FROM TRADITIONAL RETAIL TRADE TO INNOVATIVE E-COMMERCE PLAYER

These are exciting times for Jelmoli. Jelmoli is currently investing heavily in new and innovative technologies and will continue to do so in the coming years. "Our goal is to offer our customers an unforgettable shopping experience that combines the offline and online worlds," says Marc Huber, Head of Customer Experience & E-Commerce and member of the Jelmoli management team.

Jelmoli announced the opening of three new stores at Zurich Airport. "We are particularly excited about the opening of the digital Jelmoli Concept Store in spring 2020! "We want to bring the same first-class shopping experience we offer in our department store online". Their plan is to create a walk-in store with only 200 square meters, which will offer an almost complete range of Jelmoli's flagship store in Zurich. "It will be unique in Switzerland. Our customers will be able to order products in a modern and stylish online shop. Some products will even be delivered immediately within 30 minutes to collection zones within the airport", explains Huber.

Today, quality products and brands are not enough for customers to visit a department store. It is the best shopping experience that makes the difference, one of Jelmoli's key strengths.

HOW ONEDOT HELPED

"We wanted to extend the current product data model (PDM) to expand our online product range, display rich product information and enable smooth product search. This can be a difficult task, especially when you have a product range as diverse as Jelmoli. This task requires extensive knowledge of data modeling and industry expertise. This is exactly why we turned to Onedot," explains Huber.

Jelmolis new PDM will be the backbone of the product data management and online shopping experience. It provides clear guidelines for product description and opens the door for automating key data management processes such as the integration of new brands and products.

"If you have a store with more than 2,000,000 product variations and you want all of them to be available online, you must provide powerful search and filtering mechanisms so that customers can find the products they are looking for within seconds Protocol".

An essential part of building the product data model is to identify the attributes that best describe the products. It is not enough for sportswear to have only material, colour and size. Customers want to know what kind of collar an outdoor jacket has, or whether trail running trousers have side pockets and reflectors.

When designing a PDM, the key question is always how granular you want to describe the products. The finer the user experience, the better. With finer granularity, the effort to collect all product information and prepare the product data increases. "Since we are a premium brand, we want to offer our users high-quality product information online," says Huber.

Each attribute has one of three types: Free text, value list and numbers (with or without units). Value lists are particularly suitable for use in search filters in online shops.

Attributes can be either Single-Select or Multi-Select. For example, they can have multiple values for a jacket color or care instructions, but only fit a single value for the jacket. "With the help of Onedot, we have identified extensive value lists for our product attributes. This guarantees our customers consistent and searchable product filters," says Huber.

THE RESULT

The purpose of a PDM is to describe products in such a way that customers receive as much relevant information as necessary, get them excited about a product and thus make the decision to buy. The more accurate the information, the easier it is for buyers to find what they are looking for. The result is a measurable increase in the conversion rate and more revenue. Jelmoli is able to improve its offline and online presence thanks to a rich PDM.

"Jelmoli offers a wide range of products And we are constantly expanding the range to offer our customers more variety. We need to think about how we can further simplify our product data management and automate as much as possible. Onedot is definitely a strategic partner to achieve this goal," says Marc Huber.