Thursday, April 17, 2014

The secret to increasing online sales

SPONSORED POST

The secret to increasing online sales

This sponsored post is produced by SPS Commerce. 


Want to increase your e-commerce sales? Want to do it without a lot of extra marketing, new websites, or huge investment? You can do it by sharing one thing you already have plenty of: information.


Today’s online shoppers are looking for information about your products, and lots of it. Shoppers want this information so much, they make their buying decisions based on the amount of product data an online retailer shares.


Translation: More product data = more sales.


At SPS Commerce, we call this Integrated Item Management, which means instant access to product data. Shoppers want it, and retailers are asking for it. Except there’s no consistency across the board. Some retailers have more, others have less. And suppliers are having problems delivering it.


We see a lot of suppliers that only share information as it’s available or only when it’s requested. As a result, both organizations lose sales as consumers swipe to another site that offers more product details.


In the past, if a retailer needed product data, it could take as long as three weeks for the information to hit the retailer’s site, as the vendor had to track down the data and then send it off to the retailer, who then had to input it.


Most suppliers we meet aren’t prepared for the coming demand for information. At best, we estimate only two percent have an archive of product data. The rest have spreadsheets in different departments with different people. In some cases, when a retailer needs product data, someone literally goes out to the warehouse with a tape measure and emails the measurements back.


Today’s shoppers want to know more than color and price. They want to see digital photos and videos, and they want micro-levels of detail to help them make a buying decision.


The retailers who can provide that kind of content do well with online sales. They’re looking for different ways to help shoppers envision how they can use the product themselves.


EddieBauer.com lets shoppers see different colors of pants on models. BestBuy.com not only has all of a product’s specs, but they include customer comments as well. Other retailers include videos from suppliers and satisfied customers that show how well the product works. The end result? More sales and more dollars per sale.


This is where SPS Commerce can help. We help retailers and suppliers communicate and share item information easily and quickly. We help retailers determine what they need and show suppliers how to provide it. We make your product-sharing as seamless as possible so you can get back to the business of selling your product.



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The secret to increasing online sales

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