real.digital: German’s No 3 Online Marketplace Requires Better Product Content from Suppliers

In order to give its customers the best and most effective shopping experience, real.digital chose Icecat as its Content Syndication Partner.

About real.digital

real, one of the most famous and largest retail store chains in Germany. They took over the e-commerce company Hitmeister in 2016 and thus gained a solid foothold for its online expansion. Real.digital is now one of the biggest online shopping platforms and marketplaces in Germany. Based in Cologne, Dusseldorf, Darmstadt and Mönchengladbach. Today, real.digital is the third biggest marketplace for online retailers in Germany, right behind Amazon and Ebay. In the marketplace one can find more than fourteen million products in categories, like electronics, toys, home and garden, fashion and furniture provided by more than 5000 retailers, as well as by real itself. The product range is continuously expanding.

“Both our retailers and us as a platform are already seeing clear results and we are excited about the potential that the merger will continue to bring to all stakeholders”, said Gerald Schönbucher, CEO of real, Digital Services GmbH.¹

real.digital uses Icecat to download relevant product content and displays it in all its output media. In addition to the real online shop, this also includes instore presentations and other content-driven advertising media like flyers, and newsletters.

“Complete and exact product information is the key to sales promotion and customer loyalty. We integrate all Icecat information across all categories,” says Caroline Hefter, Product Data Management Director at real.digital.

Lana Buschhoff, Senior Region Manager DACH at Icecat, adds: “Standardized and high-quality product information as well as technical specifications, marketing texts and multimedia content are very important to consumers. Together with real we want to streamline the exchange of product information with manufacturers.”

Brands can deliver product content to Icecat to ensure that real.digital always has access to complete and up-to-date data.

Manufacturer’s content should meet the following requirements of real.digital:

• Product identifiers such as GTIN (i.e., EAN bar code), manufacturer part number and categorization
• High-resolution JPG-images (min 2000×2000 pix, but the bigger the better, for wide screens in the digital store) @ 300dpi for the zoom function
• One main image and at least 2 secondary images
• A unique product name of 50-75 characters length for SEO, short description, long description
• Expressive marketing text of at least 150 characters
• Important product features as Bullet Points for convincing Reasons to Buy
• PDFs (product brochure and manuals)
• EU product fiche and energy label in all products where this is mandatory

real.digital currently integrates all product content assets provided by Icecat and is improving the integration of multimedia content such as Videos, 3D Tours and Reasons to Buy.

If you would like to receive more information regarding the delivery of product data to real.digital, don’t hesitate to contact us:

For more information about real, please visit its website

Sources:

¹https://www.real.de/nc/unternehmen/presse/pressemitteilung/pressemitteilungen/detail/zufriedene-haendler-nach-100-tagen-realde/

Katharina Simon