eCommerce has long spread its tentacles around the world, and those businesses excelling in this ecosystem are those who practise efficient product information management. PIM software is what powers this efficiency, because its features enable businesses to optimise their operations and enhance their customer experiences. Our article looks at what marketplace integration is, how to overcome the challenges of integrating your PIM with marketplaces and concludes with our choice of the top five PIM solutions for marketplaces, along with insights into their integration capabilities and benefits.
What is marketplace integration?
Marketplace integration is the process of connecting your eCommerce platform with various online marketplaces to ensure seamless product data transfer and synchronisation. Integration is absolutely vital for maintaining accurate and up-to-date product information across your range of sales channels, on- or offline. Key marketplaces like BigCommerce, Walmart, Amazon, and Magento (Adobe) dominate the eCommerce landscape, making their integration with PIM systems a key element of streamlined workflows and responsiveness to market changes.
Challenges and pain points of integrating a PIM with marketplaces
Integrating a PIM system with multiple marketplaces can present several challenges:
- Inconsistent and incomplete product information: Ensuring uniformity and completeness in product data is essential to maintain customer trust and satisfaction – otherwise, your potential market drains away to others who can satisfy their needs.
- Difficulty in adapting data for diverse channels: Each marketplace has unique requirements, and adapting data accordingly using manual efforts can be complex and prone to human error.
- Ensuring data accuracy and compliance: Accurate and compliant data is an absolute must, especially in industries with heavy regulatory demands.
- Complexities in collaboration and data sharing: Increased collaboration among your various stakeholder-users is necessary for smooth operations. This is often hindered by the demands of normalising differing data formats and systems. PIM can automate such normalisation/standardisation.
Apps, add-ons, and APIs
eCommerce is characteristically dynamic and constantly changing, so having the right tools to integrate and manage your product information across various marketplaces is what will maintain the efficiency you need to remain credibly competitive. Apps, add-ons, and APIs play a significant role in this integration, as they offer specialised tools to streamline processes, enable simplified connectivity, and keep that data accuracy to the standard you and your customers want.
The Importance of app stores
Nowadays, app stores are a feature of all PIM vendors. The partner organisations whose products populate such stores offer a treasure trove of specialised tools that businesses can easily integrate to enhance and extend the functionalities of their PIM systems. These apps enable them to customise their PIM environments to better suit their specific needs, whether it’s enhancing product listings, automating data synchronisation, launching new products directly to market, or increasing levels of customer engagement.
The Role of APIs
APIs (Application Programming Interfaces – mechanisms that enable two software components to communicate with each other) are essential for seamless connectivity between diverse systems in your tech stack. They enable PIM solutions to interact with various marketplaces, ensuring that product information is consistently updated across all platforms. APIs facilitate real-time data exchange, vital for maintaining accurate stock levels, processing orders efficiently, and consistently providing up-to-date product information to customers in real time.
The best five PIMs for marketplaces
1. Plytix
Connectivity: Plytix offers robust connectivity through its Amazon eCommerce integration, ensuring real-time inventory synchronisation and unified sales data management. The platform supports integrations with other popular eCommerce platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce, enhancing multichannel sales efficiency.
Marketplace-specific apps and add-ons: Plytix integrates seamlessly with Patchworks iPaaS, providing a library of pre-built connectors and a Connector Builder for custom integrations. This flexibility allows businesses to automate and streamline processes across all channels.
2. Sales Layer
Connectivity: Sales Layer simplifies integration with marketplaces by offering a centralised hub for managing product data. Its API-first approach ensures smooth data flow and synchronisation with global platforms like Amazon, Magento, and BigCommerce.
Marketplace-specific apps and add-ons: Sales Layer provides tools for automated data syndication, ensuring that product information is consistent across all channels. This helps businesses maintain high data quality and maximises the quality of the CX.
3. Bluestone
Connectivity: Bluestone PIM uses serverless features and APIs for seamless integration with platforms like Commercetools. This ensures that product catalogues, SKUs, and attributes are regularly synchronised, providing up-to-date product information across channels.
Marketplace-specific apps and add-ons: Bluestone’s MACH[1]-based architecture means easy integration with other best-of-breed solutions. The platform offers access to sync history and field mapping, making it a versatile choice for businesses with complex data requirements.
4. PIMworks
Connectivity: PIMworks offers native integrations with Amazon, Magento, Shopify, and Walmart, facilitating single-click inventory imports and two-way synchronisation. This integration ensures that product data is accurate and consistent across all channels.
Marketplace-specific apps and add-ons: PIMworks provides tools for optimising product data with relevant keywords and detailed descriptions, enhancing visibility on Amazon and other marketplaces. Its centralised management system simplifies data handling, minimising manual errors and greatly improving efficiency.
5. Akeneo
Connectivity: Akeneo places great emphasis on automation and data integrity, offering robust integration capabilities with a range of marketplaces. The platform’s API-first design ensures seamless data flow and synchronisation with eCommerce platforms like Magento and BigCommerce.
Marketplace-specific apps and add-Ons: Akeneo provides digital asset management (DAM) as part of its system, allowing businesses to manage multimedia assets effectively. The platform’s customisable rules and workflows simplify tasks like size and colour management, which enhances the generation of product listings.
Final thoughts
Choosing the right PIM solution is a strategic decision to future-proof your operations in terms of streamlining and optimising their product data management and enhancing customer experiences. The five PIM solutions highlighted in this article – Plytix, Sales Layer, Bluestone, PIMworks, and Akeneo – all offer robust integration capabilities and marketplace-specific features, making them ideal choices for eCommerce businesses wanting to integrate with marketplaces that have the reach to grow their revenues.
Start with Data
If you’re ready to implement a PIM solution or upgrade your existing system, consider partnering with Start with Data. Our boutique consultancy offers expert services in PIM software selection, integration, data migration, content enrichment, and more. We help retailers, distributors, brands, and manufacturers unify their product content, processes, and teams to enhance customer experiences and drive sales. Get in touch with us today to have a more detailed conversation about how we can partner with you to help achieve your business goals.