In addition to the quality of the products, optimized logistics and the rest of the keyboard, it is often the product data that has a significant effect on the return rate, margin and customer experience. A reason to take a closer look!

73 billion online sales in Germany: pressure is increasing

The year 2020 was a special year in many ways. And in addition to many other things, one thing has accelerated significantly: The transfer of purchasing processes to the web. This shift has an impact on the turnover of online shops, on the return rate - and thus also increases pressure on all processes relating to online shops, marketplaces and product data.

Want a few numbers?

• According to the Bevh survey, more than every eighth euro of household expenditure on goods was spent on e-commerce - around 73 billion EUR in 2020
• Amazon alone accounts for a good 25 billion of them
• Across all product segments, the return rate is over 6 percent — with Germany being the leader in Europe with an estimated 315 million parcels in 2020.

(Sources: Absatzwirtschaft.de; collect.ai; businessinsider.de)

Important issues in this context

• How can the USP of my products be presented creatively and convincingly — especially with high comparability with competitor products?
• The return rate is a margin killer - what can my product data do and what not? and what do I have to pay attention to?
• How can our data be structured and prepared in such a way that it meets the standards of third-party systems so that my placement is ideal?

Significance from a data perspective and for the manufacturer

Now you could write a lot about various aspects of this development. For example, among e-commerce users, the 65+ age group is growing the fastest at around 160%. Or that Amazon, for example, is apparently still destroying returns. But let's stick to our main topics...

Off data view In particular, the increasing dominance of marketplaces means that product data is increasingly being processed by third-party systems and must comply with external standards.

Off manufacturer's view The decision to “do eCommerce yourself” is significantly influenced by the opportunities and constraints of marketplaces, often supplemented by large retail partners. This is often accompanied by forced transparency and comparability with competitor products, and the creative presentation of USPs is becoming increasingly difficult.

Große platforms Scale well - and also negatively: Poorly maintained or communicated content can quickly lead to severe return rates with fast-moving products and high sales, which destroy the margin - especially when you are using an aggressive pricing strategy.

What is to be done

So what is there to do if we take current market conditions into account and see them as an opportunity for eCommerce?

1. Product data maintenance and modeling Understand it as directly relevant to sales — and question it again and again.
2. A data model Implement that is adaptable in the output: Ideally, it is possible to map other standards in addition to the house classification.
   • It must be possible to describe products differently in different contexts without having to maintain data twice
   • Images and media in general must be flexibly exportable in terms of format, naming, etc.
3. Stay alert: Errors occur in data maintenance. It becomes critical when they remain unnoticed for a long time throughout the supply chain. In that case, it is good to have set up the entire publication process in advance in such a way that you can take abbreviations in case of doubt.