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How to gain control of your online reseller channels

If you’re working in e-commerce you know that keeping track of how your products are doing across resellers is a challenging task.

However, it is a vital one to ensure a smooth process for buyers and avoid sales leaks.

In this guide we answer some of the most common questions that we hear from brands and manufacturers looking to close sales leaks online.

The first step is to acknowledge what challenges you are facing

How to gain control of your online reseller channels 3

What are the factors that make controlling brand and product information in online reseller channels so challenging?

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The combination of many factors adds layers of complexity that can quickly become overwhelming:

No guarantee desired content is used

There are systems, often referred to as PIM-systems, on the market that help you store all materials, information and content related to a product to make it easy for resellers to log in and find the materials needed for their site.

There are also syndicated content systems on the market that help you ensure that the materials related to a product are shared to resellers in the format they prefer. For example, to ensure they receive measurements in the right format (cm or feet), the right image sizes and resolutions, or rich content if the reseller uses that.

Yet, this means that your product content is in the hands of someone else. In the end, it’s the retailer that decides which product information and how it appears for the consumer.

They might describe your product in a passionate way but still miss crucial information or details. Do they remove your most important USP if they need to cut the text? That might have effects even for how your product is being found in search.

Each reseller has a specific data model. Look at the product title as an example. It’s likely to start with the product name. Then it may mention the model and color. Each reseller thinks they have the magic formula for the best titles. One reseller may have an editor that thinks all titles should be created in a specific way that differs from the currently used way. If the change is made, the title becomes less relevant and can even become wrong. If too many resellers to this, consumers will not be able to find products anymore - or compare them to each other.


01.01Technical limitations

Reseller sites are different. Resellers adjust the product content to fit the format on their site.

Some sites support video content, multiple and heavy images, whereas others do not. This may mean that the rich content you carefully selected isn’t used, or misused. Your video may be passed to a hidden corner of the page, or not shown at all. Your image quality might be decreased meaning your product is presented pixled or an image cropped, excluding important information.

Category and subcategory pages on e-commerce sites account for a big chunk of organic traffic outside the homepage. A test by Distilled showed that they account for about 50%.

Using appropriate categories not only enhances the consumer experience but also makes it easier for your products to be found by search engines. There are many tools out there that might be helpful for you to get ideas on how to categorize your products, for example Google Product Taxonomy. The challenge when selling products on reseller sites is that not all of them use the same taxonomy.

01.02Different categorisation


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01.03Consistent changes

Things online happen fast. Changes that affect URLs are constantly happening. Marketplaces like Amazon rebuild their algorithms for search frequently. Every time there is a change, there is some manual work involved which means it’s always a risk of something going wrong. This may lead to broken links or products disappearing.

Temporary campaigns often mean restructuring. This is also a common source that leads to missing products online. Your product might be hidden during a specific campaign and never come back. If your product’s price decreases during the campaign it may not be changed back, or even missing a price when the campaign ends.


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01.05Hidden out of stock issues

If your product is not available, it can’t be bought. But today it’s more complex than that. Some resellers handle out-of-stock by saying “back in stock in 5 days” while others remove your product or put up a delivery time of 20 days (which in e-commerce terms often is equal to it not being available).

Many sites today integrate tests from other sites rather than gathering their own. Poor reviews, or poorly handled reviews, at one reseller site might affect customer purchases on many other sites as well. It doesn’t have to be difficult to track this.

01.06Syndicated ratings and reviews


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01.04Different ways to ensure your products are found in search

If you are selling a TV, you want your products to show up on that search term. Too often this is not the case. This can have several causes and optimising for search is a chapter of its own, however, often it is as simple as making sure that the right tags are used for your product. To add complexity to this what makes a product appear high up in search on one site might be something completely different for another site.

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01.07Ensure your new product can be bought

If your product is not available, it can’t be bought. But today it’s more complex than that. Some resellers handle out-of-stock by saying “back in stock in 5 days” while others remove your product or put up a delivery time of 20 days (which in e-commerce terms often is equal to it not being available).

Even though a growing amount of brands use tech tools to monitor product visibility, a lot of brands are still doing this semi and fully manually. Monitoring manually is very time-consuming and therefore can’t be carried out for more than a few cherry-picked products or resellers, maybe once a month or once every quarter.

01.08Lack of monitoring processes


These are all contributing to major conversion problems and revenue leaks. To stop these leaks and optimize sales in your online sales channelsas effectively as you do in physical stores...

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You need to take control of your online product visibility


An ever-expanding problem:

Small issues create big sales leaks and are often just the tip of the iceberg.


Misspelled titleWrong category

Wrong product image

Error in key product information

Too long delivery time

OUT OF STOCK

Product can’t be found

Poor presentation

Purchase

Product not listed


How can brands and manufacturers take control of their reseller channels?

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Seeing all these challenges might feel overwhelming at first glance. It doesn’t have to be difficult.


02.01Decide how to follow up the state of your product visibility

As a brand you can primarily ensure the right content is delivered to the reseller, either by you or your content service provider. The next crucial step is to learn what actually ends up appearing on the reseller site - if your product can even be found.

Often these deviations are noticed only by accident, because somebody manually checked.

In a worse case, an unsatisfied customer reaches out because they are unhappy with your product as it didn’t meet the expectations due to an incorrect product description.

But checking this manually is almost impossible. It’s a massive workload that is endless and would require many resources to maintain. But this same workload can be solved by smart technology that uses algorithms to track product catalogs, no matter their size.

02.02Prioritise what matters most for you to track

The first step is to decide what information you want to be presented in your reseller channels. This is what will serve as the source of truth when searching for discrepancies. It doesn’t need to involve every aspect of your product.

Start with what is most important to you. We support brands across industries and can guide you to find the variables to start with.

It may be a keyword that must be in the title, the size of your product, ingredients, that you have video or track out-of-stock.


02.03Monitor regularly

Online auditing is something that must be done on a regular basis. The technology sees everything exactly as a potential customer would see it. If you use a tool to automatically monitor your product visibility you can get reports and notifications delivered on a daily basis.

You may want to get notified daily if products run out of stock whereas once a week or month might be enough for other parameters. Regardless, the key to success is consistency. Detail Online provides transparency to brands on where they have sales leaks that can then help them take action.

Examples of what Detail Online can monitor for you:

If your products are visible where they should be

If your products show up under the right keywords and in the right category

If all products have a title, description, specification,

image, or video

If rich content and correct product information and presentation

Is your product in stock, and in some cases, available for

in-store pickup?

Discover how your competitors are winning sales


02.04Comparing with set KPIs

In order to evaluate performance and follow visibility over time it is valuable to set KPIs and fill your reports with insights that aim to improve them. Detail Online clients can tailor KPIs based on their needs to ensure the insights tie into their business goals.

Working with brands across industries we know what KPIs matter exactly for you. Below are five commonly used KPIs by global brands, that each can be tracked on a detailed level with Detail Online:

Low or zero stock levels

Reductions in search rankings

Poor listing visibility

Lack of consumer ratings

Incorrect product information

A good way to set goals is to begin monitoring for a couple of weeks and use the findings from that period as a foundation. Once this is agreed upon, the right stakeholders should be notified about the result and current state, making it easy to take action, to close sales leaks and seize sales opportunities.

We see that many brands compare regions, resellers or product categories and identify their own best practices that way, discovering approaches to continuously improve performance. Our tool offer a dashboard that makes it easy to see what is working well and where investments truly pay off. Discover problems quickly, especially on a global instead of just a local level.


Conclusions

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Get the demo and start boosting today!

Take action

Prioritise your findings and decide which need urgent attention, and which can wait for now. Consumers in today’s digital world expect flawless product exposure and lose trust in a brand if products are displayed differently over different channels. Most resellers appreciate all the support they can get to improve product visibility. Manufacturer/retailer collaboration is the key to success and, as we know from physical stores, there won’t be many category leaders.

Your resellers have the same goals you have and our experience is that they appreciate brands helping them find potential errors and improve consumer experience.

By using an e-commerce auditing tool to monitor performance in your reseller channels you can discuss improvements with resellers based on accurate data during a given time period.

Work with your resellers to make continuous updates. It can be, but is not limited to:

Update keywords used to describe your product

Change what category your product is listed under

Fix broken links

Send new or complimentary product content (i.e descriptions, images, video)

Respond to poor or low reviews

Ensure the reseller has your product in stock

About Detail Online

Detail Online helps global consumer brands take control of their product visibility in online reseller channels worldwide, in order to quickly identify lost sales opportunities and compliance issues.

Built on decades of passion and experience in sales and marketing, retail and search technology, the company is growing fast.

Since the start in 2015, the solutions have attracted some of the largest consumer brands in the world to become clients. Clients operate in a wide range of sectors – from consumer electronics, FMCG, IT, software and entertainment, to food and beverage, logistics, fashion, cosmetics, homewares, sports equipment and pet care.

Today we have offices in Sweden, Finland, the UK, Switzerland, Spain and the Philippines. Together with our partners we are able to serve clients all over the world.

[email protected]

+46 (0) 706 941 600

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