We’ve heard the phrase ‘you manage what you measure’, but in some cases, the idea of analytics seems more difficult and confusing. At a high level, businesses need to understand whether their product content is constructed properly; whether it is performing; and how it can be improved. But in a complex consumer and commerce ecosystem, what exactly do you measure in order to manage your product content?
Here’s a quick overview of the areas where a business should focus:
Content Integrity
The first thing to measure is Content Integrity. With all the resources you spend organizing and curating your content, you should know if the content is successfully syndicated. Tracking whether your content meets all the different retailer site standards can be a challenge if done manually; with an analytics engine to evaluate the available assets, you can have a scorecard to show you where content needs additional support (and why). In addition, having the capability to evaluate how your submitted information compares to the content that is displayed live on site is a powerful tool to have for conversations with your retailer partners.
Content Engagement
Once the information is correctly displayed, you will want to know how shoppers are interacting with your pages. This is perhaps the most familiar element of analytics – the tracking of online behavior, and learning “what’s working, and what’s not?”. In addition to the standard web monitoring tools, you should also consider ways to monitor shopper engagement compared to the competition. Syndigo has developed a few analytics reports that you can monitor to optimize your PDPs and improve add-to-cart rates and total cart value over time.
Digital Shelf Analytics
When measuring physical in-store activity, the shelf is front and center. And there are many options to measure things like sell through, promotional lift, and out of stocks to name a few. In the online world it is no different – even though it’s a newer discipline, the digital shelf should be tracked as well. For example, do you know how your pricing compares to competitors online? Which competitor items are listed out of stock on retailer sites? What is your overall share of digital shelf? By having a means to track these metrics consistently, you can build a profile and understand how to optimize your offerings – and where to focus your efforts.
Additional Reports
Beyond content integrity, engagement and the digital shelf, sometimes you need to monitor a more specific variable. That’s when it helps to have other means of reporting available. Based on Syndigo’s experience, there are quite a few variables that clients have found helpful, including: Capturing detailed customer reviews; Minimized Advertised Price (MAP) monitoring; First Mover reports to view price changes across retailer websites; and Geo-Reporting for understanding KPIs (out of stock, pricing, buy box) across multiple geographies.
To make the most of your online content, it is important to optimize – to continually improve and enhance – your product information over time. Using analytics to understand how your content is performing and learn how to improve it, online and in real-time, is one of the benefits of utilizing a provider with these tools available. With a bit of understanding around the process and a robust set of tools, you will be far ahead of the game in optimizing your PDPs.
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