make Product Catalog Optimization a Priority

While these eCommerce catalog management mistakes can significantly hurt your marketplace, leaning into product catalog optimization can give you a major advantage over the competition.

Cluster’s Catalog Enhancement solution can help. With quality data, you can clean and enhance your canonical catalog, increasing revenue as you get the right listings in front of the right shoppers at the right time. With a wide host of solutions for eCommerce marketplaces, Cluster helps you shift your focus to winning the basket. Book a meeting today to learn how we can help improve your product catalog data.

The State of Social Commerce in 2022 — What You Need to Know

eCommerce brands and marketplaces that ignore the potential of social commerce do so at their own peril. While social commerce currently represents only a small portion of total eCommerce sales, rapid sales growth in this area presents a prime opportunity for online sellers who understand these platforms and their users.

In this report, we’ll break down some key trends that are affecting the social commerce marketplace in 2022, and how eCommerce sellers can understand and use these trends to maximize their online sales potential.

Sales Growth Outpacing the Number of Buyers

According to Statista, global social commerce sales are expected to reach $992 billion in 2022. While this is certainly impressive in its own right, it pales in comparison to what is projected to happen in the next few years, with estimates expecting social commerce sales to reach $2.9 trillion by 2026.

Much of the social commerce sales growth can be attributed to the increased buying power of younger generations, who are more likely to use social media to complete purchases in the first place. For example, a 2021 survey found that while 55.5% of social network users aged 18-24 had made a purchase using social channels, only 34.3% of individuals aged 65+ had done so.

As the buying power of these younger generations increases, it is expected that the total number of purchases made using social channels — and the total amount of spending — will increase dramatically, even as the total number of buyers grows at a relatively slower pace.

For example, research from Insider Intelligence reports that social commerce sales per buyer have grown to $518 in 2022, a 26.9% increase over the year before. By 2025, that per-buyer total is expected to reach $938.

As these numbers illustrate, eCommerce businesses and marketplaces with product catalogs that focus on social media platforms have the potential to significantly increase their total value per customer in the years ahead.

Facebook and Instagram Continue To Post Strong Results

Facebook has long been the dominant social media platform — and when it comes to social commerce, that isn’t likely to change anytime soon. According to Insider Intelligence, roughly 63.5 million social commerce buyers in the United States make purchases on Facebook in 2022, with that number expected to steadily grow to 69.4 million by 2025.

Instagram, which is also owned by Facebook’s parent company Meta, also remains a major player in social commerce, with 41 million buyers in the United States as of 2022. Instagram is expected to have 47.5 million social commerce buyers in the U.S. by 2025.

Buyers have become increasingly comfortable with discovering, researching, and buying products through these platforms. A Facebook survey reveals that 62% of people say they “become more interested in a brand or product” after seeing it in a Story. In addition, Instagram’s internal data reveals that 90% of its users follow at least one business, while 70% of surveyed users say they either “like or don’t mind ads when watching video on Instagram.”

Even for brands that aren’t using the platforms directly for social commerce, there is a significant opportunity for building relationships with customers and enhancing awareness of their product catalog.

The Rise of TikTok

TikTok is no longer new, but its significant growth in the social commerce space is certainly worth noting in 2022. According to the previously cited Insider Intelligence report, while only 3.5 million Americans used TikTok for social commerce in 2020, that number soared to 23.7 million in 2022, putting the video-focused platform ahead of Pinterest for the first time.

Not surprisingly, TikTok is also expected to continue to have the fastest growth rate among social commerce channels, reaching 37.8 million buyers by 2025.

While TikTok’s numbers may trail behind Facebook and Instagram, its shopper behaviors are especially noteworthy. TikTok has the highest percentage of social media shoppers who say they buy products on it “all the time,” at 20.6%. Community trends like #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt also result in 67% of TikTok users saying the platform “inspired them to shop even when they weren’t looking to do so.”

Current Challenges

These types of numbers could make it seem like everything in the world of social commerce is going perfectly — but recent developments show that these leading social media channels are currently reworking their approach to improve their own financial situations.

As Digiday reports, Facebook is poised to cut its live commerce shopping feature. Instagram has already taken down its affiliate commerce program. And TikTok is adjusting its own commerce options with the introduction of three new ad formats, while also abandoning plans for social commerce expansion.

This pivot away from commerce and toward advertising is being influenced by several factors, including Apple’s changes to iOS 14, clunky shopping experiences, and ongoing economic turmoil.

One of the biggest challenges, however, is a lack of buy-in from marketplaces that are yet to recognize and uniformly adopt social selling strategies that will deliver the greatest impact. As Sarah Penny, content & research director at Influencer Intelligence explained in the Digiday article, “Some think of it as purchasing everything in-app, some consider it as live streaming with an influencer selling products, while others believe social commerce is having shoppable tags on their content. When we can’t fully define what we mean by it because it’s so new, it shows there’s real nuance within the industry that needs to enable all brands to catch up to be able to provide that uniformity.”

In other words, it’s up to brands and marketplaces to determine what social commerce should look like for their target audience, and then deliver on those expectations.

Are You Ready to Sell On Social?

Social media is ever-present in the lives of consumers — and eCommerce businesses and marketplaces need to take advantage. Your ability to present your product catalog in an attractive manner that makes it easy for customers to make purchases can make all the difference in turning social into a viable channel for growth.

Cluster can ensure you are presenting the right mix of products to your target audience. With accurate cross-channel data collected from digital POS data, Cluster can help you optimize your product assortment and identify assortment gaps so you can present relevant, high-demand products. By continually pleasing shoppers on social and other channels, you can ensure that they’ll buy from you again and again.
Book a meeting today to learn more about how quality data can help you sell more on social and other channels.

Assortment Optimization: Why It Is Important For Your eCommerce Business

When it comes to maximizing the potential revenue of your eCommerce business, few things can be more valuable than assortment optimization. The right mix of products can make all the difference in helping control your business costs, while also maintaining your appeal with customers.

Sound assortment planning is especially valuable in today’s environment, when supply chain issues continue to disrupt operations for many products and industries across the globe.

Here’s a closer look at how product assortment optimization can help your eCommerce business or marketplace thrive — and how today’s technology makes assortment planning easier than ever.

What Is Assortment Optimization?

In its most basic sense, product assortment optimization is the process in which an eCommerce business or marketplace decides which products it should offer to shoppers. This mix of goods is strategically selected based on customer preferences to maximize the store’s revenue.

Finding the optimal assortment generally focuses on two main types of products: fast-moving goods that sell at higher quantities but deliver a lower profit margin per item sold (like clothing), and higher-end goods that sell slower but have a higher profit margin (such as electronics).

Successful eCommerce marketplaces generally build their merchandise assortment strategy with these two broad types of products in mind, as this ensures the most consistent flow of revenue from their customer base.

Why You Should Use Assortment Gap Analysis

While assortment optimization may sound easy, the reality is far different. It is all too easy to develop an inadequate product mix that doesn’t offer enough variety to keep customers engaged. In some cases, a lack of alternative products can result in lost sales if an item goes out of stock due to supply chain issues or other factors. For other products, SKUs that are too similar to each other can ultimately cannibalize sales.

A recent analysis by Pimcy determined that while product failure rates aren’t the staggering 95% reported by some sources, at least 40% of new product launches could be considered a failure. In their analysis, they also noted that “a distinction in failure rates can be made across the various types of innovation: incremental innovation, more innovative development, and radical innovation. […] The failure rate increases the more innovative the solution is. However, on the upside, there also is the potential for a bigger return.”

Whether the product is something completely new or simply an improved version of a product that is already on the market, there is never a guarantee that it will be a success. This is especially true in the competitive world of eCommerce, where new marketplaces often struggle to thrive against more established competition.

Despite these sobering statistics, customers are often interested in trying something new, particularly in product categories like clothing or jewelry. Part of what keeps them coming back to an eCommerce business is the promise that it will have something new for them to try — be it a new T-shirt design, improved backpacking gear, or something else entirely.

Because of this, assortment optimization is an ongoing process. It can’t be a “one and done” activity. Customer preferences, supply chain factors, the introduction of new products and the discontinuation of old products means the product mix may be constantly changing. An assortment gap analysis must be performed regularly to ensure your business is introducing new products that will connect with customers — and removing products that are no longer making a profit.

Why the Time Is Now For Better Assortment Planning

With more competition thanks to the rising popularity of digital shopping, eCommerce businesses and marketplaces must prioritize assortment optimization like never before. Understanding which items are missing from your catalogs can make all the difference — and fortunately, this process no longer needs to be left to guesswork.

Running an assortment gap analysis helps your business determine best-selling products or categories from reputable sellers that should be added to the online store. Data-driven, AI-enabled tools use web scraping and other data retrieval methods to gather information on billions of products across multiple channels.

eCommerce stores that use these solutions can download information on a relevant product category, retrieve GTINs for best-selling items and obtain product lists by seller. By running this assortment gap analysis, an eCommerce marketplace can ask its current sellers to onboard new items that have a proven record of successful sales on other channels. If this isn’t an option, an eCommerce marketplace could attempt to onboard new sellers who offer the desired products.

With quality information readily available through a data-driven assortment gap analysis, it has never been easier to access and utilize this data. Such information is crucial for staying ahead of your competitors — many of whom are using similar resources for their own assortment optimization efforts.

The Benefits of Assortment Optimization

A sound assortment optimization strategy offers several tangible benefits for eCommerce businesses. An assortment gap analysis can help your business understand the eCommerce landscape as a whole — including customer preferences and competitor behaviors.

With this data, eCommerce businesses can do more than identify new options that can be added to their marketplace. They will be able to identify which mix of products will create a good blend of high-volume and high-profit sales that appeal to their target audience. They will also be better able to identify product lines that are declining in popularity and potentially reducing their profit margins.

This allows marketplaces to create a collaborative relationship with their sellers that focuses on creating win-win solutions. After all, by utilizing shopper insights and providing data-based product onboarding recommendations, marketplaces and sellers can increase their sales success. This creates an atmosphere of transparency and accountability that sees all parties involved better able to optimize their product lineup and take ownership of their results.

Collecting these insights in real time can also lead to more agile and flexible decision making. Quickly identifying trends can help your business mitigate supply chain concerns by adapting its product line based on seasonal changes or other trends. Rapidly pivoting your product assortment ensures you can always offer relevant items at any time of year.

By providing products that shoppers actually want, your eCommerce business can become the go-to online resource for your target audience.

Strengthen Your Merchandise Assortment Strategy With Cluster

If you’re ready to strengthen your assortment planning processes, Cluster can help. Our Optimal Assortment services are designed to help both marketplaces and brands identify category gaps by assessing product data across channels. With full visibility across the entire eCommerce landscape, you can gain the insights you need to boost sales by presenting relevant, high-demand items to your customers.

As you use assortment optimization to continually present shoppers with trending, best-selling products from trusted sellers, you will be able to accelerate sustainable growth that builds your reputation and keeps customers coming back time and time again.
With Cluster on your side, lasting marketplace success is closer than you think!

5 Ways Power Sellers Can Make Or Break Your eCommerce Marketplace

Ways How Power Sellers Can Make Or Break Your eCommerce Marketplace

eCommerce sales account for nearly $5 trillion in revenue today. Regardless of what industry you specialize in, it’s clear that this is the landscape of business that we all need to capitalize on.

When building your own eCommerce marketplace, it lives and dies by your ability to attract the best sellers. These top performers, known as power sellers, are essential to the growth and success of your platform.

Keep reading to learn more about the benefits of improving the marketplace seller and buyer experience by encouraging power sellers.

1. Quality Sellers Bring More Shoppers

If you don’t have sellers, you don’t have shoppers. A marketplace power seller has the most volume and a vast inventory of products that people can choose between.

Not only does this attract new buyers, but customers will begin shopping exclusively with these sellers, offering them repeat business. These marketplace power sellers bring you the most revenue when you collect your fees.

Seller intelligence is a solution that can help identify power sellers providing you with the contact information that you need to build a rapport. This relationship can help you grow their conversions and improve your market share.

2. You’ll Increase Brand Awareness and Trust

When you have power sellers, they legitimize your marketplace on a larger level and build trust with consumers.

It typically takes at least 5 impressions for buyers to make a decision to purchase. Your marketplace vendors have a vested interest in getting more attention to their personal stores, which ultimately brings more awareness to your platform.

This is why encouraging power sellers ranks highly among the most important eCommerce tips you can follow. Buyers are more hesitant to shop with vendors that only have a few confirmed sales or reviews. Having more trusted sellers will give you a larger inflow of traffic and revenue for the long haul.

These sellers serve as your foundation, which you can build on the more you attract these power sellers.

3. Shoppers Will Have a Better Experience

Power sellers are full-timers with their online stores that are constantly making improvements. The customer wins most because these improvements reward them with a better shopping experience as a whole.

Power sellers also deal with greater sales volume, are more responsive to customers, offer more payment options, and tend to ship orders faster. They often run full-time businesses offline, such as a brick-and-mortar retail store that sells similar products.

Because of this, these professionals are more likely to stay up-to-date with new eCommerce ideas and trends to consistently accommodate their customer base. They often run blogs and post videos so that their customers are informed.

You’ll build shopper intelligence and attract your ideal customers when you’re always investing in improving their experience.

4. Your Platform Will Attract Different Segments of Business

Power sellers will consistently bring you more eCommerce leads. This is one of the best things to learn when figuring out how to attract sellers to your marketplace.

These power sellers will network with each other and always find new and different ways to improve what they do best. For instance, a power seller that is successfully selling products to consumers might choose to take the private label approach or look into things like dropshipping.

This ultimately expands the reach of your outlet and the type of service that you provide to consumers. When your shoppers have more options for the types of products that they can get on your platform, it’s a net positive for everyone involved.

5. Power Sellers Provide Constant Marketing

You can also count on power sellers to continuously market themselves and their brands. They have a vested interest in building their brand awareness, which will also raise more awareness to your platform.

When you have a relationship with these power sellers, you can use eCommerce marketplace data to study the demographics of their customers and how they get their conversions. This can help you with ad placements and figuring out which customers you’d most likely to target.

Having data at your disposal is best when you’re trying to figure out where to find eCommerce business leads because your goals will be more accurate and measurable.

You’ll be able to scale your platform to achieve the type of growth that you expect, and can collaborate with your power sellers on ideas.

For example, with Seller Intelligence, you’ll have the benefit of:

Taxonomy mapping
Analytics and price benchmarking
Access to seller store analytical tools
Product matching for more accurate categories
Real-time data to help get more sales and traction from seller channels
Product data enhancement
Catalog enhancement tools

It’s best to work deliberately with power sellers so that you can get on the same page with your marketing goals and steer them in the same direction.

The Ultimate Marketplace Seller Experience

The marketplace seller experience that you create means everything when you’re trying to grow your platform. Power sellers are your bread and butter, and will help you get the results that you’re looking for.

If you’re intent to get sellers to your eCommerce marketplace website, you need a helping hand. At Cluster, we have a team of professionals that are skilled and equipped to make all of your goals a reality.

With Seller Intelligence by Cluster, you’ll have the data needed to put it all together.

To book a meeting with us, use our contact form or send us an email at info@datacluster.com.

3 Product Page Data Enhancements to Win More Traffic

The eCommerce market is expected to surpass $52 trillion by 2027. That’s nearly 4 times as large as its 2021 value.

More customers mean more competitors. While eBay and then Amazon long dominated the eCommerce scene, the pandemic created a shift. With more time spent at home, consumers had more time to shop around.

Because of that, smaller eCommerce sites have more opportunities to make their mark. How can an online marketplace stand out amongst the growing competition?

The first step is retaining customers. The number one way to do that is product page enhancements.

That’s right, it’s not all about SEO! There’s no point ranking highly on a search engine if customers abandon or don’t even fill their carts. For long-lasting success, your product pages have to convert browsers through to purchase.

Then your site traffic and search engine rankings will organically increase. And your product pages will be optimized enough to sustain your success.

Here’s our guide to specific product page enhancements every marketplace should be making and why.

Improve Loading Speeds

As basic as it sounds, loading speeds can make or break organic traffic generation. If your site or your product images take a few moments to load, it can put users off completely. In fact, 53% of people expect a web page to load within 3 seconds.

If it loads too slowly, the same survey found that nearly half of customers will be dissatisfied. And if they click away from your site that quickly, it hurts your traffic substantially.

Buyers want a swift, painless experience. Don’t give them time to second-guess their purchase or your professionalism!

Accurate Product Information

The best product page enhancements are all about product information. Product data enhancement is the key to winning more site traffic. Attention to detail at this stage is the number one way to push customers through to purchase.

eCommerce product data includes written information, as well as images and other details. We’ve broken down how to improve each area.

Product Descriptions

Product data is everything. Potential buyers want to know every detail about your products. Data-driven product catalog management should be central to your strategy.

That goes beyond dimensions and delivery dates. An eCommerce product description should be as thorough as seeing it in person.

In a brick-and-mortar store, shoppers can pick up the product. They can feel its weight, gauge its size, and read more information on the package.

eCommerce marketplaces can combat these challenges by providing just as much information.

If any product information is missing, consumers won’t have the confidence to buy. Or they may return the product.

For online purchases, the average return rate is a staggering 20%. The problem is not just lost revenue, it’s a loss of confidence in your marketplace.

If your product descriptions do not accurately represent the product, they won’t just return it – they won’t come back. That is less site traffic from repeat customers, which leads to less organic traffic generation.

Clearly, an accurate product description is key to repeat customers, which drives organic traffic.

Accurate product data also helps your product get identified by search engines. Besides a clear description, search engines respond well to these details:

Global trade item numbers
Manufacturer part numbers
Brand names
Stock keeping unit numbers

Consistently structured product data is also helpful for both search engines and consumers. On every product page, data should appear in the same order and in the same places, so people know where to look.

This is especially important if several stocked products are relatively similar. Their differences and unique identifiers should be clear enough that customers and search engines can distinguish between them.

High-Quality Images

Good images are just as important to consumers as good data. Bad images, or worse, none at all, reflect badly on your business. If you can’t provide several high-quality images from a variety of angles, buyers jump to questioning your authenticity.

Your goal should be to provide enough images that users feel they’ve seen the product in person. That will give them the confidence to buy and come back in the future.

Visible Product Reviews

Reviews add to your site’s verifiability. In fact, nearly 90% of customers surveyed said that they read reviews before purchasing a product online. The same survey found that even more than 90% of people trust reviews as much as recommendations from people they know.

Make sure it’s easy to leave a review so that previous buyers do so.

Include an image option with reviews so that buyers can upload images alongside them. These candid review images add to buyer confidence even more than professional ones.

Buyers are also interested in your responses to reviews. If any customer leaves a negative review with a complaint, you may want to respond to save face.

According to the survey mentioned earlier, these business responses are read by and are important to nearly 60% of customers. Make sure you represent your business well and respond in the most considerate way possible.

Product Page Enhancements for Your Online Marketplace

Putting these enhancement tips into practice will win you more traffic. But working with us gets that number even higher.

Our solutions for marketplaces go beyond product data enhancements. They win more traffic by fixing attribution, removing duplicates, forecasting demand, ensuring accurate taxonomy, and creating an optimal shopper experience.

Don’t struggle through manually improving product pages in-house. Instead, let us go through your marketplace with a fine-toothed comb and find every optimization opportunity.

Book a demo with us today to learn how.

The Ultimate Guide To eCommerce Product Catalog Management

eCommerce has become more lucrative than ever, with total US sales reaching a record-breaking $960.1 billion in 2021. However, this doesn’t mean that every eCommerce marketplace is automatically set up for success. In fact, the highly competitive nature of digital marketplaces means that many sellers struggle to make any impact whatsoever.

This is where eCommerce product catalog management comes in. Quality eCommerce product catalog data can make or break your business by providing customers with crucial information to help you build a brand that appeals to your target audience.

What is eCommerce Catalog Management?

In the simplest terms, your catalog is the full range of products that you offer on your storefront. eCommerce catalog management is the process of ensuring that you have accurate pricing and product information available for each item in your store or marketplace.

This information can be highly detailed. For example, product descriptions can include color options, sizes, dimensions, materials, price and other unique attributes that help a customer make his or her buying decision. The eCommerce product catalog must also be presented in an SEO-friendly manner to improve site rankings, while also being easy to navigate on your own web page.

Why is Catalog Management Important in eCommerce?

Regardless of whether a customer is shopping in a physical store or online, they value convenience. In fact, research from the National Retail Federation found that 52% of shoppers say at least half of their purchasing decisions are influenced by convenience. And, 97% will back out of an inconvenient purchase.

eCommerce product catalog management helps you deliver the convenience that can make all the difference in enticing customers to make that initial purchase — and continue to buy from you in the future.

A quality eCommerce product catalog delivers convenience by offering the right type of information to help customers make a purchase with confidence. Quality information can also reduce the likelihood of customers being dissatisfied and returning their purchases.

By streamlining the purchasing decision, you make your eCommerce store easier to use and foster brand loyalty.

3 Common eCommerce Product Catalog Management Mistakes You Should Avoid

Quality eCommerce product catalog management can be more difficult than you might expect. The following issues can result in lost sales and a poor customer experience:

Not Accounting For Different Sales Platforms

Your merchants likely sell across a wide variety of channels, such as Amazon, Instagram, eBay, and more. However, not accounting for differences between these sales platforms can create pitfalls. Different channels may require different sets of product information. They may also display product details in a different manner.

Your eCommerce product catalog data must be consistent across multiple sales channels so that customers always receive accurate information. Otherwise, you run the risk of creating an inconsistent experience, which will make it harder to build customer loyalty. This could also make some platforms fail to deliver adequate sales.

Not Adapting Catalogs For Different Audiences

Many sellers target multiple audiences, who require different sets of information. For example, a store like Home Depot will sell materials to both DIY homeowners and contractors. While a homeowner may only need to buy a few pieces of lumber, a contractor would likely look to buy lumber in bulk.

Failure to display the right information to the right consumer can cause major navigation issues that make it harder to make a buying decision. Inventory technology can help you display the right details to the right audience.

Inaccurate Product Categorization

Poor product categorization can undermine your online marketplace’s dynamic search and sorting abilities. If customers can’t easily search for and find a product, they will quickly abandon your store. Inaccurate categorization can also make it difficult to track SKUs and manage inventory.

3 Tips for Efficient eCommerce Product Catalog Management

Your eCommerce product catalog data can become a key differentiating factor that helps drive sales and customer loyalty. Here are some tips for more efficient catalog management:

Use Your Data to Upsell and Cross-Sell

eCommerce catalog data can be used to suggest related or alternate products when a customer is looking at an item on your site. This can be a great way to upsell and increase the value of an order, or to help customers find what they’re looking for if the current product isn’t a perfect fit. Amazon has previously attributed 35% of its sales to this practice.

Track Demand With SKUs

eCommerce product catalog data can also aid merchants’ SKU management. Tracking inventory using SKU numbers will help merchants identify when items need to be reordered. It can help them identify seasonal trends in demand, as well as when they should allocate more or less stock to a particular product. Automating reorder points can ensure that merchants never run out of stock, so that a marketplace is always ready to fulfill customer orders.

Use the Right Data Provider

The right data provider can make all the difference in effectively managing your product catalog. Cluster will help you keep all your cross-channel data in one centralized location. With real-time updates and complete visibility into your inventory, you can accurately track and manage product data.

This will help you standardize your catalog management process and break down information silos so you can have more trust in your backend data and be better equipped for winning more customers.

Make the Most of Your eCommerce Product Catalog Management

Quality eCommerce catalog data will make all the difference in helping your company drive revenue and improve the customer experience. With Cluster for Catalog Enhancement, you can have confidence that you are getting the data you need to put the right products in front of the right customers at the right time.
With data drawn from over one billion products, 23 million brands, and 85 thousand digital POS data providers, you will have the robust (and accurate) information you need to succeed. Additional marketplace services, such as price and demand benchmarking, can further help you increase your competitive edge and drive revenue. Book a meeting today to learn how we can help enhance your eCommerce product catalog data.

10 eCommerce Influencers to Follow on Social Media

Keeping a pulse on eCommerce intelligence in real time involves many moving parts. From scouring various datasets to online trending insights, we look to create the most comprehensive and accurate product catalogs; the foundation for any online brand, CPG, marketplace or aggregator looking to accelerate growth across digital channels.

While we continue to track and analyze product data from over a billion items, from millions of brands, across multiple marketplace channels (and geographies) in addition to the digital point-of-sale data leveraged – in our own market research, we also keep an eye on some key eCommerce influencers that help guide us on where to look next.

These 10 eCommerce Influencers are presented here:

No. 1: Juozas “Joe” Kaziukenas, Founder of Marketplace Pulse

If you’re looking for data and research on marketplaces, the lead of this eCommerce intelligence firm is a good place to start. With data collected from Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Walmart, Wish and others, its proprietary software takes raw data from web scraping and APIs to extract particular insights on brands, product categories and sellers. Kaziukenas’ most recent piece is an annual “Marketplaces Year in Review 2021,” giving an in-depth snapshot on what’s going on in this industry based on data observations in the most objective way possible.

No. 2: John Dick, Founder and CEO of CivicScience

Built his survey and data company to ‘study emerging trends among early adopters, market mavens, and influencers.’ A frequent speaker at the Carnegie Mellon University Don Jones Center of Entrepreneurship, regular contributor to AdAge, the HuffingtonPost, and Forbes and with appearances on Good Morning America, Cheddar, Yahoo Business, etc., his latest insights most recently take the temperature of consumers during a pandemic including what this means online.

No. 3: Deborah Weinswig, CEO & Founder at Coresight Research

And one of LinkedIn’s Top Voices for retail, is focused on covering all things retail technology, trends, live streaming, commerce and more. Her latest LinkedIn share speaks to rising inflation presenting a significant challenge and insights on how retailers should not simply ‘pass along rising costs to their shoppers.’ Instead, seek other opportunities to offset those inflationary pressures by looking for tech that streamlines and optimizes eCommerce processes.

No. 4: Sri Rajagopalan is not only the Chief Omnichannel Customer Officer for General Mills

But he has made his way up the eCommerce ranks in a career that spans the likes of well-known brands including PepsiCo, J&J and Revlon. He has also added advisor to startups to his current role, but is most relevant to this list for his Co-Hosting of The CPG Guys podcast. Rajagopalan adds his eCommerce expertise to podcast Co-Host and consumer loyalty guru Peter V.S. Bond to ‘explore how brands and retailers engage with consumers in-store, online and everywhere in between.’

No. 5: Colin Lewis, CMO, of OpenJaw Technologies and author of Econsultancy’s Third-Party Marketplaces Best Practice Guide

regularly researches and writes about eCommerce trends and most recently how marketplaces are everywhere. He reports that over 50% of the gross market value for the top six eCommerce players in the world is on marketplaces. What’s more, entrepreneurship and cross-border shopping, the gig economy, and so on … have all contributed to this trend. Most importantly though, Lewis covers how to take advantage of this opportunity and win on marketplaces.

No. 6: Kaleigh Moore is a regular contributor to Forbes

With an expertise in retail, eCommerce and direct-to-consumer (DTC). She’s particularly focused on trends within the fashion, beauty and luxury verticals. Her latest works include how DTC brands are diversifying their product lines creating more eCommerce competition – something online retailers need to track. She also reports recently that digital, third-party marketplaces are seeing an 81% increase in gross merchandise value year-over-year so far in 2021, and highlights examples of how online luxury marketplaces are ones to watch.

No. 7: Chris Dawson

Is a former eBay seller turned Co-Founder and Editor of Tamebay. According to his bio, he noticed a lack of general information and help [around eBay selling] and he had aspirations to create a site to “Tame eBay,” bought a URL and promptly did nothing about it. Fast-forward to today and Dawson works on the site full time, writing and attending numerous eCommerce events throughout the year, also undertaking consulting gigs for companies wishing to fast-track their eBay sales.

No. 8: Steve Dennis

Is a keynote speaker and the bestselling author of “Remarkable Retail,” keeping tabs on the latest retail, eCommerce and digital disruptions happening in the industry right now, closing out his latest podcast with another well-known industry influencer, Professor Scott Galloway. Dennis is focused on retail growth and innovation, stemming from his 30-year career as a senior executive at two Fortune 500 retailers – and more recently as a strategic advisor. He has most recently penned content around the potential Saks.com spin-off, provocative retail predictions, and the hybridization of retail – and he doesn’t hold back on offering up his opinions.

No. 9: Tom Davenport

Is Visiting Professor at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, and your go-to for all things data science. He keeps a close eye on artificial intelligence, machine learning and the democratization of data within organizations. He has co-written and written around 20 books and hundreds of articles, most recently quoted as saying the AI/ML trend is part ‘motivation in addition to technology.’ Whether you’re getting started in your data/analytics journey, or need a refresher, Davenport is a helpful ‘follow’ away.

No. 10: Sucharita Kodali

Is the Retail Industry Analyst for Forrester, talking all things retail and digital transformation. While her research is typically about broader retail industry trends, she recently held a session at a live event, which looked at a 140-brand study, released in partnership with Vorys eControl that focused on online marketplaces, the challenges that arise in digital sales and solutions for increased online control.

Putting the Influence in [eCommerce] Influencers

The aforementioned compilation is a list of top eCommerce influencers to follow, who continue to create the content that not only covers the industry trends we’re hearing and seeing, but also have an influence on the more robust eCommerce product catalog information we’re trying to build and improve upon consistently. We hope you find it useful.

Who would you add to this list? Let me know at alaricer@algopix.com, and you could see those individuals highlighted in the next iteration since, sharing is caring, after all.

From the Tech Trenches: 5 Questions with Cluster Chief Technology Officer

When the company was first launched in 2016, the mission for Algopix was seemingly simple, “To make eCommerce marketplace data more accessible and usable so online brands can make informed decisions.” It was able to aggregate marketplace data in real-time to help sellers research, source and launch their online businesses.

Fast-forward to today (and throwing a global pandemic into the mix), eCommerce has been thrust into the spotlight – as a survival mechanism for brick-and-mortar and even restaurants, to accommodate social distancing mandates, and to get essential goods and services to those in unprecedented circumstances.

Whatever the reason to shift to eCommerce, Algopix also began its own shift. As more and more enterprises and big brands started to pique their interest into learning more about what real-time data can do for their online marketplaces, we also had to pivot and create new products and services for a broader audience.

And while the only certainty in eCommerce is change, we also know that:

1. eCommerce/online shopping is here to stay (now that we’ve figured out how to buy groceries online, why would we want to go back?), and

2. Data, analytics and technology can’t be static in a constantly changing world.

So, here we went right into the trenches and caught up with our Chief Technology Officer Yaniv Cohen, with five top-of-mind questions to see what advice he uses to thrive and what technologies to watch going into 2022 and beyond:

Q: What did you learn along your career path that you still use today?

COHEN: First, when you get the chance to build something from scratch, make sure you get it right the first time. This ensures you won’t face any issues with systems that someone else has built (especially if they didn’t do it right).

Next, even if someone else is to blame, don’t use that as an excuse to report failure. Make it work by doing everything possible to get things moving in the right direction until it gets done. Try to help others around you become better at what they do, you’d be surprised how much improvement you’ll see in their performance. The most talented people I’ve had the pleasure to work with during my career are not those who have the best looking CVs.

Finally, leadership is never given by authority. Leadership is given to those who take care of others around them.

Q: If you could go back and give yourself advice when you first started your career, what would that advice be?

COHEN: As a software engineer, you should have a very solid knowledge of the basics (data collections, algorithms and even design patterns). They apply to almost every development language you will use.

Additionally, make sure to surround yourself with highly professional and GOOD people. It will make you a better professional and a better person.

I started out in the industry when XML became all the hype and JSON hadn’t been thought of yet. Today, nobody would use XML if they can avoid it, so if I could go back to when I first started, I’d say, “Use JSON, not XML!”

Q: What advice would you give to any entry-level business/tech person today?

COHEN: What you do at the beginning of your journey will most likely lead to what you’re doing for the rest of your career. So, choose your first role carefully.

The majority of interesting, challenging and innovative positions are usually not found in high profile, large companies. It is usually at the smaller or digitally born organizations that are trying to build something new and innovative using the latest technologies.

Q: What resources do you use for continuing your education or learnings as technology continues to evolve and change.

COHEN: Online blog posts and technology-centered websites. But above all, I look to my colleagues and peers who I’ve become to know well during my career. I get to discuss new technologies with them especially if they’ve had experience with them already.

Q: What is the greatest piece of technology to watch?

COHEN: I think that quantum computers are going to change everything. Programming languages are going to change considerably in order to support this new technology.

Benefits To Using an API-First Strategy

Over the past few years, eCommerce businesses have had to deploy new digital technologies to better serve their customers and stay one step ahead of their competitors.

As such, many eCommerce providers have adopted application programming interfaces (APIs) to integrate their software with such shopping platforms as Shopify, Magento, eBay, Amazon, and more. This eCommerce API integration works as a data transfer bridge between the eCommerce shopping platforms and the eCommerce tools, enabling the vendors to provide their customers with the functionality of their platforms.

An API is a set of functions that lets an application interact with operating systems, microservices, external applications, or data. Put simply, APIs allow software to “talk to” and interact with each other. An API for an eCommerce website connects consumers and eCommerce companies by transforming data into valuable business information.

Participating in the API economy is critical to the long-term success of eCommerce vendors as it allows them to connect to tools that help them as well as their customers operate more efficiently. The key to this, however, is using an API-first strategy.

Benefits of an API-first strategy

Generally, software vendors add APIs on top of their platforms, allowing customers to access some of their software’s underlying functionality but not all the functionality. The API-first strategy makes system integration easier.

An API-first strategy ensures that customers can access all of the functionality of the vendors’ software through the APIs. This API-first strategy enables eCommerce vendors to create and extend the solution they need to develop to meet their needs as well as the needs of their customers. Not only does the API-first approach improve the development of a solution, it also makes the development process more agile.

Today, applications must not only be well-designed but they have to be on the market within six months. Another benefit of an API-first strategy is that it allows companies to get their products to market faster and it enables customers to derive value more quickly from those products.

And an API-first model allows developers to customize the features of their solutions according to the business needs of their clients. API-first also makes it easier for developers to make improvements and adjustments to the solutions without having to re-architect the entire system to meet the ever-changing business needs of their customers

The following are benefits of an API-first strategy for eCommerce vendors:

Saves time and money on developing applications and rolling out updates.
Changes to the API happen simultaneously across all applications.
Enables automation, which accelerates production.
Developers don’t have to build new programs for each application.

Benefits of an API-first approach for eCommerce companies:

Lets teams identify design or programming flaws before rolling out applications to customers.
User-facing information looks the same across all platforms.
Website content can be customized to meet the needs of returning customers and website visitors.
Improves user experience, as APIs let companies offer customers more services in less time.

Importance of a product price API strategy

Price monitoring software enables eCommerce companies to monitor the changes in their competitors’ prices in real time. It also gives them real-time insights into stock availability, promotions, and other information eCommerce companies can use to optimize their pricing strategies on the fly.

It’s important for eCommerce companies to use price-monitoring APIs that provide up-to-date eCommerce data that collects information from large retailers and eCommerce marketplaces. This includes information about the top-selling products, product availability, shipping costs, and more.

Price monitoring APIs also allow eCommerce retailers to trace the pricing history of any product for a specific time period. In addition, the automated price tracing capabilities help organizations save time and money on competitive analysis.

Conclusion

By adopting an API-first development strategy, eCommerce vendors will have agility to meet ever-changing customer expectations and remain competitive in the market. An API-first strategy gives online retailers more control over the selling experience and offers them more options when it comes to scaling up and improving services. APIs also help online retailers get more insight into their customers so they can offer them products customized to meet their needs.

API tools enable online retailers to build more scalable and robust eCommerce platforms that are critical in today’s business climate.