How to Improve eCommerce Product Catalog Management

Here, we’ll take a look at some tips for eCommerce product catalog management to help you overcome common eCommerce challenges and increase sales.

So, let’s get started:

Best practices for eCommerce product catalog management

The first step to improvement is understanding the basics of eCommerce product catalog management best practices:

• Ensure you always present quality product information to customers to build trust
• Use tagging alongside customer-centric categories to enable smart browsing capabilities
• Map out your catalog management process to maintain consistency across all stakeholders
• Use cataloging to simplify upsells and cross-selling related items or present alternative products when an item is out of stock
• Maintain an optimized, scalable database with consistent naming methods and role-based authorization
• Use an effective product information management (PIM) tool that works seamlessly with your tech stack as well as your ERP
• Adopt personalization into your eCommerce product catalog for existing customers to leverage their history, which in turn encourages future sales
• Leverage effective catalog cloning and create localized variants. Doing so will mean so your product catalog matches the requirements of each sales channel and help expand your reach

Overall, following these best practices will improve workflow while also ensuring your product catalog is optimized for an improved user experience.

Assess product data relevancy and credibility

For most businesses, nothing is worse for product catalog management than low-quality incomplete product information. Likewise, insufficient data poses risks that infringe on your eCommerce strategy, as well as the ability to enhance it.

The only way to keep product information reliable in terms of quality is to collect up-to-date information in a consistent fashion. In other words, it’s the best way to build trust and create repeat customer purchases.

So, when customers see the information they need, they make decisions on the spot. All in all, that means fewer abandoned carts, more conversions, and increased customer retention.

Specify attributes and create clear categories

Defining categories makes it easier for customers to find what they need and it also improves efficiencies in product additions. Aside from clear, easy-to-understand categorization, you must include all relevant attributes, such as:

• Product size and proper sizing tips
• Color
• Price
• Special attributes such as dimensions
• Limitations or prerequisites to use the product
• Compatibility with other products

Information should be relevant and answer the logical questions a customer might have prior to making a purchase. In addition, it should be readily available to the customer within seconds.

Above all, always keep in mind how products fit into other categories when it comes to product catalog management. Avoid trying to fit a product into a category just for the sake of increasing its profile. Therefore, categories should always relate directly to the product in a logical way.

For example, the more products you have, the more important categories become to improving user experience.

Consider varied use of physical and digital catalogs

How customers use physical and digital catalogs varies. Most importantly, you should consider the variances and tailor each type of catalog so that it aligns with customer needs. That is to say, it makes a world of difference to how customers view your products. The goal is to carry them forward in their decision-making process through whichever channels are at your disposal.

Use personalization

Personalization enables each customer to enjoy an individual shopping experience based on past behavior.

Firstly, when you track behavior, you learn more about a customer’s needs and their pain points. Secondly, you understand the types of products suited to their leg of the customer journey.

In addition, successful personalization enables you to show customers things they never considered, like how a certain piece of clothing might go with a recent purchase, or how an accessory might enhance their enjoyment of something like a computer, or type of software. Displaying this sort of knowledge will go a long way in making you the go-retailer in your niche.

In short, it all depends on what you sell, how your products work together, and how they might appeal to different audiences around the globe. Segmentation rules in catalog personalization enable you to create a flawless customer experience for effortless shopping and more conversions.

Invest in the right PIM platform

A Product Information Management software or PIM manages product data. Moreover, the software eases the challenges of increasingly complex data related to your product range. PIMs provide the easiest way to improve product management with the following capabilities:

• Importing data and assets in different formats and from different systems
• Avoiding discrepancies, errors, or contradictions in product data
• Simplified changes to product information
• Automates complex attribute tables for technical product catalogs so customers make informed purchases
• Meeting the specific needs of various marketplaces
• Managing different types of catalogs such as online vs physical
• Distributing product information across various sales channels or geo-locations
• Maintaining consistent data to meet regulatory restrictions

The right PIM platform enables you to manage all product-related data. This includes ‘basic’ product data (such as SKUs) to more effective categorization (technical information and marketing data).

Overall, proper eCommerce product catalog management will improve customer relationships while increasing sales. If you’d like to learn more about the steps you can take to increase efficiencies in the way you manage products, visit our page specifically on catalogs.

For a more in-depth walkthrough on how a PIM platform can help, click below for our free whitepaper.