PIM (Product Information Management) generated product datasheet is now paramount for brands. Although its creation and update are often deemed as plodding task, product datasheet should be considered as a powerful tool that serve your sales performance. When properly entered into your PIM solution, it will help you avoid many mistakes and, most of all, develop your business in the best conditions. But what is a flawless product datasheet really made of?
Comprehensiveness
An optimized product datasheet is, of course, a comprehensive one. Time-to-market optimization is no excuse for forgetting about the product’s actual content: marketing data, technical data, logistics, regulatory aspects, consumer data, translations, media... Your commercials partners – not forgetting your customers – need access to comprehensive information about your product. One best practice consists in filling in all the available fields in your PIM, whether or not the latter are mandatory. Mandatory information notably includes information required by prevailing legislation and are different from one product category to another. However, one should not neglect optional data, because the more complete your content is, the more impact your product datasheet will have on the consumer. Furthermore, if suppliers or marketplaces use optional data as search filters on their websites, and if these data are not present on the product description, the products will lose any chance of being sold to the consumer.
Given the necessity to complete a comprehensive product datasheet, collaboration between your company’s departments stands as a key success factor.
If your PIM solution allows it, provide different descriptions to match your various digital channels – this will avoid duplicate content issues (which are not Google-friendly) if you have your own e-commerce website.
Reliability
A flawless product datasheet is one that is undeniably reliable and homogeneous on all channels.. The quality of information is more than ever a priority for brands, because it is a vector of consumer confidence or mistrust. Beyond brand image, a mistake on mandatory data – such as allergens for a food product – can expose you to legal action. It is therefore essential to ensure the accuracy of the information, especially since the data may come from different departments within your company. This information control can be done manually or through specialized audit tools.
The reliability of information also depends on its freshness. Any change in the product’s recipe of components must be updated in the PIM solution as the earliest convenience. This also applies to visual displays, which must be updated following any change in product packaging. In addition to the ‘freshness’ of the information, there is also the quality of spelling, which is a criterion to be monitored upstream in the PIM. Unsuitable shells can have an impact on brand image and create confusion in the consumer's mind, especially if they impact the meaning of words.
Attractiveness
In your PIM, the product datasheet must already contain all the elements that will make it possible to promote your product on the distribution channels. This attractive aspect is of course reflected in the visual displays, whose impact on sales is no longer to be demonstrated. It is clear that not offering visual displays is a major mistake, as is providing customers with ones of poor quality. The visuals, whether created by means of a photo shoot or 3D modelling, must be of high quality (sharp, crooked, slightly altered if necessary...) and rewarding, without constituting an overpromise. All sides of the product must be available, in order to offer consumers a view similar to that which they would have if they had the physical product in their hands.
These requirements apply to all your channels, but if you market your products through mass distribution, you will also have to comply with GS1 standards for your visuals. Retailers are increasingly demanding when it comes to the visuals sent to them and your product descriptions may not be accepted if the media sent do not meet their expectations.
GDSN-ready
If you market your products through mass distribution, it is essential that your product datasheet can pass through the GDSN (Global Data Synchronisation Network), both for data and visual displays. This is an essential prerequisite to ensure that your products are well referenced by reatilers. To do this, it is good practice to use a standardized and GS1-certified PIM solution. It should be noted that some retail chains require specific information. Thanks to the PIM solution, the control of this information will be carried out as soon as it is entered, avoiding the refusal of the form at the retailers's premises..
As your product datasheets are perfectly optimized in your PIM, you have all the cards in hand to work in omnichannel mode and accelerate the sales performance of your products.
