Data optimization for multichannel distribution

According to a recent study by Intelligent Reach, only about 30% of ecommerce businesses provide high-quality, complete and accurate product data to external marketing channels. Since different channels have different data requirements and operate differently, it is important to perform data optimization for multichannel distribution to each channel separately. 

---

In today’s ecommerce, sellers and retailers do not rely solely on their store or the marketplace they operate in. With the rapidly increasing popularity of new marketing channels, sellers are required to constantly adjust and optimize their product data for the different channels, in order to increase exposure and to attract more customers.  

According to a recent study by Intelligent Reach, only about 30% of ecommerce businesses provide high-quality, complete and accurate product data to external marketing channels. The rest are satisfied with providing basic data (such as titles and basic product descriptions), and since it is not optimized, they are missing out on a lot of traffic and potential revenues. 

But the main issue with providing only basic product data is that in many cases it will require the customers to have prior knowledge of the product. For example, in many online stores product titles and images are enough for customers to understand what the product is. But in this case, the customers have already come to the store, and know what is sold there. So providing a title that only describes the product brand, accompanied by an image, is enough.   

However, the majority of external channels do not extract data from images, so the only data received is from the title (which contains only the brand name, but not the type of product), so customers in these external channels are left to wonder what type of product is sold here. 

Since different channels have different data requirements and operate differently, it is important to perform data optimization for multichannel distribution to each channel separately.    

In this article we will explore four main strategies to help sellers optimize their product data for external channels:

• Creating high quality product data and category structure
• Enhancing product title
• Experimenting with different keywords
• Optimizing product data for specific channels

Creating High Quality Product Data and Category Structure

External channels use category data in order to correctly index the product in their category tree. If products are missing categories, or tagged in the wrong one, they will simply not appear in category searches in the channel. 

To increase the chances of the product appearing in searches, it is recommended to provide as much relevant information as possible. The more relevant the information is to customers - the more likely it is to appear at the top of the search results page.   

Enhancing Product Title

As mentioned above, most sellers choose not to optimize their product data for external channels, instead relying on the product data and title already in their website. For instance, below we can see a Google Ad for a laptop, with the title “ASUS E410MA-EB0008TS”.

Despite having enough information for customers to understand which specific product this is, channels may lack a lot of data for indexing, causing the product to appear low in the results, if at all. To improve exposure, it is recommended to include in title additional relevant information about the product, in this case, operating system, drive space, RAM etc. This way, the channels have more data to work with when indexing the products, ensuring they will come up in relevant searches. In addition, since sellers provided customers with more information, the ones that click through to the store have a higher conversion rate.    

Experimenting with Different Keywords

Sometimes people search for the same product using different variations of wordings in the query. It is important for sellers to remember this, and try to create product titles that encompass the most popular variations. 

In order to have a better idea of which keywords shoppers use when searching for certain products, sellers need to research search queries on their site, investigate what the competition is doing, and use AdWords Keywords to supplement the data.  

After reviewing the information, sellers should optimize their product title to include popular keywords, which will help the products appear higher in the results. However, be careful not to include too many keywords to the titles, as they become too long and confusing. Try to keep the title short, while including the most important attributes of the product. 

Optimizing Product Data for Specific Channels

For all the benefits of omni-channel sales, which enable sellers to reach a lot more shoppers, they require a lot of work. Each channel operates a little differently, and therefore has its own unique product data requirements. This means that sellers need to go over the data and adjust and optimize it specifically for each channel. 

Examples of this include changing the names of attributes and values to match the naming convention of one channel, optimizing product titles to include keywords required by a different channel, highlighting different parts of the product description to match the customers of a third channel, etc. 

Without these constant adjustments and optimizations, the products will perform poorly in most external channels, and the likelihood of them completely rejected for failure to meet the requirements increases. 

Before overhauling your entire product data, it is worth taking the time to conduct some A/B testing on the strategies listed above. Select a category of products, and optimize only a subset of this group, so you can compare the positive effects of optimization to non-optimized products of the same category. Once you are confident in the results, you may proceed to full scale optimization. 

Why You Should Optimize Product Data

When venturing into the world of omni-channel marketing, it is crucial for sellers to continuously optimize their product data for the different channels. The more sellers invest in optimizing the data, the better it will perform across the various channels, boosting traffic and driving up sales. 

Lisuto combines technology with deep ecommerce consumer product knowledge helping sellers optimize their product data and extract much more out of the online store. Using proprietary AI technology, Lisuto goes through the existing product information, tagging the data with marketplace specific navigational tags, making necessary corrections and completions, bringing the quality of the sellers' product feed up to highest standard in terms of uniformity and completeness, making it perfectly optimized for each channel and for the user's eyes.