The customer experience is a key concern for online retailers. In order to deliver a smooth and engaging shopping experience, two elements are essential: attractive visuals and complete, reliable product information. This is where PIM (Product Information Management) and DAM (Digital Asset Management) come in, two pillars of e-commerce content management.
By combining a PIM like Akeneo and a DAM like Keepeek, you can multiply their benefits. This is what PIM/DAM synergy is all about: unifying the management of product and media data to boost your productivity, improve the performance of your site and, ultimately, boost your sales.
Imagine streamlined workflows, always up-to-date content across all your channels, faster time to market... All by harnessing the power of AI to automate time-consuming tasks and personalise the customer experience.
In this article, we're going to explore the challenges of product content management and see in concrete terms how the PIM/DAM synergy responds to them. We will detail the business benefits that you can expect, based on real-life examples of companies that have adopted this approach.
Companies have to manage an increasing volume of content while ensuring its quality and consistency across all points of contact. It's a real headache that can quickly become a drag on their digital performance.
With the proliferation of product references and sales channels, companies have to manage an exponential amount of data and media. Photos, videos, descriptions, technical attributes, marketing content... These are all elements that need to be created, enhanced and updated on an ongoing basis. Inefficient management can lead to errors, duplication and delays. According to Shopify and Website Builder Expert, a PIM/DAM solution can increase the efficiency of digital asset management by 66%, responding to this challenge of complexity and volume.
But quantity is not the only issue. The quality and relevance of content are just as crucial. Non-optimised visuals, incomplete or inconsistent information... these problems of content quality degrade the user experience and penalise site performance. According to Google, 53% of mobile users leave a site if it takes more than three seconds to load. A slow website can deter customers and increase abandonment rates. What's more, 75% of online shoppers say that product photos influence their purchasing decision (Learn Hub | G2). It is therefore essential to optimise visuals and ensure the quality of product information to offer an optimal user experience and encourage conversions.
Another major challenge is brand consistency. With the multiplication of channels and points of contact, maintaining a consistent brand image is becoming a real headache. Without centralised content management, there is a high risk of conveying contradictory messages that dilute brand identity. Around 20% of potential sales are lost when descriptions and images do not match customer expectations (Nogin). A strong, consistent brand across all channels is therefore an essential performance lever.
Finally, collaboration and content creation workflows are often a sticking point. The creation and validation of content involves a large number of players: marketers, producers, agencies, etc. Coordinating all these players without a collaborative tool quickly becomes mission impossible. Manual processes and communication silos can slow down the creation and approval of content. According to the Content Marketing Institute, 78% of companies cite collaboration as a major challenge in content creation. One of the main challenges in e-commerce is the media retrieval and validation chain with a multiplicity of sources to be received (emails, online platforms, supplier DAM, etc.). Streamlining these workflows is therefore essential if we are to improve our agility and time-to-market.
Faced with these challenges, manual, compartmentalised content management is no longer viable. To respond effectively, companies need to rethink their product content management strategy, relying on high-performance, interconnected tools. This is where the synergy between a PIM (Product Information Management) and a DAM (Digital Asset Management) comes into its own.
By connecting these two systems, companies can streamline their processes, improve the quality of their content and offer a smoother, more consistent customer experience.
The PIM centralises product information while the DAM centralises associated media (photos, videos, etc.). The native connector between the two systems automatically links each media item to the corresponding product sheet. No more duplicates, inconsistencies or time-consuming updates!
This is precisely what Akepeek, the connector developed by Keepeek to integrate its DAM with Akeneo's PIM solution, offers. Thanks to this connector, companies can automate the indexing of new content by synchronising new media with the product repositories already present in the PIM. This ensures that product information and associated media are constantly and consistently updated while eliminating time-consuming manual tasks.
Thanks to PIM/DAM integration, content creation and validation workflows are automated and streamlined. Marketing teams can easily collaborate, validate content and distribute it across all channels in just a few clicks. According to Forrester, automating DAM workflows can reduce the time spent on manual tasks by up to 85%.
Keepeek offers several workflow modules adapted to different uses to streamline the media production and approval chain. Confidential and secure collaborative spaces ensure that all projects and creations are traceable, from the creative phase through distribution. Photographer and director rights, model and music rights, image rights... Keepeek manages all levels of rights and allows you to link contracts and authorisations to the media, guaranteeing that assets are used in a compliant and secure manner.
The DAM has advanced functions for automatically optimising media for the web: resizing, compression, variant generation, etc.
Dynameek - Keepeek's on-the-fly thumbnail generator - automatically generates all the image formats required for each distribution channel (e-commerce site, mobile application, social networks, etc.) with no processing time. For a site with 50 images to publish per month, this represents a time saving of 30 hours per year! By automating the creation of image variants and optimising them for each channel, Dynameek guarantees an optimal customer experience while considerably lightening the workload for your teams.
With a unified product database between the PIM and the DAM, companies can be sure that the information they distribute is always up-to-date and consistent across all their channels. No more risk of finding out-of-date visuals or contradictory descriptions! This consistency strengthens the trust and commitment of customers throughout their purchasing journey.
By connecting their PIM and DAM systems, companies can effectively manage their product content on a large scale. This synergy enables them to gain in agility, productivity and quality, ultimately improving their business performance.
But what are the tangible benefits of PIM-DAM integration for businesses? How do they translate in terms of ROI, customer experience and time-to-market?
The synergy between a PIM and a DAM translates into tangible business benefits for e-commerce companies. Here's an overview.
By automating workflows and centralising content, marketing teams can create and distribute their product content much more quickly. For example, La Redoute - a Keepeek customer - has reduced its time-to-market from 72 hours to 24 thanks to the integration of its DAM solution, while increasing its productivity by 30%. Truffaut has saved 3 weeks on bringing new products online. On average, Keepeek customers are seeing a 20% reduction in the time spent searching for media and a 40% acceleration in creative processes.
PIM/DAM integration enables us to offer customers a superior product experience with files enriched with quality media and complete, consistent information across all channels.
On the PIM side, a solution like Akeneo centralises all product information (descriptions, technical attributes, prices, etc.) and ensures that it is consistent and up-to-date across all contact points. No more inconsistencies between channels which degrade the customer experience and drive away buyers!
On the DAM side, Keepeek automatically optimises media (images, videos, etc.) for high-performance distribution on the web. The result: product pages that display quickly, even on mobile devices, which is crucial for preventing shopping basket abandonment.
By combining these two blocks, businesses can offer their customers ultra-complete product sheets, with reliable information and quality media, for a smooth and convincing shopping experience. According to a Shopify study, product pages with optimised visuals have a conversion rate that is up to 40% higher. And according to Akeneo, companies that use a PIM can increase their online sales by 20-50%.
In an omnichannel context, where customers interact with a brand across a multitude of touchpoints (e-commerce site, marketplaces, social networks, physical shops, etc.), maintaining a consistent brand identity is a real challenge. Yet this is a crucial issue, because according to a Widen study, 64% of consumers say that an inconsistent experience deters them from interacting with a brand.
PIM/DAM integration makes it possible to meet this very challenge by centralising all the content produced (information and media) in a single repository. In this way, the company can ensure that the same information and visuals are distributed across all its channels, reinforcing the consistency of its brand identity and message.
What's more, thanks to the DAM's rights and validation management functions, companies can easily control the use of their brand assets (logo, graphic charter, images, etc.) and ensure that only validated and up-to-date content is distributed. An effective way of avoiding inconsistencies and protecting your brand identity!
With the multiplication of distribution channels and employees involved in content creation, the question of security and compliance becomes critical. How can we ensure that only the right people have access to the right content? That the assets distributed comply with usage rights and current regulations (RGPD, copyright, etc.)?
Here again, PIM-DAM integration provides an effective solution. Thanks to the DAM's advanced rights and access management functions, the company can precisely define who can access, use and distribute each piece of content. It can also associate rights metadata and the necessary supporting documents (contracts, authorisations, etc.) with each asset.
On the PIM side, centralising product information ensures that only validated and compliant data is distributed. This is particularly important in regulated sectors such as food and beauty, where labelling errors can have serious consequences.
By controlling the entire content chain, from creation to distribution, companies minimise their legal and financial risks. According to a Cognizant study, poor digital rights management can cost a company up to 2.5 million dollars a year.
To be visible on search engines and generate qualified traffic, an e-commerce site absolutely must optimise its natural search engine optimisation (SEO). And that means high-quality product sheets with relevant and well-structured content.
Thanks to PIM/DAM integration, companies have all the ingredients they need to create SEO-optimised product sheets: quality media, optimised for the web and associated with the right tags and metadata, thanks to the DAM, as well as canonical URLs and meta tags managed centrally in the PIM, to avoid duplicate content and improve indexing by search engines.
Over the course of this article, we have explored the many facets of the synergy between PIM and DAM, two pillars of product experience management in omnichannel commerce.
But beyond the operational and business benefits, the PIM/DAM synergy is above all a powerful lever for innovation and transformation for businesses. By placing product data at the heart of their omnichannel strategy and automating and streamlining their content management processes, they are giving themselves the means to be more agile, more responsive and more relevant in their communications and offerings.
So, are you ready to take the plunge and make PIM/DAM synergy a cornerstone of your e-commerce strategy? Don't hesitate to contact us to discuss your project and find out how our Akeneo and Keepeek solutions can help you realise the promise of unified, personalised, high-performance commerce!
