The Ultimate Guide to Integrating Product Attributes, From Google Search to PIM

Once you have customer-centric product attribution, brands and retailers can apply this enriched product detail across the retail value chain. Effectively applying product attribution connects consumers to your products more efficiently and easily than ever. It enhances product discoverability, improves customer experience, and critically, grows sales.

The process of applying customer-centric product attribution across your business is not one-size-fits all though. In fact, it’s the opposite! There are many ways to get started and grow, depending on your needs and what you are optimizing for. 

Partnering with a retail vertical AI leader like Lily AI ensures you’re in good hands regardless of whichever approach you choose. In fact, Lily AI cleans and completes retailers’ product data as a first step as well, which you can learn more about here.

Here, we detail three different ways our clients often approach applying product attribution, with three different goals in mind. Keep in mind, the only wrong way to go . . . is to not start at all!

Considerations Before You Get Started

Before you land your approach, here’s a pre-flight checklist to consider. Having all these points aligned will ensure that your Lily AI product attribution setup goes as smoothly as possible.

• Do you sell the product types supported by Lily AI? We work with Fashion, Home, and Beauty retailers and brands.
• Do you have the product data needed to get started? Have text and images? If so, great! Lily can also generate attributes from files like CADs or sketches, although the better data you put in up front the better data we can provide.
• Does your catalog require product taxonomy alignment? This depends on your use case. But don’t worry! Lily AI’s team of experts will work with you hand-in-hand throughout the process of mapping terms and phrases.
• Are system integrations needed? We can integrate with any platform and have a growing partner ecosystem to make this fast and easy. 
• Is IT support needed? The only thing your IT team needs to do is apply a pixel to your website. This is fast, simple, and easy, making insights and analytics accessible.

Optimizing for Speed to Impact: Google Search & Site Search

You’re a retailer or brand who wants to see the results of customer-centric product attribution immediately. Really, you have no time to wait. 

If this sounds like you, there’s good news! Impact of this product attribution can be seen very quickly when applying it to your Google Search and on-site search efforts, both of which will drive more traffic to your online shop and product detail pages (PDPs).

Here’s a breakdown of what the fastest implementation option for customer-centric product attribution looks like: 

• Time to Implement: Three-Six Weeks
• Product Taxonomy Alignment Requirements: None, as all of the attributes being used here aren’t directly customer-facing, and are rather enriching your merchant feed product attributes and website meta data.
• Integration Partner Examples: Google Merchant Center, Algolia, SearchSpring
• Why This Might Be Best for You: This is the quickest way to drive more traffic both to your website and to your product pages.

Optimizing for eCommerce Transformation: Website & PDP Enrichment

Let’s say you want to enhance your customer experience and product discoverability even further. If you have a little more time to dedicate to applying customer-centric product attributes across your website, the payoff can be incredible. From delivering more relevant product recommendations and improving filters and facets, to enriching Product Display Pages (PDPs) and more, your website visitors will be able to easily find exactly what they’re looking for.

• Time to Implement: Two-Three months
• Product Taxonomy Alignment Requirements: Minimal taxonomy mapping is required other than for attribute consistency, such as “v-neck” and “v neck.”
• Integration Partner Examples: Shopify, Bloomreach, SHOPLINE
• Why This Might Be Best for You: It boosts product discovery, increases average revenue per visitor (ARPV), and drives more conversions and sales from your website.

Optimizing for Maximum Impact: Integration Into PDM or PIM

The best way to maximize the impact of customer-centric product attribution is to integrate it directly into the heart of your operations: your product data management solution, or PIM if you have one (or Excel sheet if that’s what you’re using!). Many large brands and retailers invest in a PIM or PIM-like solution to organize and distribute their product data to other internal or external systems for e-commerce, marketing, analysis, and more. 

Here’s a look at what it takes to apply Lily’s product attributes across your PDM or PIM.

• Time to Implement: Three to six months, depending on the size and complexity of your catalog.
• Product Taxonomy Alignment Requirements: Full taxonomy mapping is required when integrating product attributes into your product data management system or PIM. This ensures attribute consistency with complete and accurate field mappings between the retailer’s/brand’s catalog items and Lily AI’s 20k+ taxonomy. For example, does your Taxonomy have Occasion? What about Special Occasions or Micro Occasions? Lily AI has you covered.
• Integration Partner Examples: Stibo, Akeneo, etc.
• Why This Might Be Best for You: This is the most efficient path to further propagate all systems for maximum impact across your entire business, both to drive immediate sales as well as sharpen planning and forecasting and enable more predictive and powerful analytics.

Maintaining Customer-Centric Product Attributes for the Long Haul 

No matter which of these three optimization approaches are the best fit for you, partnering with Lily AI ensures you have an automated, ongoing solution to enrich your product data and apply the language of the customer throughout your operations. 

With Lily AI, once setup is complete, you can ensure that time-sensitive attributes, like seasonal occasions and new trends are continuously refreshed and added to your products. The latest new trends from TikTok, Instagram, or even inspired by the next big craze will be accounted for in your product data, connecting people to your catalog when they search for said trends. 

After analyzing, organizing, cleaning, and applying customer-centric product attribution across your business, you’ll make the most valuable use of your data: helping future customers more easily discover your products.