Why You Should Use a PIM as Your Item Master

When you started your eCommerce business, just selling on your webstore was enough. But, then you were successful and grew. You added new webstores or new sales channels like Amazon or eBay. That introduced some complexity.

Merchandising (managing product information) in a growing, multichannel business is one of the most important areas of your business to improve. Your ability to do it well has a direct impact on your ability to sell more products.

You probably managed your product data in your eCommerce platform to start. Doing so doesn’t work well as your business expands to new sales channels. You need a Product Information Management tool that is specifically suited to the task.

In this post, we’ll discuss why you need to use a Product Information Management tool as your item master instead of your eCommerce platform.

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Magento SEO: Setting Changes & Tips to Increase Rankings

Many retailers are focused on increasing their social presence or optimizing their online advertisements. But, in fact, 51% of all visitors from B2B and B2C websites come from organic search. This blows paid search and social out of the water.

With the majority of visitors are coming from search engines, it’s critical to optimize your Magento store for search. This post will focus on increasing your Magento SEO ranking. (more…)

How to Select the Right Multichannel Retail Systems

Selecting the right point solutions to execute your multichannel retail strategy is difficult. You must evaluate eCommerce platforms, enterprise resource platforms (ERP), and point of sale (POS) systems. And, it’s complicated to figure out which ones will work together to support your multichannel business processes.

For example, if you want to list different pricing for your B2C website versus your B2B website, does your ERP support that? How about your eCommerce system? More importantly, how will those systems communicate to make sure each has the right price displayed?

Many vendors do not build software that supports the key requirements to building a multichannel business. They built their software in the last decade (or sometimes the last century!) and are trying to milk every dollar they can from it. Some are not interested, others are incapable of making their systems multichannel-ready. You, the multichannel retailer, will feel the weight of that this problem.

But it doesn’t have to be that way! (more…)

Exceptional Customer Experience: How to Deliver Incredible Retail Experiences

(This post was originally published on January 13, 2015. We’ve updated it for accuracy and completeness.)

Customers don’t just buy products anymore. They buy experiences. They buy communities. They buy identity.

That means trying to sell anything less than “wow” (to borrow from Michael Hyatt) will not work. In a market where your customers have all the power, you cannot afford to under-deliver on customer experience.

You need to understand what makes up an exceptional customer experience. You need to understand how to deliver them. Let this post be your guide.

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How to Provide Personalized Product Recommendations

To provide product recommendations you really only need two things: products and recommendations.

In the offline world recommendations are easy. You see someone looking at a nice skirt, you show them the matching top. If someone is browsing through videogame consoles, suggest your favorite game.

But what if you can’t see your customer? What if you don’t know how your customer is browsing your store? This is the problem online retailers struggle with, daily.

This blog post will discuss what you need to do in order to provide online product recommendations that actually work. (more…)