How to manage a growing product catalogue in your online store (and why a PIM system is worth considering)?

Table of contents:

• What challenges might you face when managing products in an online store?
• A rescue for informational chaos? Product management with the help of a PIM system
• How to choose the right PIM system for your online store?
• Pimcore - a system that offers far more than just product management
• Is a PIM system a necessity?

From 500 to several thousand - that’s typically the number of products offered by a mid-sized online store. This number often grows as the store expands, the brand strengthens, and new markets (increasingly international ones) are explored. It’s a great sign - after all, more traffic means more orders. However, a growing product range also brings greater challenges in managing the entire inventory.

Every additional product not only increases sales potential but also adds more work in updating descriptions, tailoring content for different sales channels, and even translating information into foreign languages (for international sales). Without the right technological support, it’s easy to make mistakes, which can result in outdated product data, missed orders, or incorrect pricing. This, in turn, can cause your business to lose efficiency.

Manually entering and updating data is a time-consuming process that can tie up resources that could be better used for strategic initiatives. As a result, instead of growing dynamically, your business may start to lose momentum and fall behind competitors. How can you ensure the necessary support? By implementing a PIM (Product Information Management) system, which is the focus of this article. Read on to learn more!

A product in an online store is the centrepiece of every transaction, but managing it isn’t always simple. eCommerce owners often struggle with the chaos of gathering, updating, and organising product data. Issues like inconsistent descriptions, missing images, or incorrect attributes can lead to customer frustration, reduce brand trust, and ultimately — decrease profits. But product information disarray is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to product management challenges. What other difficulties might you face?

• Maintaining data consistency across channels - omnichannel has become the standard. For this reason, it’s essential to keep consistent and up-to-date information not only on the eCommerce platform but also across other sales channels (such as marketplaces, mobile apps, or social media stores). Inconsistent information, like varying prices for the same product, can cause not only customer confusion but also real financial losses for the business.
• Adapting content for local and international markets - stores operating both in their country and internationally must ensure their content aligns with local preferences, languages, and sometimes even regulations (for example, food labelling laws can vary by region). A lack of a coherent strategy for a specific location can result in mismatched offerings and reduced sales in that region.
• SEO content optimization - product descriptions that aren’t properly optimised for search engines can significantly lower the store’s visibility in organic search results. Failure to update and optimise content affects not only positioning but also website traffic, ultimately leading to lower conversion rates.
• Managing content specialists’ work - coordinating the efforts of the team responsible for creating and updating product descriptions requires a clear division of tasks. Poor permissions management can lead to unintended changes or data loss, as well as increase the risk of errors or delays.
• Platform load with a growing product catalogue - as the product range expands, stores often face difficulties in managing the increasing amount of product data. Without the right data format and optimization, an excess of information can overload the system, slowing it down. Poorly prepared images, large multimedia files, or inefficient data structures result in longer page load times, negatively impacting the user experience.

As you can see, a product catalogue in an online store is, in reality, an extensive set of information that you not only need to store securely but also keep constantly updated. Effective product management requires controlling many different types of data at once - from technical specifications to marketing descriptions to logistics information and pricing. That’s why, especially if your offerings frequently change or you plan to expand them in the future (a natural growth phase for most online stores), it’s worth considering implementing a PIM (Product Information Management) system. What exactly characterises this kind of solution?

A PIM system enables centralized management of all product data in one place. This ensures that every team member is working with up-to-date data, and any changes are automatically applied across all sales channels. This not only saves time but also eliminates errors resulting from manual data entry across different systems.

In short, using a PIM system helps maintain order in product information and streamlines updating processes, which is especially crucial for large e-stores with thousands of products. Data centralization makes it easier to implement changes, expand the product range, and prepare for seasonal promotions or rapid business scaling. With PIM, all information is consistent and accessible in one location, greatly improving operational efficiency and enhancing the customer experience.