How Can Product Experience Management Boost E-Commerce Sales?

prodcut experience management

Product experience management (PXM) optimizes the customer experience so users can easily find what they need. It does so by contextualizing and personalizing content according to the channel and each user.

The need for product experience management has grown. Today’s buyers no longer base their purchases on price and product alone, but just as importantly, they also focus on their experience with a brand. Because of this, most companies in this Gartner study expect to increase their CX budgets in the coming years significantly.

In the past, companies reserved CX optimization for high consideration purchases. But today, the need to optimize the product experience is widespread. Customers now expect personalized content the same way they expect a solid UX. Even B2B buyers, who have traditionally expected an unpleasant online experience, have come to expect sellers to customize their experience.

Rich product and customer data build an effective product experience management process. It requires one system to collect and distribute the product data and a second system to personalize the user experience based on customer data. It is the intersection of these two systems that allows brands to give customers the experience they desire.

Product Experience Management and PIM

Product data must be complete, accurate, and up to date for customers to have the information they need. Data richness helps them to envision themselves using an item. In addition, product data must be consistent across channels while also being tailored to each touchpoint.

Obtaining this level of data quality requires the right e-commerce technology. Trying to manage a sizable multichannel catalog in the backend of a monolithic e-commerce platform or spreadsheet is a difficult feat.

The better option is to use product information management (PIM) software, which manages and spreads product data at scale. With a PIM, you have a single source of truth for all product data. The software collects data from different sources then validates and spreads it to any number of channels easily.

fabric PIM is unique in its ability to manage multiple hierarchies for your products. The master hierarchy is the foundation of your product classification and allows you to organize your items by categories and subcategories.

The alternate hierarchies will enable you to classify your items based on different merchandising objectives. You can use these hierarchies to display similar or dissimilar content, depending on what you want to serve to each channel.

Customer Data and Personalizing the Shopping Experience

Once product data is rich and consistent, the next step is to customize its display to each user. Robust customer data and personalization software are thus critical.

Detailed customer data informs you where individuals are in their buying journey so that you can serve them the appropriate content. With a strong customer relationship management (CRM) system, you can track the journey of each user whether or not they are logged in to your site.

For personalization, a search and discovery platform like Algolia gives you the ability to tailor the experience to each user. The AI-powered software analyzes user actions to surface the most relevant content for each search. You can connect the recommendations API to your headless architecture to present highly targeted cross-sells and upsells throughout the buyer’s journey.

Conclusion

In a competitive, omnichannel market, product experience management allows brands to strengthen their connection with customers. To take advantage of powerful tools like PIM, brands can combine strong product and customer data to create memorable and differentiated experiences for their customers.


Topics: Commerce
Nessa Garcia

Customer marketing @ fabric. Previously @ Staples, BORDERLINX, and Groupon.

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