Read how one of the worlds' largest pharmaceutical manufacturers gathers digital shelf data from +20 retailers daily. Digital shelf monitoring is the key!
A science-led global healthcare company that manufactures innovative consumer healthcare products has been using Sitelucent's digital shelf monitoring software since October 2019. Read in the interview below how this helps their Digital Project Operations Manager and eCommerce Manager make their jobs easier and drive eCommerce performances and sales.
Digital Project Operations Manager: "For us as a manufacturer selling our products via many retailers, it's quite the challenge to know what's happening at every retailer. I used to do analysis manually on all the markets, which took a lot of my time. It wasn't easy to gather data, summarize it, and gather insights into how well we were doing on the digital shelf. Since we use SiteLucent, all these processes became automatic.
SiteLucent tooling is supporting me with gathering all the product page data. I don't need to surf the retailer web pages anymore to gather the insights I need and know what I need to act upon. We quickly zoom in on each retailer and brand to see, for instance, if they have uploaded and listed content as we have sent it."
I don't need to surf to the retailer webpages any longer to gather the insights I need, and to know what I should act on.
Digital Project Operations Manager at Global manufacturer of pharmaceutical OTC products
"In the Netherlands, we work with 20+ retailers; imagine monitoring that manually is absurd! Having everything in 1 tool with the data visualized very nicely is super helpful. For instance, we have over 1000 kinds of toothpaste, and we want to make sure that we are visible everywhere. SiteLucent is already helping us with that by content optimization. The next step is using SiteLucents's visibility dashboard, to bring our retail search positions to page 1."
Digital Project Operations Manager: "It's one thing to gather data, but then you need to know what we measure against. We have to deal with different markets, and within each market, retailers have other KPIs and content requirements. For example, which keyword is important, and does the title require 100 or 200 characters?
SiteLucents' DCC score: Digital Content Completeness score
With SiteLucent, we were able to standardize this. You set the KPIs via the DCC score, and you start measuring 'against it' and adjust it accordingly whenever you want or need to. Using one tool to look at all the data and one way of measuring KPIs makes the job easier and more accurate."
Digital Project Operations Manager: "I love the new image feature that shows me an overview of all images and their order, per retailer, per product. One of the most important things for us is that we have all the images in place. Besides titles and descriptions, which are important for search, images are most important for conversions."
I use the SiteLucent image widgets to check if content changes are implemented on retailer websites.
Digital Project Operations Manager at Global manufacturer of pharmaceutical OTC products
"We want to make sure that retailers are always showing the newest design of our packaging and if the secondary images, which we call USP items, show the correct claims of a specific product.
It is also important to us that images are shown in the correct order. Suppose new content has been syndicated to a retailer. In that case, I use the SiteLucent image widgets to check if the content is correctly implemented because it is the easiest way for me to monitor and recognize changes quickly."
eCommerce Manager: "In the last couple of months, I was pleased with the new and improved pricing dashboards. An overview of all retailers of current prices they offer makes it very easy to compare them. As soon as we have new products or relaunch, we monitor prices to see what's happening in the market.
We advise retailers on what the price of a product should be. We can adjust or advise prices if we see that average market prices are above or below that recommended price. We use the SiteLucent pricing module on a regular base, to keep a good overview of what's happening in the market."
eCommerce Manager: "When having a conversation with a retailer, it's very easy to share screens, give insights, and use SiteLucents' visualizations to make clear what I mean precisely. I can see that at the retailer level, they like to see how easy it is for us to tell them where they can tweak some small things to show even better content on their website.
Looking back to where we started and where we are now, it became easier to work together towards a shared goal with retailers. The communication and the relationship between us as a manufacturer and resellers improved thanks to SiteLucent. That is something I value a lot!"
Looking back to where we started, and where we are now, it became so much easier to work together towards a shared goal with resellers.
eCommerce Manager at Global manufacturer of pharmaceutical OTC products
Are all retailers open to hearing points of improvement on their websites from you? eCommerce Manager: "Yes, they are. Up until now, all retailers see it as a win-win. Of course, most retailers have a clear vision of how they want to see things presented on their website, and this might slightly change from how we see things, but that's okay. We still have an overview of the big picture, which makes our lives so much easier.
In the end, we as a manufacturer and our retailers work towards the same goal: We want to increase the findability and conversions. SiteLucent makes this job more efficient and measurable."
eCommerce Manager: " The communication towards retailers became easier, as well as communicating within our organization on what we have achieved. We can prove now that syndicating content is not a spur-of-the-moment thing and that when retailers publish content, our job is not done. We can easily show how the status was some weeks ago and which steps we have taken to optimize the presentation of our products. This challenges people internally to use the tooling. They notice the value of SiteLucent both from a strategic perspective and an operational perspective.
We can prove now that syndicating content is not a spur-of-the-moment thing and that when retailers published content, our job is not done.
eCommerce Manager at Global manufacurer of pharmaceutical OTC products
Now that we see how easy it is to share insights with retailers and how open they are to it, we want to extend the use of SiteLucent towards our sales department. For instance, account managers actively contact a retailer when a product is out of stock and push towards placing a new purchase order.
We work towards better collaboration between eCommerce management, sales, and retailers with SiteLucent as a guideline and source of truth. We want to challenge the retailer and each other to take things to the next level!"
eCommerce Manager: " We did a test case on AS Watson, the website of Kruidvat. We updated the product titles and first images of a toothpaste product. We did the test in the weeks that we didn't have any promotions."
We see a big difference in sales figures if we compare them with other retailers within the same category, where we did not do the content optimizations yet.
eCommerce Manager at Global manufacturer of pharmaceutical OTC products
The results:
"We see a big difference in sales figures if we compare them with other retailers within the same category, where we did not do the content optimizations yet."
Digital Project Operations Manager: "We have so much data to act on now. The next challenge is to find out who is going to work on what. We have come to the point where we want to standardize SiteLucent and responsibilities in all internal processes. Much data on stock availability, content, ratings, reviews, etcetera, are somehow related. So that is still a challenge!
We are now starting with actively monitoring product listings, using retailer-specific product lists. We want to compare a list of products we think they are selling with what they are indeed selling. Getting this overview for 25 retailers has been a challenge. It also urges us to look at assortments more critically internally.
The goal is to find out if retailers listed the right products, sell something old, or respect the launch date of newly introduced products. We also want to tackle if retailers are using old EAN codes for new or improved products.
There is a correlation between content quality and search positioning. We strive to be always on top. Now that we are actively optimizing content and see an increase in sales, we want to start monitoring organic search positioning within retailer websites actively with SiteLucents' improves Search dashboard."
Digital Project Operations Manager: " We have a constant dialogue with the SiteLucent team. That's a good thing. We can express our needs, and they meet them. We appreciate that a lot."
There is a constant dialogue with the SiteLucent team - We can express our needs, and they meet them. We appreciate that a lot!Digital Project Operations Manager at Global manufacturer of pharmaceutical OTC products
A tip towards manufacturers who are about to start using SiteLucent:
"We were very enthusiastic about starting with 23 retailers right away, but don't do that! Start with 5 or 6 retailers, focus on them and then go to the next 5 or 6. Otherwise, it can get messy, not knowing where we have to concentrate. SiteLucent software is highly customizable, which is great. Be patient. Begin with the basics and then scale up. Move to other retailers, and the results will follow! "
Do you want to get started with SiteLucent? Book a demo with us, or take a peek at our software for free!
Watch how international brand Trust monitors 1500 products on more than 30 retailers, using SiteLucent's digital shelf software.
Joolz focuses on improving its digital shelf presence. SiteLucents' tooling helps improve product pages on retailer sites by elucidating the whole...
Digital Shelf optimization is a cross-functional path. Learn in this blog what roles can leverage digital shelf monitoring for your brand and how.