Salsify made simple: how our favourite PXM software syndicates your content
For any business with a large number of products to sell or multiple endpoints where they sell those products, product experience management software (PXM) can save a huge amount of time.
More importantly, it gives a high level of consistency, and therefore quality, to your brand.
Salsify is our favourite PXM tool. It allows you to centralise all your listings content, ensuring it’s all correct and consistent, which ensures your brand looks high-quality and professional and helps you win on the digital shelf.
It allows you to publish your content to Amazon, Shopify, and other marketplaces quickly and easily. But what does that look like in practical terms?
In this blog we’ll take you through a couple of Salsify’s major back-end functions, to give you a sense of how it works.
The two pillars of Salsify
There are two pillars to Salsify. The first is as a product information management/digital asset management combination in which to upload your complete listings content, making sure all the product information for each product is in one central location, in your brand language.
The second is syndicating those listings to the different endpoints: Amazon, Walmart, Shopify, your own eCommerce platform, etc. Salsify allows you to do this as easily as possible, formatting the listings so they appear correctly, following the requirements and conventions of each platform.
You are able to view in Salsify each channel your content appears on. In each channel, among other features, you will find:
- Overview
- Product selection for that channel
- Readiness report, indicating if you have the minimum required information to submit your content
- Schedule.
Following the rules
Different platforms require your content to be formatted differently. Salsify allows you to do that as quickly and easily as possible, using rules.
Amazon, for example, requires very strict values to ensure your content – such as your bullet points – is displayed properly.
You can establish rules that will automatically modify your content so that it displays as discrete bullet points on Amazon, rather than one lump of text in one bullet point, for instance.
These rules can be used to adapt your own company style to that of each endpoint. Your prices might usually be styled with a comma, whereas Amazon requires all prices to be styled with a decimal point: a rule can be established to modify each listing this way every time you syndicate to Amazon.
This is one example, but it goes for almost everything: you can set up endless rules for each endpoint you’re publishing to.
“Configuring these channels may seem challenging, but we must not forget that in most cases it is a one-time job. Once you configure a channel you will profit from it in all future uploads to that endpoint.” - Antonio Vicedo, e-Comas
Almost any value can be changed in Salsify to ensure your product information appears exactly as you want it, at any endpoint – across Amazon, Walmart, Shopify, Cdiscount or any other platform.
These rules can be configured once and then apply for as long as you need them to, to however many listings needed.
You don’t need to always create new rules: rules can also be reused and edited to fit a different channel or endpoint.
It’s called mapping, and Salsify makes it easier by emulating the attributes that you would see on each platform.
Eliminating errors
Salsify also flags up errors. Its readiness reports will flag up potential data gaps and incorrect values so you can take action before publishing.
Even if after all the precautions and recommendations Amazon still rejects your listing, Salsify will retrieve Amazon’s feedback to keep you always informed.
These are the basic functionalities of Salsify. There are loads of exciting features that we will cover in later blogs - stay tuned for more.
Handling your account
Salsify is fantastic. It can save your business a lot of time, and improve your brand’s image – helping you win on the digital shelf.
But it’s not an automated service: it requires someone with training in Salsify to manage it, to ensure content is correctly syndicated.
At e-Comas we can handle your Salsify account for you, ensuring you get the best out of it and your brand and products show consistently on every platform you sell on.
We know Salsify incredibly well and have seen it transform our clients’ business again and again.