E-commerce and retail industries have seen a dramatic change in their customers’ purchase behavior in the wake of the pandemic. The pandemic has accelerated digital transformation, and there has been an evident increase in retail sales growth by 45% from 2020 to 2021.
Today’s prevailing conditions have permanently created the need for small, medium, and large-sized online businesses to deliver the best shopping experience to customers through innovations, customizations, and attractive storefronts.
What are product catalogs?
An e-catalog or paper catalog holds the complete information of the products being sold in the retail market or through ecommerce websites. The digital catalog consists of product titles, descriptions, category, Stock Keeping Unit (SKU), brand name, minimum price value, and other key attributes such as color, size, images, product types, etc.,
It is difficult to sell products online without proper, information-rich product catalogs. An appropriate strategic approach to managing product catalogs is necessary to sell your products to targeted customers.
Importance of ecommerce product catalog management
A well-organized and conceptually categorized storefront has the power to attract more customers to your online store with the additional benefit of easy navigation. But what anchors the customers to spend more time shopping? The credit goes to product catalogs.
A perfectly structured and designed product catalog can influence the purchasing decision of a store visitor by providing vital information and appealing digital assets.
In short, a product catalog helps in driving casual browsers towards conversions. Hence, your business should have well-managed product catalogs that ensure effortless product discoverability to enhance store credibility.
Challenges faced by retailers in managing catalogs
Product catalog management is essential for retailers to cater to increasing customer demands and frequently upgrade their product catalogs with top trending products in the market. For this, robust catalog management is essential, but it can be time-consuming and mundane when done manually.
Here are some of the challenges retailers face:
- .Maintaining data accuracy throughout the catalog.
- Frequently updating product catalog across multiple channels.
- Managing different catalog formats for various sales channels.
- Listing products under appropriate categories that impact product discoverability.
- Maintaining rich Metadata for products on a large scale.
- Balancing the product demand and supply due to lack of inventory insights.
Retails can easily overcome these challenges by creating perfectly structured product catalogs that are flexible enough to comply with multiple platform formats.
How to structure your product catalogs?
Building a well-organized taxonomy structure for your catalog is as important as taking the right product data to customers through accurate product classification on category and subcategory level. Let’s look at the three different catalog models.
Single-path
The single-path product catalogs come as a tree-like structure. The basic model displays each product or category under one parent category.
Multi-path
The multi-path catalog is a more flexible approach and allows customers to reach their products through multiple filtering. In this model, each product has multiple parent categories.
Custom catalog
Custom catalogs are complex structured models that can be defined, organized, and tailored as a separate catalog to the specific need of a site user.
A well-structured product catalog can showcase products in the top search result, drive more traffic and lead customers towards the right products. To attain the full benefit of a well-managed product catalog here is how to structure your SEO-friendly product catalog.
- Follow a consistent content schema structure suitable for search engines.
- Include unique product titles, descriptions with accurate and informative product details.
- Redirect discontinued product links to the same product category.
- Include sellers and buyers ratings and reviews that prompt customers towards purchasing.
- Infuse search-related keywords into the product content and maintain unique texts as much as possible.
How can you manage your product catalogs efficiently?
Following the right digital catalog management strategy will result in an optimized online store free of inconsistent and messy product data that could directly impact the operational benefits, increased business revenue, brand identity, and customer experience.
Here are some of the best practices that can improve the quality of your product catalogs effectively.
- Ensure your product information is free of low quality and redundant data to maintain the relevancy and credibility of the product catalog.
- Make sure your digital catalog showcases accurate categorization and enriched products attributes.
- Fine-tune your online catalog for up-selling and cross-selling features to help customers make better decisions.
- Personalize and segment the product catalogs for a seamless customer experience suitable for different audiences across all touchpoints.
Conclusion
Product catalog management goes beyond organizing and managing the products across multiple sales channels. Regular updates, constant analysis of the catalog content, customer needs, and market analysis are required.
An efficient product catalog management solution can save time and effort while allowing you to spend your valuable time on the benefit of online business. If you are looking for catalog management services, feel free to get in touch with us.
