Product data quality management

In ecommerce, every click a shopper makes is influenced by product data that describes what you sell. When that data is incomplete or inconsistent, the impact is immediate and costly.

Imagine a $120 smart watch mistakenly listed at $12 on your website and the loss it will incur. Or a feed with outdated stocks and mismatched specifications, leading your customers to abandon their carts within seconds.

Consistent product data not only avoids these pitfalls but also builds a strong brand image and fosters customer trust. 87% of online shoppers base their purchase decisions on the accuracy and consistency of product information across the web. That’s why it is essential to maintain high-quality product data and invest in a robust product data quality management system to turn every click into a potential sale.

What is product data quality?

Product data quality is the measure of how accurate, consistent, up-to-date, and relevant the information about a product or service is across a business’s website and every marketplace where it’s listed across the web. This includes product titles, descriptions, prices, specifications, images, and stock availability.

83% of online shoppers will abandon an ecommerce site if the product information is inaccurate or confusing. High-quality product data gives customers confidence to buy and allows businesses to operate efficiently, ensuring that their product feed across marketplaces is trustworthy and uniform.

What is product data quality management?

Product data quality management refers to the data management processes, tools, and systems employed by your business to enhance the quality of your product information across all systems and channels. It’s a discipline within product information management (PIM) and product data syndication that focuses specifically on the quality of the data, rather than just its storage or distribution.

Manually maintaining validated product data throughout your business processes is impossible. It can be a challenging and error-prone task, especially for retailers with a voluminous and versatile product catalog.

For example, Adidas in 2023 produced some 330 million units of sportswear and about 310 million pairs of shoes worldwide. How do these brands keep their huge volume of product data successfully synchronized, updated, and uniform?

Businesses like these do not have the time to regularly audit their product information across the hundreds of ecommerce platforms they are listed on for updates and edits. Nor is it a cakewalk for growing ecommerce businesses, who cannot afford to waste time, make mistakes, and lose customers. Here is where you need an efficient platform like Productsup, where your data is consolidated, refined, standardized, and distributed across marketing and retail channels, and promptly updated.

What should product data quality management offer your ecommerce business?

Here are the five essential metrics that any efficient product data quality management system will come with:

• Consolidation

The first step towards effectively managing your data involves aggregating and organizing product data from multiple sources, like suppliers or third-party systems, into a single, unified, and reliable dataset. Productsup’s Supplier Onboarding solution helps you centralize all product information, reducing duplication, errors, and fragmentation.

• Accuracy

Your product data must accurately reflect the true attributes of the product you sell. Inaccurate and outdated data can mislead customers, erode trust, and lead to returns or negative reviews.

• Completeness

Complete product data includes all relevant information needed to fully describe your product for both customers and internal systems. This might include SKU numbers, sizes, colors, materials, warranty information, or compatibility details. Incomplete and missing data can frustrate customers who need this information to make informed decisions.

• Consistency

Inconsistent data, like a product having different names or prices on different platforms, can confuse customers and disrupt your brand image. With Productsup, your data consistency is ensured, and your product catalog is uniform across all channels, such as your website, mobile app, third-party marketplaces, and physical stores.

• Timeliness

Your product data must be current and reflect real-time changes, such as updates to inventory levels, pricing, or product availability. Outdated data, like showing a discontinued item as in stock or failing to update a promotional price, can lead to overselling or lost sales. The Productsup Content Portal simplifies creating and sharing customized product catalogs, ensuring all stakeholders have instant access to your updated product data.

• Relevance

It is important to tailor your product data to meet the requirements of your customers, business processes, and external platforms. This includes providing information that customers find valuable and adhering to industry or platform-specific requirements, such as SEO-optimized keywords for searchability or standard guidelines for marketplaces. Our Marketplace Channels solution helps you avoid marketplace disqualifications by validating data to adhere to the various guidelines.

With our suite of well-defined solutions at Productsup, we help you maintain high-quality data, reduce errors, and scale your operations globally. Book a demo with us today to transform your product data into a strategic asset, boosting conversions, customer experience, and business growth.