E-commerce website redesign: what role does PIM play?

Finally approved. The project of the year (or even the next few years), the one on which the company is banking to grow and reinvent itself: a new e-commerce website, migration to a new platform, an upgrade to your existing site, or – on a more structural level – a change of ERP system. This large-scale project will affect the entire company and all its business lines, but it is also proving to be particularly time-consuming and costly. Once underway, it will be difficult to launch other projects alongside it.

However, are you entirely sure that the time-to-cost ratio for this type of project is truly cost-effective for the company?

Implementing a PIM first to address structural issues will enable you to move much faster and work more efficiently when carrying out these future projects. In the meantime, the PIM is not a ‘project’ in its own right. On the contrary, it is a solution that can be rolled out quickly and delivers a return on investment for the business. From quick wins to long-term growth, discover why some businesses have prioritised PIM over their IT and e-commerce projects.

Reasons for an e-commerce overhaul

There are several reasons why a company might choose to overhaul its e-commerce platform and/or IT system.

• Website design. Your website may have become outdated and no longer reflects the trends in your sector or meets certain web design standards. It is not as responsive as it should be, and the web design is no longer up to date.
• Improving the user experience (UX). Navigation on your website is not smooth and your users struggle to find their way around; they have difficulty locating products and their details and/or placing orders. All of this can lead to a loss of business, as well as reducing your conversion rate. The user experience can be improved by focusing on usability, the site’s ease of use and navigation.
• Mobile optimisation. More and more users are browsing websites on their mobiles, and a redesign may be necessary if the site is not responsive across different devices: mobile, tablet, computer, etc.
• Optimising your website’s performance. Several factors can have a negative impact on your website’s conversion rate: excessively long loading times, features that are not responsive, etc.
• Optimising your SEO. Best practices and trends in search engine optimisation (SEO) change rapidly. Therefore, to align with search engines’ requirements, it is crucial to maintain an optimised website that can improve search results and boost your brand’s online visibility.

To understand the reasons behind a company’s decision to undertake an e-commerce and IT system overhaul, it is also important to understand which teams are affected and the reality of their day-to-day work.

E-commerce revamp: the reality for business teams

The product, marketing and e-commerce teams are responsible for managing content on a day-to-day basis by enriching and disseminating product information. They are directly affected by issues relating to restrictive tools and ecosystems, which hamper their productivity. At Quable, we talk to these staff members and know that they are the first to recognise the value of prioritising PIM in the company’s future investments. This would finally give them the means to work more effectively with data on a day-to-day basis – which would also become more consistent across the various sales channels – whilst boosting productivity and minimising errors. So, if an easy-to-implement solution exists to improve their productivity right now without affecting the company’s structure, why not make use of it?

The reality facing decision-making teams during an e-commerce overhaul

On the other hand, aligning strategic choices with operational needs is not always straightforward, and striking a balance can sometimes prove complex. Decisions are therefore sometimes made in favour of ‘front-end’ solutions (e-commerce overhauls, unified commerce solutions, etc.). Such projects seem to be the cure-all.

Yet it seems pointless to re-roof a house when its foundations are threatening to collapse: a brand-new sales channel does not resolve issues relating to data structure and quality. It is essential to equip the teams responsible for enriching this data so that they can be more productive whilst providing higher-quality data to your sales channels.

“Do you really have to wait for a year-long project to be completed when you can reap all the benefits of a PIM within a month?”

PIM is all about productivity. And productivity is, quite simply, ROI!

And productivity remains the key to success. Faced with the temptation to pursue a project based on solutions more closely aligned with end customers, some brands have chosen to prioritise PIM. Implemented in under a month, the solution breaks free from the constraints of projects lasting several months or years and therefore offers numerous quick wins that deliver ROI:

• Structured data improves the ROI of your future projects – clean data in a healthy IT system means time saved in the implementation and future efficiency of your IT and e-commerce projects.
• Reduced time-to-market – Jennyfer reduced this to just 24 hours following the implementation of the PIM
• An average saving of 60 man-days per year – reinvested in strategic initiatives that deliver added value;
• Greater agility to open and develop new sales channels and markets more quickly: Delsey has thus entered four new markets in just one year;
• Internationalisation has finally become straightforward thanks to the multilingual enhancement of product listings and their automatic distribution in the correct language via the appropriate channel;
• Reduced return rates: you provide higher-quality, reliable and comprehensive product information, enabling customers to be properly informed before making a purchase.

Redesign projects: in what order?

Given its promise of rapid productivity gains and its role in a company’s growth, PIM is fast becoming indispensable. But in what order is it best to structure your major projects?

PIM

PIM is not simply a project for the company and should be launched as soon as signs emerge of difficulties in organising and maintaining the pace of product data enrichment.

By creating the basic structure for your entire product catalogue – which will govern all information exchanges with your sales channels – PIM forms the foundation of your online and offline business strategy. It will enable you to structure, organise and enrich your product information to perfection, so that you can implement and develop a highly effective omnichannel sales strategy over the long term.

ERP Overhaul

The ERP is the essential bedrock of all processes: creating the first product entries and initial data, acting as a hub interconnected with all tools… It is crucial.

Generally, there are two scenarios that prompt the launch of an ERP project:

• It is no longer functional and is becoming a hindrance to your business
• It is no longer up to date and does not align with your strategic ambitions (digital, business, omnichannel, etc.)

However, there is no need to wait until the end of this ERP project – which will take between 1 and 3 years – to implement a PIM that will deliver quick wins (immediate ROI, improved team productivity and better product information quality). Once your new ERP system has been delivered or upgraded, simply connect it to the PIM using our API.

Unified commerce solutions / Marketplace feeds

It’s up to you to choose a solution that suits your needs: deploying sales channels, connecting to marketplaces, analysing results… However, these solutions benefit from being built on a PIM, as this ensures they are based on reliable data that is easier to manage. That’s just as well, as you’d already made this a priority.

E-commerce redesign

The e-commerce site is the first thing your customers see, yet it’s the last step to prioritise in a revamp. Usability and the checkout process must be well thought out to match customer habits and needs, but are of little use if:

• Product data is incomplete or incorrect, misleading the customer or driving them to a competitor’s site,
• Your time to market is too long, and several weeks or months pass between a product becoming available and it going on sale across your channels,
• Your products are not visible because they are not promoted across all the channels where your customers are.

Conclusion

Whilst a ‘front-end’ or ‘back-end’ overhaul is generally essential at some point during a company’s transformation, it is vital to ask the right questions in order to structure this project in a way that is relevant to the business. Quable PIM and DAM is a quick-to-implement solution that delivers immediate productivity gains. It is recommended that you prioritise it at an early stage to ensure the overhaul is carried out on a sound footing: improve the substance before the style.

Want to boost your e-commerce with PIM? Feel free to request your free demo.