Icecat & Gepard: Rich Product Content For Your Business
Valuable rich product content is a key asset of any eCommerce business. It’s impossible to sell, expand your business, or grow your customer base without relevant product information.
Receiving data from a single place, without having to collect it from brands’ websites or requesting it from their databases is much easier if you have access to an open product catalog, like Icecat. Furthermore, we’re going to explain what is rich content and how Icecat together with Gepard can help make the most out of your product data.
What Is Icecat?
Icecat: The Way To Becoming The Biggest Open Product Catalog
Founded in 2001, Icecat launched its open product catalog in 2005 and kept expanding its cooperation with the supporting brands. As for now, Icecat is producing millions of data sheets on products of more than 27,000 brands. The data users can find product specification content in the industries of Computers & Consumer Electronics, Health & Beauty, Toys & Accessories, Pet Care, Fashion & Lifestyle, Home Appliances, Kids Goods, Home and office supplies, Sports and Entertainment products.
Icecat product database is constantly updated with the new product specifications, while the company keeps expanding its partnerships with various retailers, brands, distributors, online eCommerce platforms to make sure their customers can access the top-grade rich content, verified and structured, and most importantly, approved by manufacturers.
What Is Rich Content And What Product Data You Can Get With Icecat
With the diversity of product content, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep the buyers’s attention. Rich product information is multimedia content that stands out because of its visual features and brings more attention to the product. Unlike the usual text-based data, rich content incorporates graphics, video, and audio and provokes the sensory feelings of a potential customer.
Every day Icecat imports data sheets with rich product information from the sponsoring brands, that later go through data transformation and categorization and can be accessed by its customers. Here’s the information that Icecat data sheet contains:
- Name of a brand;
- MPN (Manufacturer Part Number);
- Product images;
- Multimedia content (rich product information, such as demo, videos, tutorials, user manuals);
- Categorization;
- Marketing text in multiple languages;
- Product specs (standardized specifications for product search and comparison);
- Options of related or alternative products;
- Basic product data (product launch date, moderation date);
- Logistics details (EAN/UPC code, product sizes);
- Product stories – rich HTML pages.
Icecat & Gepard: How To Get The Most Out Of Your Data
Starting from day one in 2015, Gepard has been cooperating with Icecat. Gepard customers get an opportunity to access the largest open product content catalog, as well as to enrich and optimize the data and receive optimized product content that brings even more business value.
Icecat & Gepard For Retailers
Each retailer/marketplace has its own categorization and taxonomy levels. Sometimes they are so different from what is offered by a content provider that content requires optimization to make it compatible with the internal requirements of the retailer/marketplace. That’s where Gepard comes to the rescue: our clients can access Icecat product information and have it optimized to their private taxonomy and requirements. Then, the optimized and syndicated data (adjusted to the structure of a client) is delivered to any required endpoints: online or offline sales channels, platforms, marketplaces.
Icecat & Gepard For Brands
Gepard covers the needs of brands in delivering quality product information to Icecat content catalog. It is especially relevant for brands who work with large amounts of product data and have their own well developed data model Often there is a gap with what a content provider expects so Gepard can help to optimize the content automatically and close the gap. Gepard syndication tools help brands to streamline optimized data to Icecat that is intended to bring more consumer awareness, make the products more easily discoverable and, as a result, drive more sales. The unique brands’ product content, adapted to Icecat data model requirements, can be seamlessly pushed there and shall be easily accessible to any retailers, seller or buyer.
The process of data transformation works as follows:
- Gepard Syndicator imports the product portfolio from the client’s and Icecat open catalog. The process is automated and requires minimum time.
- Automated data mapping tools help to map and match product information from the data sources to your data structure, according to your taxonomy order.
- After the data mapping step, the content is optimized automatically to meet the endpoint’s requirements, be it offline or online sales channels.
- Gepard PIM integrates with Icecat for data enrichment and frequent updates of brands’ content, to ensure real time delivery of upgraded content.
- With the help of Gepard Syndicator, enriched and modified data is published on the requested customer’s webshop or sales platform.
How Your eCommerce Business Can Benefit From High Quality Rich Content And Data Automation
Regularly updated product content is undoubtedly a powerful asset for any business that wants to conquer the eCommerce world. What value do you get with the top-level product information?
1. Enhance operational activities.
High quality, automatically updated content improves business performance, as the teams can stop wasting time on manual data work and focus on valuable projects, creating new business strategies and using their human potential for more creative tasks.
2. Improve time to market.
The sooner the sellers get product updates and receive product data that matches their taxonomy classification and structure, the faster their time-to-market, which means the company can outpace the competitors and increase their sales.
3. Better customer experience.
Brands-approved product data is well-structured and validated, which notably improves buyer’s experience, brings customer satisfaction, and builds up a business reputation.
4. Build up customer loyalty.
Providing your customers with truthful information about the products and services makes you look more credible. Not only a great product description helps you acquire new customers. It also helps you retain the existing ones and build up brand loyalty.
5. Increase sales with an omnichannel strategy.
Possessing high-quality product data helps you build a successful omnichannel strategy to allow your buyers purchase from various sales channels and increase your customer base. Verified and structured data is a key to choosing the right marketing strategy for each of these channels to guarantee that your business awareness will keep growing.
The Power Of First-Class Product Data
Nowadays it’s difficult for eCommerce companies to deliver results without proper product information management. Receiving high quality product content is just one of the many steps. Then there’s the long journey of data transformation, adjusting content to the requirements of marketplaces and sellers, data delivery, and modification according to the latest updates.
Gepard saves your time by taking care of all these data-related processes: you can be sure that your top-notch Icecat content will be transformed to serve your business needs. Enjoy the power of first-class product data – request your free demo today!