This is the first in a series that explores the dynamic world of retail and how retailers can get ahead to improve margins, increase sales and become more efficient with data.
At the helm of this series is Tim Marshall, Syndigo’s Vice President of Retail Partnerships with many years of industry experience working with the worlds’ largest retailers and brands across multiple segments. Tim will be your guide through retail trends and challenges and allow you to hear from some experts who are helping to shape the direction of our industry.
In the fiercely competitive world of retail, every detail matters.
From the moment a customer lands on a product page, they’re making snap judgments. High-quality images, detailed descriptions, accurate specifications, enriched content—these are the elements that can turn a casual browser into a loyal customer. But what happens when content is flawed, inconsistent, or just plain wrong?
The answer is simple: it bleeds profits, quietly but consistently.
The Profit-Draining Power of Bad Product Content
Bad product content isn’t just an inconvenience; it’s a direct threat to the bottom line. Consider the following impacts:
Lost Sales
When product information is incomplete, inaccurate, or poorly presented, statistics show that more than half of customers will abandon their carts and an overwhelming majority, 89%, say they seek out competitors who provide clearer, more trustworthy content.
Increased Return Rates
Mismatched shopper expectations due to insufficient product descriptions lead to higher return rates. In fact, over one-third of customers say they returned a purchase because it did not meet expectations based on the information provided. Not only does this erode your profit margins, but it also creates a negative customer experience that can damage your hard-won reputation.
Lost Loyalty
Consistency is key to building trust with customers. When product content varies from one platform to another, or when it fails to accurately represent the product, customers lose confidence in the retailer, resulting in long-term damage to customer loyalty.
Operational Inefficiencies
In our increasingly busy world, time is precious, and organizations must be cognizant where they are spending their time resources. As one client recently told me, “It’s very tedious and takes a lot of time to get products updated across multiple retailer platforms.” This diverts time and energy away from more strategic initiatives, further hampering profitability.
The Retailer-Supplier Dichotomy: A Tale of Misalignment
At the heart of the bad product content issue lies a fundamental dichotomy between the retailers that sell products and suppliers that make and provide them.
Both parties share a common goal—selling products—but they often approach content creation and management from very different perspectives. This misalignment is where the trouble begins.
The Challenge of Multiple Formats and Requirements
Retailers are focused on delivering a seamless, consistent customer experience across all channels. Each retailer has its own set of content requirements—different formats, image resolutions, character limits, and metadata fields.
Suppliers need to get products listed as quickly and widely as possible, but they have their own ways of managing data with internal systems, processes and governance rules. They too want to differentiate their content, but keeping up with the varied requirements for a large portfolio of products across multiple retailers can be overwhelming.
Resource Constraints
Trying to meet the demanding needs of consumers’ every changing whim while maintaining a manageable model is a monumental task. Retailers face the daunting task of ingesting content for thousands of items with constant new product launches, item updates and seasonal changes.
The number of staff needed to maintain content across their retailer portfolio is daunting for suppliers. Smaller suppliers in particular may lack dedicated content teams needed to effectively manage the job. This resource gap results in content that is rushed, incomplete, or not optimized for specific retail environments. These gaps create additional follow-up and manual efforts for the retailer…it’s a never-ending cycle and back-and-forth communications, validations and updates.
Bringing It Together: The Path to Profitability
Bad product content is a problem that can’t be ignored. The costs are too high, the impact too severe. Good enough is not enough. To stop profit bleed, suppliers and retailers must take a collaborative approach to improving product content.
By understanding the challenges suppliers face and taking steps to support them, retailers can transform their content into a powerful competitive advantage. Suppliers must help retailers with open communication and sharing of best practices.
This isn’t just about fixing a misspelled word in the product description—it’s about seizing an opportunity to enhance customer experience, build stronger brand loyalty, and ultimately, boost profits.
Investing in Tools and Technology
Once retailers and suppliers share a common goal and agree on overall processes, the next step is operationalizing their goals. An investment in commercially available tools and technology is a critical step in the journey.
Forbes reported that in 2022, Walmart invested over $11 billion in their digital transformation. This investment represented 72% of their capital expenditure budget for 2020/21. Unless your organization intends to invest billions of dollars in digital transformation, evidence suggests that the days of homegrown systems have passed.
The Key to Solving the Content Conundrum
Ultimately, retailers hold the control to determine what content makes it to the consumer. No one sets out with the intention of creating complex processes. However, processes evolve over time in efforts to meet consumer expectations.
When that happens, data requirements and processes are developed in a vacuum and eventually forced downstream. The retailers who have exceptional content and happy suppliers have a common denominator—they truly consider their suppliers’ experience and strive to maintain true two-way partnerships that support the data needs of both parties.
In the end, the key to success lies in recognizing that product content is not just a byproduct of the retailer-supplier relationship, it’s a critical element that requires careful management, collaboration, and investment. By addressing the hidden issues behind bad content, retailers can unlock new potential for growth and profitability in a crowded, competitive market.
Sourcing quality content is step one in the path to retail excellence, but it’s not the whole equation. In the next part of the series, we’ll explore the challenge of standardized product content for retailers.
Don't miss out! Subscribe to our blog for updates.