5 good reasons for a DAM system in your web shop

An online shop is a great addition to brick-and-mortar retail, and not just these days. Your shop is open 24 hours, 365 days a year and thus reaches a wider audience. But just like in stationary retail, the design plays a decisive role for your sales. If you can't see a product for yourself on site, you need even more informative product images or videos. In the best case, these can also be used for marketing campaigns and on your social media channels, as well as for print advertising if necessary. So that you don't lose track of your media and their different versions, including licences, digital asset management is not only particularly helpful, but is almost part of the basic equipment for every web shop.

You can also read about good reasons for a shop here: CREATING A SUCCESSFUL WEBSHOP

Often, several people in a company edit and manage pictures, videos, audio files or other media. Each person has his or her own system for naming and saving them, even if they have access to a central file server. In addition, there are new employees who cannot easily find their way around, who first have to familiarise themselves with the system and who often have different versions of one and the same medium.

The chaos is perfect and a lot of working time is lost sorting it out again - and at regular intervals.

A digital asset management system (DAM) uses intelligent search filters with categories and metadata that you create yourself beforehand and can change at any time. This way you always have everything in view and no file gets lost in the chaos of folders. The DAM system stores all files centrally in one place, manages them and makes them available to users. These can be detached from the classic folder structure. Metadata and intelligent search functions are used. This information is stored on the files in the DAM system. With some DAM systems, images of the same product can be found more easily using the similarity search. 

No matter whether you want to find the latest version of a file, a specific format or an exact size: with the intelligent search of the DAM system, the desired variants of the file you are looking for are always displayed quickly and easily. You can also send, export or download these directly and conveniently.

It often takes several steps to integrate an image into your webshop. The photographer creates several photos of a product, then sends them to your marketing team, which selects the suitable images and releases them for further processing. This now goes back again by email... A back and forth until the final version is ready.

With a DAM system, the photographer can upload the images directly for approval. Thanks to a note function, you can now attach the desired changes to the selected files. Afterwards, article numbers, metadata and categories can be directly assigned to the images. The responsible e-commerce employee is automatically informed by the DAM system. He marks the images that are to be processed further. 

Afterwards, you only release your favourites and then receive them back as the latest version of your original files. The images can now be saved in different sizes and versions, sent and used on your various channels.

This simplifies workflows considerably, saves working time and gives you full transparency and control over your media and their processes at all times. Editing and correction loops can be shortened enormously. Nothing can get lost, because in your DAM you can restore older versions from the archive at any time.

In an online shop, different media from different sources are often used. In your DAM system, you can easily manage the licence rights of your media. Simply store the corresponding licences for each medium and the licence agreement is automatically linked to the corresponding image file and read out via text recognition. The DAM system automatically warns you when licence rights expire or have already expired. This ensures that licences are respected. This saves you expensive legal disputes.

As an admin, you can grant access rights and also restrict them to a limited period of time. Which department has access to which areas? You can define anew for each project which supplier or partner has access to which media and for how long.

Only you as an admin have full access control over everything. By defining access rights, your sensitive company data is always optimally protected. Each user gets his or her own password and is restricted by you to defined areas and, if necessary, for a limited period of time.

Of course, every DAM system can also be personalised. This means you can add logos, watermarks and your own branding. In this way, your DAM system adapts perfectly to your company and also has a professional and value-enhancing effect on external parties.

In addition, most DAM systems have several languages. This facilitates cooperation with international partners, who thus always receive the most up-to-date media versions and product descriptions. Search filters, categories and metadata are automatically adapted to the respective language.

What else a DAM system can do, we have summarised for you here: "What is Digital Asset Management (DAM/MAM)?"