April 28, 2020 
It is obvious that catalog management plays a vital role in today’s booming eCommerce business sector across the globe.
It is a fact that customer’s preference for online retail shops over physical stores has been fast-growing and in such a competitive market, efficient product catalog management can by no means be downplayed.
Customers being choosy, demands highly rich, informative and accurate product information before they purchase online.
Well managed product catalogs are the first step to conversion in online retailing. It helps consumers to make their buying decisions.
What is product catalog management?
In brief, product catalog management is the strategy of managing the product data, efficiently across all the sales channels.
It includes 3 processes:
- Organizing product information
- Standardizing the catalog data
- Publishing the product data across all the communication channels, visible to customers
Product catalog management substitutes physical product demos, thus, helps quick and detailed product display across online sales channels.
Hurdles in product catalog management
Though by text definitions, the process of catalog management seems easy, in reality, to reach a well-organized catalog, multiple hurdles are to be crossed. Most online retailers sell the product on multiple channels, today. Each of these vendor websites may have a different format of product display.
This makes catalog management a hard task as for each vendor a different catalog is to be prepared. Another hurdle in product catalog management is selling the same product at multiple prices, depending on who is buying it. In B2B selling various buyers may be offered various prices for the same product.
Why catalog management is important
Let’s see in brief, the importance of product catalog management in online retailing.
Accuracy of Data
Product catalog management is inevitable to maintain an accurate database of products, price and product details. Well managed catalogs serve as the backbone to the retail business and establish easy access to the products for buyers. Frequent catalog management helps retailers to keep all the data accurate across all the selling points.
Growth Management
The practice of catalog management helps to manage business growth. Every retail seller tries to update and grow the product list as frequently as possible. With and effective catalog management system, it is easy to include new product database into existing channels and initiate quick sales. It also helps business growth by offering consumers a better buying experience.
Quality Product Data
Product catalog management is an absolute necessity to offer your buyers with quality product data. In such a highly competitive market, the quality of products and quality of product data is important to bring in new customers and satisfy retained buyers. Potential customers may become your regular buyers only when your product data is of great accuracy.
Create Brand Trust
A well organized and accurate product catalog helps with brand trust. In online selling, the face of sales platforms is the visible product catalog. people enter a store through product data and value a retailer by the ease of access to the data and quick purchase.
Easy Categorization
catalog management helps with the easy categorization of products. It offers a highly accurate filtering option to buyers. When your products are tagged and categorized, chances are less that potential customers miss it. Categorization and tagging help you with displaying your products to buyers on materials, colors, make and many other attributes.
Suggested Products
Catalog management helps the retailers to suggest related or alternative products to customers. It increases the chances of not losing a customer because the product variant is out of stock. Also, when you offer related or alternative products, the chance of extra conversions is high.
Improved customer experience
The prime purpose of the well-managed product catalog is to provide excellent customer experience to all visitors. Easy access to products, fast detailing, advanced product imagery, etc.make a catalog an excellent tool to help customers to buy fast and easy. When your products are searchable and easy to locate, buyers can quickly land into the exact product they are looking for.
Tips on Better Catalog Management
Effective catalog management requires a lot of planning and a strategic approach. These tips help you to have an effective product catalog for your online retail business.
- Comprehensive information: Always include comprehensive data of all your products in the catalog.
- Updated information: Always make sure that the product information is up to date and accurate, so that customers may develop trust towards your business and products.
- Quality illustrations: The product catalog is the face of your business in external selling channels. Using high-quality visuals and illustrations of products and accessories helps buyers to know the product in detail also, to make a quick buying decision.
- Do not limit attributes: include maximum attributes to each product in the catalog, so that buyers can easily access the exact product they are looking for.
