Convincing with Facts: Product Datasheets which Sell

It’s This Simple to Create Product Datasheets

Successful sales require more than simply offering the perfect product. A study by ECC Köln in collaboration with Hermes, SAP, and Yapital has shown that 85 percent of all shop visitors conceive of the product description as the decisive criterion for committing to a purchase decision. The less intuitive the product, the more important extensive and easy-to-understand product content is required to be. To this end, the product datasheet makes for an integral aspect of your product presentation.

However, what exactly is a datasheet? At first glance, the answer seems simple. Yet the more one zooms into the nitty-gritty details, the more difficult it becomes to formulate a clear-cut definition. In this blog entry, we have an in-depth look at this topic. We get to the very bottom of the question of what makes for good datasheets and demonstrate to you – using ONLINEPRINTERS Group as an example – how you can create datasheets yourself in effectively no time.

What Purpose do Product Datasheets Serve?

Datasheets are an important instrument for Product Marketing and Sales. Essentially, it’s about the presentation of the most crucial product information, allowing potential customers to see at a glance whether or not the product is what they’ve been looking for.

Datasheets serve the following elementary functions:

• Presentation of the most important information about the product
• Comprehensive overview of the product
• Quick access to technical data
• Clear distinction from similar products
• Easy comparability

Important: Product datasheets aren’t manuals. The name of the game is to provide consumers with an overview of functions and technical data which is as compact as possible, so keep the number of pages low.

You may also explain the use cases of you product. Here, the same idea applies: brevity is the soul of wit. Datasheets are primarily about providing an overview and facilitating the process of comparing products. After all, the purchasing process is about research and comparison, the price only comes after the fact.

The Must-Haves of Good Product Datasheets

Product datasheets can come in different layouts – be it text-heavy, table-centered, or like a glossy magazine. Indispensable are graphics of the product and a comprehensive presentation of technical information. The latter is best visualized in the form of a table or pivot table. For the ease of comparison, it make sense to standardize your datasheets across the board. This means that similar products should be presented in a similar way. If you’re active on the international markets, it’s essential to not only provide datasheets in the language of your main region but also in the language of your customers. For companies which design individualized products for their customers, it’s optimal to generate datasheets in an automated rather than manual manner, in order to make sure that all data is always up-to-date, correct, and consistent.

Naturally, there’re also technical aspects to look out for:

• Good readability on all end devices: Customers don’t only use PCs or laptops for getting the information they need. Accordingly, your datasheets should also be readable on smartphones and tablets.
• Thought-out print format: Many users print out product datasheets – be it as the basis for comparison or for a better overview. Which is why they should fit into a print format and also be usable in paper form.
• Up-to-date data: The most important thing, however, is that your data is always up to date. This is only possible if you never change your running system or automate the creation process. The manual creation process is always prone to error, so that data may be inconsistent and you may end up unintentionally providing customers with incorrect product data.

Meeting all these criteria poses a challenge for any company. However, you can tackle this problem head on by automating the generation of your datasheets. To this end, a PIM system is the best solution. This is how you can keep all your information up to date, automate translation processes, and compile everything in a clear well-standardized format.

Easily Automated: Ideal Product Datasheets in 4 Steps

Creating an ideal and flawless datasheet which convinces your customers and fulfills all technical requirements is a task which can barely be handled with manual labor alone. Thank god that there are suitable tools which can take care of the job. Using ONLINEPRINTERS Group as an example, we want to show you how this can be done in no more than 4 steps. ONLINEPRINTERS Group is one of the leading players on the European online printing markets. The group produces print outlets for more than 1,000,000 customers in over 30 countries across Europe – from flyers to complete exhibition stands.

To automate the production of product datasheets, ONLINEPRINTERS Group utilizes the PIM system developed by eggheads. The following process has stood the test of time:

1. Creating Generic SVGs (Scalable Vector Graphics)

ONLINEPRINTERS uses generic SVG assets – for both, their products and product groups. Such graphics come with placeholders. This means that, while the graphic remains the same, its content is dynamic. After creating the assets, they’re imported into the PIM.

2. Localizing Product-Specific SVGs

Having stored the generic graphics in the product system, the name of the game is to create product-specific graphics. On the one hand, this process depends on the specifics of the concrete article and, on the other hand, it depends on the respective language in which the articles are to be presented. All this is handled in a fully automated manner. In the process, a set of specific graphics is generated out of the generic SVG – one per product and language respectively.

3. Generating Multi-Lingual, Product-Specific Datasheets from Templates

In this process step, templates are used to automatically generate a datasheet for every product and article within the PIM system. The templates reference the previously-genreated SVG assets, integrates them, and creates product datasheets in multiple languages out of them. Once again, they are stored in the PIM so that every PIM user can access them, as necessary.

4. Distributing Publications to External Systems 

Finally, in the last step, the datasheets are ready for the export to external systems. For example, this may include shop systems where consumers can download the datasheets in required languages.

Conclusion: Automated Product Datasheets? No Problem!

Product datasheets are plain, they don’t snatch your attention with fancy graphics. What they do, however, is communicate product information in a clear and distinct way.

They’re the most important means of communication for customers who currently are in the last phase of the Customer Journey, providing them with the decisive impetus for purchasing the product. Because of the compactness of datasheets, the creation process poses a great challenge for many companies – from keeping product data up to date to customizing datasheets for specific target customers.

All these challenges can be mastered in effectively no time with the help of a PIM software, since it allows you to automate the creation process. The example of ONLINEPRINTERS group shows just how simple it is to automate product datasheets. With a PIM system as the central datahub, you can assure consistent data, flawless product information in multiple languages, and a clear-cut layout.

We’re always happy to show you in a personal web demo how to optimize and automate your product data processes with out software – individual, free, and without any commitments on your end. Secure your demo tour now.