The Evolution of PIM in Delivering an e-Commerce User Experience

Product data is the lifeblood of eCommerce. With global eCommerce projected to increase 20.7 percent to reach $3.535 trillion this year, savvy global retailers, distributors and manufacturers are honing in to ensure that their product information is ready to seize the tremendous growth opportunities.

As such, product information management (PIM) has risen to become a strategic imperative for every product company. With our own product innovation, we’re raising the bar and have set a new standard in PIM by not benchmarking our product based on other PIM offerings but against the best eCommerce experience. That’s our new guiding principle for the design of Agility: in designing our new Agility v8, we’ve modeled the PIM experience on the eCommerce experience customers come to expect.

Our customers are accustomed to the intuitive functionality of eCommerce websites where there is no learning required. We’ve designed our PIM with this mind by providing a more contextual user experience (UX), allowing users to search and refine as they would on an eCommerce site and then presenting the user with exactly what they need based on the content and the task at hand.

Evolution from two-dimensional to three-dimensional PIM

Historically, PIM solutions have provided a two-dimensional ‘what you see is what you get’ user experience, where you can preview the content, but it’s flat and you can’t actually interact with the data.  You might be able to preview how a product will look in your catalog or as presented in the product page template of your website, but you cannot see the results of interacting with your content.

Today, we’ve redesigned our PIM platform to deliver a three-dimensional user experience, where users interact with their data from within the PIM just as they would within an eCommerce site, by clicking on refinements. For example, what happens when you click on ‘black’ under your color attribute? Do you get the results you expect? Or do you have potential gaps in your data? Do your color options include both ‘grey’ and ‘gray’? If so, then you have data inconsistencies.

If you could easily identify these issues while working within your PIM, you could prevent accidental errors and omissions from going live on your website. Now, with Agility v8, you can. We’ve delivered an intuitive eCommerce-like, faceted search experience, leading to paged results that can be acted on immediately.

A win-win for retailers, brand manufacturers and customers

Delivering complete, contextually relevant and consistent product information is now table stakes in the era of the always-connected consumer. It’s why a robust PIM platform is needed for creating, organizing and optimizing product data from one central source to ensure brand consistency across all customer channels, wherever consumers choose to engage.

Having an effective PIM strategy in place is the cornerstone for creating an engaging and effortless commerce experience — one that drives long-term customer loyalty, increased sales and ultimately results in fewer returns.

To learn more about the value PIM can bring to your business, let’s have a conversation.