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Customer Profile

The client is one of the leading retailers in the country who specializes in delivering affordable quality products across categories to their customers. Their USP includes their innovative offerings and wider reach with over 16 million square feet of retail space ensuring a high-quality lifestyle for their customers. They serve millions of customers through their digital platforms and over 1500 stores across 400 Indian cities.

Business Challenge

One of the top priorities for the client’s business was business growth via leading e-commerce marketplaces in the country. Their team was struggling to achieve this goal due to the poor pass percentage their product listings were receiving across the platforms. Due to this, only an astounding 39% of their product listings were getting approved to be listed on various e-commerce platforms. The team was unable to pinpoint the specific reasons behind this and this was hindering their business growth.

The impact of the poor pass percentage was reflecting in their diminishing revenues from marketplaces. In addition to this, their competition was gaining a higher share of the sales due to the absence of other products.

The client wanted MattsenKumar to help with achieving the objectives below:

• Identify the factors contributing to the higher product listing failures
• Establish a process to improve the pass percentages from 39% to more than 90%
• Identify the factors that will contribute to better product visibility on the marketplaces
• Develop a framework and guidelines for a robust product listing process across the platforms.

First Things First

What is a Pass Percentage?

The pass percentage is a metric that is widely used by e-commerce platforms to ascertain whether the product submitted should be listed on the platform for sale. A higher pass percentage denotes quicker listings and sales for the sellers as the product will be available for the buyers faster.

E-commerce marketplaces keep updating their guidelines for product listings making it a tough task for sellers to stay on top of the same. Pass percentage improvement is impacted by multiple stringent factors determined by the respective marketplace.

Here are some examples of listing guidelines for leading marketplaces in India:

While uploading product images, It is mandatory to provide a complete view of the product and even a slight crop is not allowed (Example below). Whereas the product view was not impacted by the crop, these types of images were leading to failure in listings.

For apparel like Tops and T-Shirts, if the product images are at an angle instead of straight (example below), they will not be passed.

The client was struggling to stay on top of these guidelines and understand the reasons behind the low pass percentages.

Our Approach

Our team leveraged 2 analyses for delivering the right results for the client – Failure Comment Analysis and Product Benchmarking Studies.

Failure Comment Analysis

This analysis helps our team to assess and identify the list of reasons behind the failure of our client’s product listings. After combing through the plethora of reasons, the team was able to identify the top reasons contributing to the failure of listings and develop a plan to rectify them.

Product Benchmarking Studies

This was a value-add step used by our team to help identify the Good-To-Have (GTH) attributes for listed and yet to be listed products. By leveraging benchmarking with close competitors, our team was able to identify the factors that can contribute to the boost in visibility for the client’s products on the platforms.

Based on these studies, the team was able to develop the following guidelines and processes:

1. Guidelines to Mandatory View Requirements (For Product Images)

From the failure comment analysis, our team found that non-compliance to mandatory view requirements was one of the top contributing factors to listing failures. Around 28% of overall listing failures were due to this where the client’s team was unable to stick to the guidelines.

While analysis, our team also observed that even though the seller portal was carrying information regarding mandatory view requirements, the client’s team was unaware of the same (background, allowed pixels, appropriate sizing, etc.).

Recommendation

Leverage MattsenKumar’s in-house image editing team expertise ensuring images comply with the various platform requirements.

2. Addition of Allowed Values Under Free-Text Mandatory Attribute

The next biggest contributor was non-adherence to guidelines on attribute values leading to 23% of failures. Attribute values are mandatory and free text is allowed for the same on most platforms. Our analysis showed usage of the same and incorrect attribute values for images or vertical guidelines by the client’s team.

Recommendation

Our team developed a framework to define the right attributes for every vertical with the allowed values for each. By following the framework, our team was able to increase the pass percentages above 90%.

3. Automation Capabilities to Improve Efficiencies and Productivity

As multiple products from various verticals were getting uploaded, a particular template was used for the task. Our team developed an in-house tool to analyze these excel sheets for errors with a built-in “failure highlighter” to notify about the wrong values under attributes. This proactive innovation helped in avoiding incorrect uploads and thereby improving pass percentages for the listings.

4. Identification of The Right Good-To-Have (GTH) Attributes

Attributes come in 2 variants – Mandatory and Good-To-Have. As the name suggests, without the mandatory attributes, no listing will pass hence the client’s team was focusing only on that. Good-To-Have (GTH) attributes, even though not mandatory, bring a lot of benefits for a product listed in terms of visibility and product discovery.

Recommendation

Our team helped the client in improving their focus on Good-To-Have (GTH) attributes. Additional attributes like fabric, material, occasion, wash type, etc. were suggested to the client based on our Search Analysis and benchmarking studies. This helped in boosting the visibility of the listed products across platforms for the client.

5. Key Insights on Image Guidelines

As different marketplaces have their guidelines for images allowed for product listings, it was a tough challenge for the client’s team to stay updated on the same. Ignoring the same or non-adherence was leading to the high failure rates of their product listing submissions.

Recommendation

Our in-house team with image editing capabilities were assigned to handle all the image needs of the client. They ensured the adherence of product image guidelines including white background, image size, products with center alignment, acceptable formats, etc. This helped the client in reducing the listing rejections due to image guidelines violations.

Results

Our team helped the client to turnaround their product listing process with the right results. Some of the key achievements were:

• The pass percentage of product listings reached 92% from a meager 39%
• A methodology for easier identification of root causes behind the staggering listing failures
• A framework that safeguards the client’s marketplace performance from frequent platform guideline changes
• Better visibility for all their products on all e-commerce marketplaces due to the focus on good-to-have (GTH) attributes.