What is PIM in Ecommerce? Key Features & Benefits (2026)

For many enterprise retailers, product data is scattered across spreadsheets, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, supplier files, digital asset management systems (DAMs), marketplaces, and storefronts. A change to one SKU requires manual updates across every channel, hoping you didn’t accidentally miss one. 

The stakes are high with this manual approach to product data management. Syndigo’s 2025 report found three-quarters of customers form negative opinions of a brand if they encounter incomplete or inaccurate information. Some 44% have abandoned a purchase because of it. 

Retailers use product information management (PIM) software to close those data gaps by centralizing product data inside one source of truth. The platform connects with every sales channel so any updates to PIM data automatically update everywhere else.

This guide shares how PIM software works, describes the signals that help brands determine they need PIM, and how PIM connects to your existing ecommerce toolstack.

What is PIM?

A product information management (PIM) system is a tool retailers use to centralize product data so teams can collect, clean, enrich, approve, and distribute it. The data on a PIM usually includes: 

• Titles
• Descriptions
• SKUs
• Specifications
• Translations
• Category data
• Compatibility information
• Channel-specific requirements
• Images
• Videos (Some retailers continue to store videos and higher-resolution images on a digital asset management tool.) 

As an ecommerce platform, Shopify provides multiple ways to manage commerce-facing product data, including:

• Products: The core product record
• Variants: Different versions of a product
• Metafields: Custom fields attached to products beyond Shopify’s standard variant fields
• Metaobjects: Reusable custom structured content
• Files: Product images and other media
• Collections: Groups of products
• Catalogs: Products and pricing made available to specific markets or customers
• Storefront content: Content used in the customer-facing experience

Some larger retailers or brands with a more complex business structure add a PIM upstream when they need deeper enrichment, approvals, supplier workflows, localization, or syndication to multiple channels. In these cases, Shopify is the place where approved product data from the PIM becomes shoppable. 

How does PIM work?

PIM software collects data from multiple sources and normalizes it inside a central system. Ecommerce teams review, approve, and govern that data before it’s syndicated to sales channels. 

Here’s a breakdown of how retailers can set up data on a PIM system:

1. Collect product data from multiple sources

The first step is to get raw product information into one place before it reaches customer-facing channels.

When connected to the right systems, PIM tools can collect product data from multiple sources, including:

• Supplier spreadsheets
• Manufacturer feeds
• ERP systems
• Digital asset management (DAM) software
• Product lifecycle management (PLM) tools
• Internal merchandising teams

2. Normalize and enrich the data

Before product data can be syndicated, teams need to standardize naming, attributes, categories, units, product relationships, and required fields. This ensures that information feeds accurately across all channels in a way that can be understood by the tools handling the data. 

Here’s are some examples of the steps that go into this process:

• Turning inconsistent size fields into a standard size attribute
• Adding missing dimensions or material details
• Connecting images and videos to the right product variants
• Writing channel-specific product descriptions

3. Review, approve, and govern product information

It’s important to identify who has ownership over each major dataset that goes into the PIM. Native governance tools like approval workflows, validation rules, version control, access control, completeness scores, translation management, and role-based ownership help teams identify and prevent data-quality issues before content is syndicated. 

4. Syndicate product data to sales channels

PIM software can send approved data to your direct-to-consumer (DTC) website, point-of-sale (POS) system, marketplaces, retail partners, social commerce channels, B2B portals, and print catalogs.

Take Solberg Manufacturing, who migrated more than 8,700 objects and 3,600 products into Shopify. The migration included product images, custom catalog hierarchy, B2B capabilities, SEO redirects, and support for 11 languages. 

After launch, Solberg reported 15.2% year-over-year revenue growth, a 13% order volume increase, and a 6.9% increase in average order value (AOV). 

What product information does a PIM manage?

PIM software generally manages four main types of product data:

Core identifiers

Core identifiers standardize products to appear inside the PIM software. They help your team connect product data across systems and reduce duplication.

Examples include:

• Product titles
• SKU numbers
• GTINs or UPCs
• Variant IDs
• Barcodes

Core identifiers can also extend to non-product data, such as supplier IDs or manufacturer part numbers. 

Product attributes and specifications

Product attributes give extra context to each product. These depend on the products you’re selling. For example:

• Size
• Color
• Material
• Dimensions
• Weight
• Ingredients
• Compatibility
• Fitment
• Care instructions
• Certifications
• Technical specs

On Shopify, product variants pull these specifications from the PIM to display different variations of the same product on a product description page (PDP). You can also display metafields or metaobjects to display additional specialized information not covered by variant fields, like Bala does with their fabric, care, and fit insights:

Onsite search tools also use attributes to match queries to products. If someone searches for “red cashmere sweater”, for example, the tool would reference the color, material, and product type metafields pulled from the PIM software.

Product content and media

A PIM houses extra data that helps customers visualize your products, whether that’s:

• Product descriptions
• SEO titles
• Images
• Videos
• Manuals
• 3D models
• Comparisons
• Social proof

Accurate product content and media information is important. Salsify’s 2025 Consumer Research report shows 77% of shoppers named product titles, descriptions, images, and videos as “extremely” or “very” important in their purchase decision. GS1 also found nearly two-thirds of consumers are willing to spend more on a product when a store offers detailed product information.

Commercial, channel, and localization data

PIM software helps with multichannel management by including the assets you’ll need to sell one product across different channels. If you sell B2B, for example, the PIM might house wholesale price lists and minimum order quantities (MOQs) for each SKU.

The same applies to international ecommerce. PIM software acts as one source of truth for products sold cross-border, holding key data for products, including: 

• Regional product availability
• Translated copy and location-specific product descriptions
• Local regulations and compliance (for example, when a certain product or category of product may not be legally purchased or shipped in a country or region due to regulations)
• Market-specific attributes, such as units of measure or regional pricing

PIM tools can also support channel-specific content requirements, like vertical images and short-form video for social commerce platforms. 

Why ecommerce brands use PIM software

When used correctly, ecommerce PIM software can support faster product launches, better discovery, fewer returns, stronger consistency, and lower operational costs:

Faster product launches

Ecommerce PIM software can help retailers shorten the distance between supplier data, product enrichment, approval, and publishing. 

Taschen launched a global ecommerce experience on Shopify Plus in just five months. The implementation included a headless architecture, an integrated PIM, Shopify Checkout, payments, segmentation, and support for five languages. 

Taschen reported 20% year-over-year revenue growth, a 6% lift in average order value (AOV), and a 12% increase in orders post-migration. 

Better product discovery and conversion

Structured product data powers product-discovery features like:

• Search filters
• Personalized product recommendations
• Variant selection
• Compatibility logic
• Category pages

Kooks Headers & Exhaust, for example, needed year/make/model fitment to power B2B self-service, live inventory, and cleaner product search for their highly specialized product catalog. They connected Shopify with their PDM Automotive PIM, creating a single commerce engine that powered easy and accurate product discovery for both DTC and B2B customers. 

After the migration and PIM integration, Kooks reported a 22% conversion increase and a 38% lower total cost of ownership (TCO). “Transitioning to Shopify has given us the functionality we needed to scale—real-time inventory, integrated analytics, and B2B capabilities that streamline operations,” says president George Kook Jr.

“It's freeing up our account managers to spend more time prospecting and helping us grow not only Kooks Headers & Exhaust, but also the performance manufacturing side of the business.”

Fewer returns and more customer trust

Accurate product content can reduce retail returns, which totaled $849.9 billion in 2025. Syndigo’s report found 21% of shoppers returned a product when it didn’t meet the expectations set by online product content. The same study found 75% of consumers form negative opinions about a brand when product information is incomplete or inaccurate, and 44% have abandoned a purchase because product information was insufficient. 

Stronger international and omnichannel consistency

PIM software can store product data that differs across global markets,  supporting translations (language and currency), market-specific attributes, local regulations, and channel-specific content requirements.

Shopify Markets is another tool that lets you manage the complexities of selling across countries, regions, languages, and currencies. 

“It is a whole lot easier to localize your catalog and show or hide products using Markets than it is to stand up a completely new Shopify store—both in terms of the hours it takes to set up initially and ongoing maintenance,” says Dylan Feiner, senior product manager at Ruggable.

Lower operational complexity

PIM can reduce manual rework because one change automatically syncs to integrated sales channels. 

Home and garden brand The Conran Shop moved from a heavily customized Magento setup to Shopify. They used Matrixify to migrate their PIM data, reduced total cost of ownership by 50%, and reported a 54% conversion increase.

When do you need a PIM system?

Not every brand needs a standalone PIM. Here’s how to assess whether you need to upgrade versus when your ecommerce platform’s native features are enough:

When Shopify native tools may be enough

Shopify has native catalog-management tools to manage product data, which feeds into other DTC, retail, and B2B storefronts powered by the unified commerce platform. It’s suited to brands with products that fit the Standard Product Taxonomy, including many single-market stores and brands with straightforward product content. 

Standout catalog-management features available out of the box with Shopify include:

• Unlimited products
• Up to 2,048 variants 
• Metafields and metaobjects 
• Bulk editing
• Syndication across sales channels, including Shop and AI search engines

Shopify also has a range of apps that pull from this native catalog, including Search & Discovery, which helps deliver relevant search results to shoppers in your online store. Food service equipment brand Russell Hendrix implemented Search & Discovery after replatforming to Shopify, a move that resulted in 24% higher revenue and 43% higher B2B online order volume.

“Being able to surface something as simple as the lid that goes with a pot, that makes it so much easier to buy from us,” says director of ecommerce and marketing Paul Roy.

When to add a PIM to Shopify

Shopify handles the storefront, checkout, product pages, B2B buying, and market-specific commerce experience for retailers of all sizes and structures. But a PIM can be useful when a retailer needs Shopify to receive approved, enriched product data from a dedicated upstream system.

Factors that may lead a retailer to consider upgrading to ecommerce PIM software include:

• Thousands of SKUs or variants
• Frequent product launches
• Multiple suppliers or manufacturers
• Multiple languages or markets
• Large media libraries
• Compatibility, fitment, or technical attributes
• Approval workflows across merchandising, legal, brand, and ecommerce teams

How to choose and implement a PIM for Shopify

If you’ve identified a need for standalone PIM software, here’s how to evaluate options and implement them on Shopify:

Audit your product data model

Start by mapping every attribute your product catalog needs. This includes variants, supporting media, B2B-specific fields, and localization data. Your new PIM’s data model needs to directly map those attributes to each integrated sales channel. 

Ask yourself:

• Which fields are required to publish?
• Which fields vary by channel?
• Which fields vary by market?
• Which fields are needed for search and filtering?
• Which fields create support or return issues when missing?

Define integrations and system compatibility

Clarify the role the new PIM software will play in your broader ecommerce toolstack. It’s important to establish clear boundaries for which systems have ownership of which datasets.

For example, a retailer may structure data ownership according to this framework:

• ERP owns inventory, purchasing, and fulfillment records.
• PIM owns enriched product content and attributes.
• DAM owns media assets.
• Shopify owns customer-facing commerce experiences.
• Analytics tools track performance and content gaps.

Automotive parts manufacturer and distributor ULE Group partnered with Shopify Platinum Partner Uncap to integrate Shopify with their wider toolstack, including Epicor as their ERP system, Klaviyo as their email marketing tool, and Akeneo as their PIM. 

“This was not a standard build, it was a deep, messy, ambitious piece of modern commerce plumbing,” says Denis Dyli, Uncap’s CEO. “We were genuinely thrilled to help design and deliver one of the most complex infrastructures we have ever touched, built natively on Shopify, with true B2B and B2C unified commerce and tight, real integrations across ERP, PIM, and ESP.”

Now with Shopify’s commerce capabilities and strong integration with their Akeneo PIM, ULE Group now operates an ecommerce engine that can accommodate up to 1 million SKUs. Since migrating to Shopify, ULE Group has achieved 225% growth in site traffic and a 250% increase in sales.

Build governance workflows

Having a PIM doesn’t automatically guarantee that the information it contains will be accurate. Establish one clear owner who’s responsible for approving any changes and keeping data up to date. 

Some PIM software also comes with governance tools to assist, such as:

• Required fields
• Version controls
• Audit history
• Access rights and permissions
• Validation rules

Launch in phases

Start with a high-impact category, market, or channel before migrating the entire catalog. This gives the opportunity to address data quality issues before you sync PIM data to every sales channel. 

Metrics to track as you deploy the PIM software include:

• Product-launch cycle time
• Product content completeness
• Conversion rate
• Search usage and zero-result searches
• Support contacts tied to product questions
• Return reasons
• AOV
• TCO or engineering time spent on catalog work

A leading independent consulting firm found Shopify offers the best time to value in commerce. Brands are 66% more likely to implement on time and three times more likely to implement on budget than on competitor platforms, on average. 

PIM and the future of AI commerce

Agentic commerce poses a huge opportunity for retailers. Shopify’s data shows AI-referred traffic to Shopify stores was up eight times year-over-year as of Q1 2026. 

Over half (55%) of AI shopping sessions on Shopify stores start on a product page. This indicates AI search tools have already helped customers find what they need. As a result, AI-referred traffic converts at 50% higher rates than organic search visitors. AI-referred customers also spend 14% more than other customers on average.

But for AI shopping tools to surface your products in conversations, they need complete product data to understand what a product is, who it is for, what variants exist, and whether it fits a shopper’s needs. 

Make your product data AI-ready by including:

• Accurate product titles
• Complete descriptions
• Structured attributes
• Variant-level details
• GTINs or identifiers
• Availability
• Product media
• Shipping and return details
• Compatibility or fitment data
• FAQs or buying guidance

Shopify Catalog helps brands show products accurately in AI shopping answers across platforms like ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot. You can customize which products are visible to AI agents and track how many orders come from these sales channels. 

“At Monos, we’re excited about agentic shopping because it enables us to meet customers where they already are,” says Victor Tam, CEO and cofounder of Monos. 

“It’s a new way for our story and product details to show up at the exact moment someone is asking real questions with real intent, in a format that feels helpful, not intrusive. For a brand built on thoughtful design, it’s a natural next channel for discovery and trust.”