The product catalog is one of the best-boosting factors for businesses to get sales. Many people think that product catalogs are not of the latest trend, but it is not true. Even now customers look for a product catalog to know what products or services you provide and some may have along with pricing. Print catalogs are in place with many businesses, but customers are much fond of e-catalogs and considered one of the best ways to reach new shoppers.
For a better customer experience and for those who cannot visit your store, e-catalogs are the best source of sharing your product/service information. But creating an online catalog is not a cool process; to make it so, you need a tool like product information management (PIM).
Let us see the benefits of having a product catalog at first and then get into creating a product catalog.
Advantages of displaying a product e-catalog
- It is cost-effective when compared to print product catalogs
- It can be launched superfast, so you do not miss out on any potential sale
- No need of worrying about the spacing issue to display information on all products
- You can easily get to know customer behavior analysis and display products accordingly
- Simultaneous distribution of product information across sales channels and social networks
- You can easily reach a wide range of audience and capture new markets
- E-catalogs provide great interaction with your customers
- It provides more agile and powerful customer service
- You can change product information anytime and avoid customers knowing your mistakes
- It offers omnichannel and flexible marketing which leads to exceptional sales conversions
What to do before you create an online/e-catalog?
Be it creating a new e-catalog or modifying/enhancing the existing one, from this blog you can learn how to develop it and make sure it is in line with the objectives of your organization. Before you begin with your online catalog design, understand these basics that get you the right product catalog designed.
- What purpose motivates you towards creating an online catalog?
- Will you maintain both paper and e-catalog or just go with only an online catalog?
- What type of responses do you expect from your customers?
- Is your focus on improving brand image or sales?
Therefore, it is ideal to know who your target audience is, get good product catalog management software like CMS, and equip with catalog design tools like PIM.
Why need good product catalog management?
Any shopper would look for maximum real-time information about a product they purchase online since they expect the same experience as to how they shop in stores knowing the look and feel of the product they use. Therefore, they assume the product like how it appears in the e-catalog.
The biggest challenge that e-commerce retailers face is managing data of all products, providing it with a timely update and distributing it to different channels right from your website to mobile apps, social media and to online market places such as Amazon, Walmart, etc. and finally, to your product catalog too.
Since it is a hectic task for online retailers to provide up-to-date information about their products to customers, the need for product information management comes in place.
With PIM the practice of developing and maintaining a product catalog is made easy and you can effortlessly show your customers complete product information through your online catalog.
Generally, product catalog management consists of
- Empowering brand trust by showcasing high-quality and accurate product information
- Tagging and segregating your products in the form of a digital catalog
- Mapping highly viewed products as per customer’s preference, so they see relevant and suggested products in any of their searches
- Producing sales-specific product catalogs such as press outreach, retail, and wholesale
- Giving equal weightage to online and offline catalogs and balancing them as per requirements
- Controlling the master database of your product information; therefore keeping away from dependency
Ideally, choosing the best PIM software can get you all done within a jiffy and let you focus on your primary goals and achieve organizational objectives.
Designing an online product catalog with PIM
- First know that your product catalog consists of three elements as Product Data, Images, and Catalog layout.
- The product data should be complete and updated to the latest; therefore, it is ready to import from your PIM.
- Images should be added to your product information and attached as assets to products in your product information management tool.
- Catalog layout is something you can decide between developing from scratch, proceeding with an online template, or following what your PIM tool offers you.
- Once you are good to go with the elements, now here comes the product selection. A product catalog does not necessarily have every product that is on offer; therefore, you should select the list of products to show your customers according to their favorites.
- Next step is designing your catalog. To design your catalog, you can either hire a designer to create a fresh layout and format from the scratch; otherwise you can prefer an online template design or go with the template that your PIM tool offers. Whichever you select, make sure that the layout is customizable and allows you to make changes in the future.
- Further optimizing your product data plays an important role. You should have accurate, up-to-date and consistent data and get it optimized in your PIM.
- Now as the next step, connect your catalog with different platforms and channels. This requires your end-to-end product information to be updated since customers of a wide range will browse through your e-catalog and missing out any information or showing any differences in catalog display can lead to unnecessary confusion and show the impact on your brand image.
- As the last step, export your catalog for offline use. Apart from displaying your catalog online, keep some physical copies, offline catalogs, and sell sheets, though digital is in place.
Conclusion
A PIM tool lets you handpick your products and show them online to know the product availability to your target customers. A great PIM tool allows you to do so much more than just serving the purpose of creating online product catalogs.
Author Bio
Sandeep Agarwal
Sandeep holds the position of CEO at Credencys Solutions – a digital platform development company. He has more than two decades of experience in creating world-class teams and driving innovation through cutting edge products. With a motto of ‘Go Digital,’ Sandeep delivers an Extraordinary Customer Experience to its every client.
