For a Product Manager, a poorly designed product taxonomy often results in frustrating customer experiences with null search results, high abandonment metrics, and limited scalability. The challenge is to design a hierarchal structure that provides B2B buyers with accurate, relevant product selections and promotional offers quickly and effortlessly. We’ve seen the good, bad and the terribly ugly in taxonomy so we’ve narrowed it down to these three key strategies that drive all product description in a B2B or B2C environment.
Optimal taxonomies equip your e-commerce platforms with a seamless navigational flow and quality search results that reduce bounce and abandonment KPIs to close more sales. Furthermore, strategic taxonomy allows product teams to design relationship matrixes to create more focused up- and cross-sell promotional offers.
Key #1: Create A Structured Product Data Taxonomy
Why does it matter?
Although most e-commerce platforms offer basic taxonomy functionality, they’re not designed to optimize complex and/or high-volume product portfolios. Many companies in this category are choosing Product Information Management (PIM) software to first structure and optimize their product portfolio and then feed to front- and back-end systems for end-to-end value chain integration.
PIM middleware acts as a control tower feeding product information to front- and back-end systems from a central database. Modern PIMs often offer open source code that can be customized to your operation. Due to its middleware functionality, PIMs are designed with a composable architecture and extensive API connectivity for easy integration to virtually every digital solution both legacy and new deployments.
Key #2: Product Attribute Planning
Once product information assets have been uniformly structured and categorized, product teams can begin to create product relationship trees at the granular level based on attributes. These offer product teams unlimited opportunities to experiment with kits, bundles, and promotional offers to increase revenue and customer acquisition. Common attributes are product features like brand names or color, but that’s not the power behind PIM data management.
Product attribute segmentation is what drives the unlimited scalability of modern PIMs to a large degree.
Attributes can be copied to images, video, technical documents, user manuals, case studies, and whitepapers downloads for high findability, search engine indexing, and comprehensive on-page product offers.
For example, a global product identifier (GPI) can have thousands, even millions, of attribute variants attached to it without having to create a new SKU. Through drag-and-drop functionality, PIMs offer companies the ability to construct product attribute relationships by market segment for more targeted merchandising.
Key #3: AI-Generated Attributes for Advanced Search Inside Your eCommerce Site
Using AI-generated keywords and metadata makes product search optimization a breeze. SKU product variants can be SEO optimized in bulk in any language based on attribute segmentation. Strategic attribute planning offers:
- Better Search Filters & Findability – the more granular the product information, the better the search functionality
- Predictive Search & Autocomplete – offers faster, more intuitive site search functionality
- Attribute Weighting – emphasizes high-priority attributes for search engine indexing like localization or industry.
- Misspellings, Jargon, & Brand Identifiers – allows for the inclusion of unpublished misspellings, language variations, industry jargon, and brand identifiers to widen search parameters.
- Localization – create SKU product variants by market segment to improve local or regional search indexing, cultural preferences, or language translations.
AI-Generated PIM Product Taxonomies at Scale?
Yes, as a Product Manager, you want the PIM AI functionality. It automates the collection, organization, and enrichment of product information at scale. PIMs are designed for mid-market and enterprise businesses and can manage millions of SKUs and product relationships. Furthermore, PIMs eliminate SKU redundancies by consolidating all product variants under one SKU, GPI, or category through attribute segmentation and version management.
Thinking of using a PIM? Take a look at our ROI calculator and answer a few questions about your product volume and hierarchal complexity to see if PIM middleware is an option for you.
