Around 2.14 billion people worldwide are expected to do their online shopping in 2021 and they are projected to spend a whopping 2.9 trillion dollars. The e-commerce landscape is going through an interesting technological evolution and as an outcome, the number of people using the Internet as a medium of purchase is increasing steadily especially after the 2020 pandemic.
How Does Product Matching Come into the Picture?
With well-catalogued taxonomy information accompanying the product on e-commerce portals, all details are presented online to help buyers make the purchase decision for a particular product. This is done irrespective of the hour or geography from which the information is sourced online.
For the average customer, the entire retail world now fits into a 15” laptop or 5” smartphone. It is true you can find your preferred product for purchase across different e-commerce sites and portals. However, have you ever stopped to wonder about the magic that happens behind the screen that allows you to be presented with different options for the same product, same model, and same variant?
Or have you wondered how all e-commerce stores present unique and accurate information about a product without showing the same variant repeated elsewhere on the site with different information on features or pricing? If you have, then welcome to the world of product matching.
We recently sat down with our Product Manager, Ali Ahmed Khan who helped us clarify the next solutions Omnilytics can offer businesses who want a deeper level of understanding of their competitor’s pricing strategies.
“Our proprietary matching solution allows our clients to stay ahead of the competition with data-driven insights that determine when and how to react on their pricing strategies for maximum return with minimal risk,” says Ali Ahmed Khan, Product Manager at Omnilytics.
“Advanced machine learning matches, compares and analyses exact, similar and relevant competitive product data has now allowed businesses to improve matching over time with algorithmic and easy-to-use matching parameters. We can now conduct unprecedented like and exact product matches by SKU, category, retailer and platform” said Ali.
Businesses use product matching to maximise revenue with minimal risk by taking advantage of having a complete view of the retail market powered by an automatic, accurate and efficient data matching algorithm and parameters which meet your required criteria. This helps your business meet short term and long term goals by setting the right pricing as retailers get an exact match even if the product has already taken off the shelves.
Missed matches happen when product matching is not done on competitors’ websites. If the price monitoring tool that you are using focuses only on finding the match on Google Search, or on marketplaces, there is a high possibility that the results will show no matches at all.
Why is Product Accuracy Important?
Businesses base their repricing decisions on the data which is provided by product matching. So, if this step is not performed correctly, it will lead to wrong conclusions which end up in bad business decisions.
This would be the result of false positives. A false positive is generated when the algorithm recognises two products as identical when they aren’t. This is an outcome that every user and business wants to avoid.
How Does Product Matching Work?
“We find products that are identical to yours on competitors sites using multiple layers of algorithms and matching logic. We also use layers of evaluations processes to optimise our match coverage with high accuracy for products that we aren’t confident enough to make a match” said Ali.
Sample data will be provided to you before the project commences so that you can identify and analyse a representative rather than surveying the entirety of the data.
It is important to note, however, that there should be personnel dedicated to analysing the data once it is provided to you to ensure you can harness the result in the correct manner.
This type of exact matching can improve over time and will help justify and guide your strategies.
Benefits of Product Matching
For an e-commerce provider, product matching gives golden information on how the product is priced on a competitor website. By performing intelligent web crawling, Omnilytics can access competitor product catalogues and listed prices and see if there is a scope for price reduction to lure end purchasers.
The blend of product matching and predictive intelligence can enhance an e-commerce store’s visibility by being on top of the lowest prices in the market. This visibility translates to better traffic and conversions.
Product matching also helps to cleanse the catalogue offering. No longer do duplicate products or products with incorrect details (descriptions, images, reviews etc.) need to appear in stores.
With the help of a proper product matching algorithm, putting up newer SKUs and product variations is made smoother. As a result, optimising inventories becomes easier and costly overhead from overstocking can be avoided.
All these benefits translate to a much better, well-structured, and potentially rewarding shopping catalogue on e-commerce websites. As a result, your authority value shoots up, you improve fragile customer loyalty, and add substantially to your bottom lines.
With its tremendous advantages, investing in product matching can turn out to be the single biggest success driver for your e-commerce store. You can enlist the help of reputed experts who can help you to get your product matching endeavours underway with immediate effect.
Contact us for more info to learn more about product matching here.
About the Author
Omnilytics
Before her current fashion content writer role at Omnilytics, Aqilah Zailan was already decoding trends in the retail space. She now produces articles for Omnilytics’ blog and continues to keep a keen eye on shifting trends in the fashion industry.
