Master eCommerce Catalog Management With Our In-Depth Guide

Not unlike brick-and-mortar stores that used to be the only way to do your shopping, digital storefronts need to be easy and intuitive to navigate. Shoppers need to be able to find what they’re looking for without hassle and their whole experience must be as smooth as possible. This is where eCommerce catalog management makes all the difference.

Just like physical stores, their eCommerce counterparts rely on catalogs to streamline the shopping process. However, this process in online shops is far more complex than keeping a ledger ever was or will be.
This guide will help you navigate the inherent complexities of eCommerce product catalog management and give you a clear overview of what it entails and how to manage your eCommerce catalogs efficiently. There’s much to cover here, but by the end of this read, you should feel confident about managing a catalog all by yourself, or with outside help.

What Is Catalog Management in E-Commerce?

eCommerce catalog management is the user-first approach to consistently displaying correct and detailed product information, as well as updating product databases in real time. In other words, catalog management is the process of ensuring your entire inventory is organized and structured in such a way that users are always presented with precisely the items they are looking for. 

To the user, a properly managed catalog of products appears as a well-organized system that can be filtered, searched, and otherwise influenced to pinpoint the product they’re looking for.
Take Amazon, for example. It’s the pinnacle of eCommerce sites for more than a single reason, one of which is an incredibly accurate and structured catalog of every single product in the store. Scrolling down a product page, you’ll eventually reach a table of products similar to the one you’re looking at right now. It will allow you to compare products according to their specifications, find better alternatives, and assist your discovery. Here’s what you might find if you look at the AirPods page:

Try to imagine an eCommerce store without proper catalog management that relies on categories and tags. Amazon wouldn’t be able to associate AirPods with AirPods Max. 

eCommerce catalog management is all about staying on top of all changes to the inventory while providing the absolute maximum in details so that the buyers can find what they’re looking for.

How to Create an eCommerce Catalog?

Since the main focus of eCommerce catalog management is a proper structure and completeness of data, the same values can be applied when creating a catalog from the ground up. Before you proceed to create an eCommerce catalog, it’s best to gather and structure all the data you’d like to include in the catalog. 

Now is the time to think about product variants, categories, labels, and tags. It’s also an excellent opportunity to decide on the layout of your catalog.

While creating and managing a catalog manually is technically possible, it’s also a terrible waste of time given how many practical and streamlined eCommerce catalog management solutions there are.

Catalog makers such as Publitas or Flipsnack can take care of the entire process for you. They’re also decent solutions for small businesses as they’re neither expensive nor time-consuming to use.

How Do You Manage a Product Catalog?

Depending on the scale of your business, it can be anyone from the store owner to a team of people who are updating the product database across a variety of channels and stores. Most eCommerce stores will, at one time or another, grow out of a single person’s ability to manage the entire catalog regardless of the software they’re using. 

That’s why there are people you can hire to fill this crucial role within the company. Dedicated eCommerce managers are responsible and accountable for the development, management, and optimization of product catalogs. That includes adding new products, removing “sold out” or discontinued products, enhancing product descriptions, and so on. 

Optimizing existing systems, managing eCommerce reports and dashboards, and reviewing and testing product recommendations are all part of an eCommerce manager’s work day. Naturally, such jobs appeal the most to highly organized individuals with a penchant for creating order and following strict procedures and guidelines. They should also have a background in eCommerce tools such as Shopify and are proficient in HTML, CRMs, and other web technologies.

An eCommerce catalog manager can significantly reduce the overheads of running an eCommerce store by taking on one of the main responsibilities in this type of business.

Do You Need a Product Catalog Manager?

Depending on how fast and how broadly you expect your business to grow, you might be better off hiring an eCommerce catalog manager from the get-go.

As previously stated, most eCommerce businesses face rapid expansion that can get out of hand without proper processes and systems in place. For the sake of scalability and stability of your business, you might want to consider filling the position of eCommerce manager early on.

The pros far outweigh the single con in this scenario — you have one additional employee on your payroll. In return, you have the peace of mind that the most important process in your store, i.e., eCommerce catalog management, is being carried out diligently and dutifully.

Product Catalog Management: Best Practices

Now, on to eCommerce catalog management itself. There are several tried and true methods of keeping your catalog optimized and up-to-date. With these best practices in mind, you will have no problem scaling your operation when the time comes. Staying on top of all the daily changes should also be a non-issue with a couple of tricks up your sleeve.

Organize Your Catalog Management Process

Mapping your eCommerce catalog management process is the crucial first step before you get to work on anything else. The reason for that is quite simple — catalog management is complex enough for any single person to stay on top of even without all the constant changes and updates.

With a system as convoluted and complex as eCommerce catalogs are, there’s no winging it. You can’t improvise every time an update to the catalog is required, the mess would be incredible. You need to have a clearly laid out plan every step of the way. Why are you making changes to the product database? When? How? Who else needs to be up to speed on the latest changes?

More often than not, you won’t have just one person managing the catalog. Every stakeholder needs to be aware of all the changes and know how to make them without disrupting the workflow. 

It’s not just about making changes to the catalog, however — organizing and mapping the management process is all about having strict procedures in place whatever it is you’re doing.

Make eCommerce catalog management guidelines, train everyone with access to catalogs to follow these guidelines, and ensure that they cover every possible scenario. It should explain how to add new products, update existing ones, how to use product management software, etc.
The best solution is to use a product information management (PIM) system to standardize all operations across all sales channels. In conjunction with detailed guidelines, you’ll have a perfectly mapped out process that will be flexible enough to expand whenever you need it to.

Help Your Visitors Find What They Need: Proper Data Structuring and Filtering

Filters are at the heart of every successful eCommerce store. They are the number one facilitator of excellent user experience, accurate navigation, and confidence to buy. Thanks to filters, your customers will be able to traverse the massive landscape that is your inventory and find what they’re looking for without fault. 

For the filters to make any sense, however, all of the product data in your database needs to be structured and categorized properly. Labeling of all the products in your inventory needs to be intelligent, thoughtful, and extremely detailed. You need to be able to anticipate user intent, understand their motives to search for a certain product, and then label all your products accordingly.

Take a blow dryer for example. If you were to categorize it too specifically, without any thought given to how someone might actually search for it, you’d miss all the customers typing in “hair dryer” and they’ll go someplace else. It’s a banal example but paints a correct picture regarding user intent and search patterns.

Make sure to anticipate and capture every user query. It will help users find what they’re looking for and improve SEO at the same time.

Don’t Be Scarce on Product Information: Provide Quality Product Descriptions for the Users

If there’s one thing that can damage your bottom line, it’s a lackluster product description. When the description is lacking or otherwise incorrect, the number of returned items increases, creating a case of reverse revenue — a constant stream of reimbursements that hurts your profits and makes forecasting earnings near impossible.

Product descriptions are at the core of successful eCommerce catalog management. When it comes to descriptions “the more the merrier” rule applies. There’s no such thing as too much information — every bit of data that you provide will give you an edge over your competition.
Product description can include product variants and many other pieces of information:

• Short explanation or definition
• Brand
• Colors
• Sizes
• Specifications
• Images
• Bundles.

The more elaborate the product page, the better. The thing is, few people will actually bother reading the full content of a product page. However, you can’t anticipate what individual customers will be on the lookout for — some want technical details, others care about high-quality mages of a product. Then there are those who rely solely on social proof, so they’ll mostly be interested in ratings, comments, and other people’s experiences with the product.

Your product descriptions need to capture every individual’s expectations regarding what they’d like to see before adding an item to the cart. That way, they’ll feel confident about buying an item from you and receive precisely what they were looking for, thus building brand safety and cutting back on item returns.

Upsell & Cross-sell: Suggest Additional Products that Go Along with This Purchase

Upselling and cross-selling are cornerstones of any eCommerce business. Upselling means offering the customer a more expensive or premium version of the product, while cross-selling is all about sweetening the deal with extra items the customer might need, but doesn’t realize yet.

Say you’re browsing an eCommerce store for a Dell laptop. In that case, upselling would mean suggesting a newer generation laptop, usually (but not necessarily) from the same manufacturer, while cross-selling you a bag for your new laptop or maybe a mouse to make using your new device easier.

Offering alternate or similar products to your customers has been a staple of every modern eCommerce store for quite some time now. Not having it yourself means losing out on valuable income and offering a less fulfilling service than your competitors.

eCommerce catalog management relies on the concept of collaborative filtering to suggest additional products based on similarities between users and items they’ve purchased in the past. In essence, it’s a more advanced form of content-based filters that are too rigid for this particular purpose.

By observing past customer behavior, collaborative filtering can induce what a useful suggestion is for other customers as well.

Freshness Factor: Update the Product Database Regularly

Ultimately, no matter how detailed your eCommerce catalog management is, it’s not going to work unless you’re failing to update product databases as changes happen.

Of course, real-time updates to databases like MySQL are best left to software to handle. That’s where PIMs come into the picture. However, if more than a single person is accessing product databases regularly, you should still have clear guidelines in place regarding the roles and authorizations required to make any changes to the databases.

It must be clear who gets to update product bases and how.

Finally: Set Up Product Catalog the Right Way

Setting up a product catalog the right way means conforming to all the industry best practices and never losing sight of what users would want. There’s no better way to approach eCommerce catalog management than to continuously deliver the utmost quality and convenience for the buyers. 

Think navigation, detailed product information, cross-selling, and ease of access. If there’s something that you personally find convenient and practical when buying products from eCommerce stores, then your catalog ought to have it.

Above all, have a process in place that you and other people who have access to the catalog should follow to ensure maximum cooperation between back-end data and front-end user experience.

eCommerce Development: Find a Trusted Partner

If you need help to build your eCommerce shop, whether it’s web design, product and inventory management, analytics and reporting or even search engine optimization (SEO) – Concise Studio has a solution for you. 

Remember: to run a reputable and reliable eCommerce business that users will want to revisit for all their future purposes, you need a top notch eCommerce website, looking professional and running smoothly. 
Send us a message and we will gladly help you make your business venture a successful one.