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Showing posts from November, 2017

B2B Catalog Creation Software – An Overview

B2B customer needs are changing at a fast pace. They expect a highly efficient B2C-like experience when they make a purchase – whether they engage with retailer’s online, offline or on their mobiles. Thus the catalogs catering to the B2B customers need to evolve accordingly. Questudio’s CatalogStudio is powerful software to create full line and specialty catalogs. It consists of several modules providing the features needed to create, manage and maintain all product information in one central repository. Its functionality also includes PDF catalog publishing and content management. One can create both print catalogs and web catalogs with equal ease. The design of a catalog is as important as its functionality. A catalog creation software helps in the process of creating catalogs in multiple formats. The catalog production is maintained such that it picks up data from the product information management system. This database consists of cross-referenced part numbers that in tu...
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How PIM Helps Your eCommerce Business Grow

As an eCommerce business grows, the number of products they offer grows as well. It often becomes increasingly difficult to manage and maintain product information, ergo hindering growth. Product information management offers a clear and considerable solution for your eCommerce business. The lack of a central system to store, manage, organize and publish product information can seriously hold an eCommerce business back in today’s hasty digital world. By implementing a PIM system, organization and product management, marketing and branding, and customer acquisition and sales are all positively impacted. Organization and product management Keeping track of information for every product you sell and manually organizing it can be complex and messy. A PIM solution is designed to keep all this information straight. It allows you to make bulk updates, create dynamic and logical product groupings, adapt and edit product info and pricing, and combines all data from various systems into a...
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The Power of eCommerce Personalization

As you probably already know, customers today dominate the online retail landscape, and current eCommerce trends are specifically aimed to improve their experiences. One major way to cater to customer preferences is by eCommerce personalization. When retailers implement personalization strategies into their eCommerce stores, they often see significant benefits. What is eCommerce personalization? The primary goal of eCommerce personalization is to provide an online customer experience that replicates that of an in-store experience. This is one of the most advantageous concepts in eCommerce today. Essentially, a personalized eCommerce site helps retailers better serve their customers and create lasting relationships by utilizing customer data, personal messages, product recommendations, tailored search results, customized content, etc. to help users find exactly what they’re looking for. It shifts the retail environment from company-centric to customer-centric. What are the benefi...
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Create a Personalized eCommerce Experience for Customers

As the digital world expands, it’s vital for eCommerce stores to keep up with the newest trends and techniques. Customers today seek a personalized eCommerce experience during each visit to your store. This shifts the goal of eCommerce stores from a company-centric experience to a primarily customer-centric experience. In other words: it’s all about the customer. Each time someone visits your online store, they should feel like the site was built specifically for them. It should cater to the individual, rather than the group. How do you create a personalized eCommerce experience? First and foremost, in order to create a personalized experience for your customers, you must truly understand your customers. In order to produce effective personalization, ask yourself the following things: Who are your customers? Who are you trying to sell to? What do your customers want? How do they shop? Where do they make purchases (online, mobile, in-store)? Why? It’s all about understanding ...
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The Difference Between Omnichannel Retailing and Multichannel Retailing

The terms omnichannel and multichannel are often used interchangeably in the industry. However, the terms actually reflect two different approaches to eCommerce, and retailing in general. Let’s break it down. What is multichannel retailing? The prefix “multi-” means many, or more than one. Therefore, multichannel refers to more than one channel, or sales avenue, to engage customers. In retailing, companies that use multiple sales channels–ie: brick-and-mortar, web, mobile, etc.–yet focus on them individually, have a multichannel strategy. While they may encompass a strategy across many channels, each channel ultimately stands on its own. What is omnichannel retailing? The prefix “omni-” means all. Thus, omnichannel means to use all channels and devices to reach customers. In retailing, this means encompassing a consistent message, look, feel, and experience across each possible sales avenue. There is no such thing as mobile commerce or social selling in omnichannel retailing, ...
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Product Information Management is Key to Omnichannel Success

In times when customers are growing more demanding, and dictating the retail industry, an omnichannel approach allows businesses to keep up. Omnichannel retailing allows businesses to create more meaningful and more consistent customer experiences across every channel. The key to omnichannel success lies in managing business operations and integrating channels to streamline and enhance the customer journey. Omnichannel Success The retail world is all about convenience for the customer. Therefore, in order to be successful in this industry you need to make your customer happy. That’s where omnichannel retailing comes in. Customers want a seamless and effortless shopping experience. An omnichannel strategy means integrating all channels and devices to provide just that. The question is, how does a business integrate these channels to encompass an omnichannel approach to retailing? Product Information Management A product information management (PIM) solution allows retailers to ...
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Seamlessly Integrate Product Information Management With Dealer Portals

The lack of consistent information about products is an extremely common and frustrating experience for online shoppers. Seen from a company’s point-of-view, given the short lifecycles of products, and the sheer volume of products on a website, it is difficult to create and maintain the data without using a mature PIM software. PIM software makes it possible to maintain, harmonize and update the data centrally and remove the errors that tend to creep in through manual systems. Product Information Management and Dealer Portals PIM software, like the one from Questudio, enables companies to manage their product database from a central location. This means that any search will access the same data and hence return consistent information. Using this central repository, you can create different deliverables while ensuring that all of them sing the same tune. This ensures that your customers find consistent information no matter how they arrive at the information. To ensure that the da...
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The Future of Print Catalogs

With the marketplace moving online, it would seem like the death knell has been sounded for the print catalog. However, studies conducted in various parts of the world show that this is far from the actual state of affairs. Independent studies in the US, UK and Australia have shown that while the number of catalogs being mailed to customers has fallen, the percentage of women who made purchases after seeing the product first in a print catalog is close to 86%. A well-made print catalog tends to influence purchase decisions more than online catalogs. In fact, even in the target demographic of 18-35 year olds, it was found that they prefer print catalogs to online catalogs. Advances in print technology today make it easy to customize print catalogs to cater to specific audiences. Technologies such as Variable Data Printing allows marketers to create highly effective catalogs that talk to specific customers and result in higher business. Furthermore, ...
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Unorganized Content – Try Content Management

Digital content has a way of exploding on you. Different types of data and multiple versions of each item means that managing content can become very cumbersome, time-consuming and error-ridden. Content Management Software enables you to administer digital content throughout its lifecycle. The typical stages of content management are: Creating Editing Publishing – online or on print Managing Removal or deleting A good content management system will enable you to manage all these tasks easily and remove most of the errors that can arise from trying to manage a large amount of data. To be able to do this, it will contain all or some of the following features: Create SEO optimized content Manage product categorization (meta information) Manage product attributes Manage product descriptions Enable image editing Enable easy updates Enable cross-selling and upselling Enable branding support Putting a good Content Management System in place gives you a slew of benef...
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Web Catalogs and eCommerce – An Overview

As shopping moves online, it is not surprising that catalogs too have moved online. A web catalog works very much like a printed catalog or brochure in that it lists the various products on offer with details about products and pricing. Like a printed catalog, a web catalog allows customers to browse the products on offer and read details about the product. It also lets the customer to see images of the product. However, unlike a printed catalog, customers can also buy products directly from the catalog by clicking the appropriate links. Web catalog creation software can help a company boost its sales by making the catalog attractive, easy to use for the end customer, and easy to set up for the seller. Some of the features that good web catalog creators provide are: Inventory control: Lets users add, edit and delete items in the inventory from a single interface. Crosslinking related items: Lets users link related products to drive customers to other products they might want t...
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Benefits of Print and Web Catalogs

In the debate to use print or web catalogs both sides have very valid points that support their viewpoints. Here we will try to list out the benefits of each type of catalog. We will also try to provide pointers of where each can be used.Print catalogs have been around for a long time. With the advent of the Internet and web-based catalogs, many people thought that the heydays of print catalogs were behind them. However, print catalogs have proven to be very resilient and studies show that many customers still prefer the print catalog to an online one. Print catalogs provide a myriad of benefits that cannot be matched by other types of catalogs: Print catalogs allow you to create a connection with the customer. By its very nature, print catalogs allow you to tell a story rather than just show products. Since you can control the sequence in which your customer sees the photographs, you can lay out a series of pages that take the customer through an experience. Print catalogs don’t...
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Benefits of Catalog Management Software

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A retail solution requires three distinct entities to share information. It is the smooth flow of information between these three entities that ensures the success of the organization. It is not enough that each of these entities has the information, it is important that they have the most up-to-date information. For instance, if your supplier is able to see up-to-date information about product stock levels, they can plan their production and procurement better. This is not beneficial only to your supplier but provides benefits for you too. Here is another scenario. You receive a new shipment of a product and the price is lower than what is shown on your website. You want this information to flow from the supplier into your system and on to the customer who can make a more informed decision, and make it quickly. In a world where online shoppers open multiple tabs on their browsers and compare rates across portals, if your system does not support such smooth flow of informati...
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Why Does a Company Need Catalog Management Software

To understand how a good catalog management software can help an organization, we take the case of a fictional online grocery story – Zimblybuy. Zimblybuy is considering whether it should invest in a catalog management system. They speak to a consultant who asks them to point out the issues they face in their business. Situation #1 Just as in normal organizations, in e-Commerce organization too there are many departments and divisions; each of these tend to work within their own silos. Such independence leads to data being owned by different entities and stored in different ways. Such dispersion of data in the organization leads to misleading and, sometimes, conflicting information being presented to the customer. At Zimblybuy, the Marketing division rolls out a Buy One Get One (BOGO) offer on a certain set of products. For this event, the division creates a new set of product images with the BOGO identifier on the image. On the day the campaign ends, these images are to be r...
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Tips to Enhance Omni-channel Marketing

Over the past decade, we have moved from brick and mortar stores being the primary point of sale, to the Web and now, with the spurt in mobile devices users have multiple ways to engage with a business. To be able to benefit from the shift, as an organization you have to offer solutions that enable multiple modes of engagement for your customer. Customers no longer only expect such a unified approach to sales but demand it. Over the past year or so, more and more retailers who primarily offered online stores are augmenting it with brick and mortar stores. Take the example of a customer who is looking to buy a mobile phone. Before she makes the purchase decision, she will check the features and prices online; then she may go to a brick and mortar shop to hold and feel the phone. The decision to buy the phone could happen at any moment. In order to make the sale, the business needs to be where she is rather than wait for her to come to them. The aim of omni-channel marketing is to ...
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Benefits of storing all information in a Central Repository

Repository is derived from the Latin term “repositorium” which means a place where things are stored or collected. Similarly a central data repository is an aggregation of stored data in some place such that it can be shared, updated, analyzed and secured by every user in an organization. The complexity of huge data created and used by several divisions of a business or organization poses great threats to its security, access, accuracy and quality increasing the need for more efficient centralized, integrated data management. In addition, inaccurate data can be harmful and can lead to wrong decisions resulting in loss; hence a central data repository is a necessity to support your business. Improves decision making Data is crucial for making business decisions; especially complete and accurate data is vital for making business analysis and taking effective decisions. When data is integrated in one place in the central repository, management can make better decisions to run the bus...
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Most Happening E-commerce Trends in 2017

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Customers today prefer to shop at their convenience. They prefer shopping online as it provides a large variety of goods, comparison of prices etc. at their finger tip. E-commerce satisfies these needs of the customers. E-commerce is any type of business or commercial transaction that involves the transfer of information across the internet. E commerce is constantly evolving with improved discovery, technology, logistics etc. Chat Bots A computer program designed to simulate a conversation with human users, especially over the Internet. Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, and Google are all introducing cohesive bots to help improve the shopping experience. They help to retain customers. They cleverly use push messages, text messages and emails to gently bring back customers. If a sale is not done and the product is in the cart it can send the user with reminders, offers etc. They are available 24/7. Mobile Phones Mobile has become a key driver in business as it is used at every st...
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Product Information Management and ROI

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Product information a click away Processes and technologies aimed at managing information about products are referred to as Product Information Management. With the speedy growth of e-commerce and the fame of online stores, PIM is gaining importance. Availability of high-quality product information is essential as consumers devote more time exploring products online. Questudio’s CatalogStudio PIM software works as the central repository. It helps create, manage and maintains all product information. CatalogStudio software consists of numerous modules which are suitable for enterprises and SMEs. PIM directly impacts the revenue and cost of a company. The effects of PIM on returns on investment are: Increases sales Customers search product information across platforms before their purchase. Availability of accurate product information increases sales. It has been proved through studies that online conversion ratios can increase by up to 56% through PIM. PIM helps in cross...
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SaaS based Product Information Management

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Internet-as a service SaaS (Software as a Service) is a software sharing model where some third-party hosts applications and makes it accessible to consumers over the internet. It is also commonly stated to as ‘on-demand or web-based software’. One can easily use the software via the internet where no installation or maintenance is required. This gives user freedom from complicated hardware and software management. SaaS applications run on its provider’s servers. The access to applications is managed by the provider. Questudio also offers CatalogStudio in a SaaS-based model. An easy way to comprehend SaaS SaaS model can be understood better by comparing it with the working of a bank. Bank provides trustworthy and protected service to its customers and at the same time protects their privacy. Bank customers use identical technologies and financial systems without any worry about their private information which cannot be accessed without authorisation. The SaaS model provide...
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Popular posts from this blog

B2B Catalog Creation Software – An Overview

B2B customer needs are changing at a fast pace. They expect a highly efficient B2C-like experience when they make a purchase – whether they engage with retailer’s online, offline or on their mobiles. Thus the catalogs catering to the B2B customers need to evolve accordingly. Questudio’s CatalogStudio is powerful software to create full line and specialty catalogs. It consists of several modules providing the features needed to create, manage and maintain all product information in one central repository. Its functionality also includes PDF catalog publishing and content management. One can create both print catalogs and web catalogs with equal ease. The design of a catalog is as important as its functionality. A catalog creation software helps in the process of creating catalogs in multiple formats. The catalog production is maintained such that it picks up data from the product information management system. This database consists of cross-referenced part numbers that in tu...
Read more

What does your product information say to the customer?

Product information is the data related to the product that helps customer buy the product. Consumers today demand rich data and related images to make their purchasing decisions. In today’s content driven commerce environment, it is important to have detailed product information. Product information flows through multiple departments, such as IT, accounts, sales, marketing etc., across an organization.  The precise flow of the data is essential for successful touch points on the customer side. Questudio’s Product Information Management makes use of processes and technologies to manage information about products centrally.  PIM acts as a single repository for all product data coupled with data integration and governance capabilities. A business through its product information conveys the following to the customer: Unique Selling Point A seller must strategically answer the customer queries on what the business is, what they do and why they must buy the produc...
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Benefits of storing all information in a Central Repository

Repository is derived from the Latin term “repositorium” which means a place where things are stored or collected. Similarly a central data repository is an aggregation of stored data in some place such that it can be shared, updated, analyzed and secured by every user in an organization. The complexity of huge data created and used by several divisions of a business or organization poses great threats to its security, access, accuracy and quality increasing the need for more efficient centralized, integrated data management. In addition, inaccurate data can be harmful and can lead to wrong decisions resulting in loss; hence a central data repository is a necessity to support your business. Improves decision making Data is crucial for making business decisions; especially complete and accurate data is vital for making business analysis and taking effective decisions. When data is integrated in one place in the central repository, management can make better decisions to run the bus...
Read more