PIM for ecommerce: one source for your webshop and marketplaces

When a webshop outgrows its shop admin

Every webshop platform has a product admin. That is where you create products, set prices and upload photos. For one shop with a manageable range, that is enough. What a PIM is exactly, you can read in what is a PIM system. This article is about when the product admin of your webshop falls short. The signs:

• You sell on more than one channel. Next to your webshop also on a marketplace or through a product feed. Every change then has to be made in several places, or your channels drift apart.
• Your products come from suppliers. A wholesaler sends a feed with short names, no description and its own categories. If you fix that in your shop, the next import overwrites your work.
• You have thousands of items. Checking each product by hand is no longer realistic. You want to see which products lack a photo, a brand or a valid EAN, and fix them in bulk.
• Marketplaces have their own requirements. Their own category tree, required attributes, an EAN per variant and GPSR details. Your shop admin does not know those fields.
• Stock sits in more than one place. A warehouse and a shop, or stock at the supplier. Overselling is then just around the corner.

Where a PIM sits: between sources and channels

A PIM for ecommerce works like a hub. On one side product data comes in, on the other side it goes out to your sales channels. In between, you make the product complete.

Sources

• Suppliers and wholesalers through a fixed connection, so new products, prices and stock come in automatically.
• POS systems, if you also run a physical shop.
• Files: a one-time import of XLS, XLSX or CSV with column mapping and a preview. That is how you bring in, say, an export from your ERP.
• Your own products, created directly in the PIM. One action turns an imported product into your own PIM product.

In the PIM

This is where you manage name, descriptions, EAN and extra barcodes, SKU, brand, model, prices, VAT, weight, dimensions, attributes, metafields, variants, images and product relations. Product rules make sure your changes to an imported product survive the next import. If text or a photo is missing, you enrich from the EAN, see AI product enrichment.

Channels

• Webshops: WooCommerce, Shopify, SitePack, CCV Shop, Lightspeed and HikaShop.
• Marketplaces: Bol, Kaufland and Mirakl marketplaces. Allegro, eBay, Books in Belgium and Boekwinkeltjes are in beta.
• Product feeds for Google Shopping, Meta, Microsoft Ads and TikTok.

In the other direction, marketplace orders come back into one overview and stock stays the same on every channel. That makes StoreLinkr a PIM plus integration platform, not a stand-alone enterprise PIM. All channels are listed under integrations.

PIM for WooCommerce, Shopify and other platforms

How StoreLinkr feeds your webshop depends on the platform. For WooCommerce you install a plugin in WordPress, for Shopify an app in your store. The other platforms are connected directly from StoreLinkr. After that, products, prices and stock go from the PIM to your shop.

Not sure whether your platform works? Check connect your webshop. If it is not listed there, there is no connection.

Marketplace requirements: categories, attributes, EAN and GPSR

A webshop accepts almost anything you put in it. A marketplace does not. It has its own category tree, required attributes per category, wants a valid EAN per product and variant, and increasingly asks for GPSR details. This is where a PIM helps most.

• Categories. You map your own categories, or your supplier's, once to the marketplace categories. New products in that category follow the mapping automatically.
• Attributes. Attribute mapping converts your attributes, such as colour, material or capacity, into the attributes the marketplace expects per category.
• EAN. The data quality dashboard shows products with an invalid EAN, so you fix them before the marketplace rejects them. More on the number in what is an EAN code.
• GPSR. You record the economic operator details (name, address, email, phone) and match them to products, for example per brand. Marketplaces that ask for them, such as Kaufland and eBay, receive them. See GPSR product safety.
• Titles. For feeds and marketplaces you compose the title from brand, model, title, EAN, SKU and category.

Per channel: selection, price list and stock

Not every product belongs on every channel, and not every channel gets the same price. That is why every sales channel connection in StoreLinkr has three settings of its own:

• Product selection. Which products go to this channel. The bulk action to allow or disallow export changes that for many products at once.
• Price list. Its own price list per channel, with country and currency.
• Stock locations. Which locations supply the stock for this channel. Extra stock locations are a paid add-on.

Example: home goods webshop on WooCommerce and Kaufland

Take a home goods webshop: kitchenware, tableware and textiles. Around 2,500 products from two suppliers plus its own items, sold through a WooCommerce webshop and on Kaufland. This is how you set it up step by step:

1. Bring your products in. Connect the two suppliers and import your own items once from an XLSX file, with column mapping and a preview.
2. Sort out your categories. Build your own category tree with drag and drop, and map the supplier categories to it.
3. Check data quality. The dashboard shows products without a photo, with an invalid EAN or without brand, weight or dimensions. Fix them in bulk or with inline editing in the table.
4. Enrich what is missing. Fill in names, texts and photos from the EAN, optionally with your own AI. Product rules keep your changes at the next import.
5. Record GPSR. Enter the economic operator per brand, so Kaufland gets those details with every product.
6. Connect WooCommerce through the plugin in WordPress. Pick the whole range, your regular price list and the stock of warehouse and shop.
7. Connect Kaufland. Pick only products with an EAN, a category and GPSR details, a separate price list and warehouse stock only. Map categories and attributes and compose the title from brand, title and model.
8. Let it run. Kaufland orders come back into one overview and stock is pushed to both channels, so what sells in the webshop also disappears on Kaufland.

What this costs depends on your number of orders per month: subscriptions start at EUR 69 per month, see pricing and what PIM software costs. How to plan the rollout is covered in PIM implementation.

Frequently asked questions