Have you ever seen a caterpillar? You must have! But you must not have seen a caterpillar with misaligned legs. Such a caterpillar with misaligned legs will look scarier and uglier. Despite the fact, no one likes caterpillars in their regular shape. But catalogs are in a better position if they are positioned in an orderly manner. Enough of this caterpillar analogy!

Consumers abhor mismanaged catalogs. Such catalogs hush away the customers. In the context of eCommerce, catalogs ought to be more functional than fashionable. The success of your store requires management of your products, expansion of your products line, fetching the right customers and spending minimal time managing your inventory. 

Catalog Management 

In eCommerce, Catalog management refers to a strategic process of streamlining and organising high-quality and consistent product details across channels. It helps customers to track inventory and products across all channels. 

It makes the user’s experience comfortable and smooth. Product catalogs include information like prices, sizes, colours, materials etc. 

Catalog eases the complexities of business operation and smartly facilitates the workflow. Let us take a read of the best practices for the effective management of the products’ catalog to increase sales and smooth inventory management. 

Map the Process

With multiple stakeholders, your eCommerce product catalog may face multiple challenges. Mapping out the catalog management process can overcome such challenges. You must take care of these variables: 

• Which of the portions of the catalog are touched by the stakeholders?
• Which customers are affected by the changes?
• What are the changes that affect them? 

Such inquiry will help you in understanding the steps you need to take in the whole process. You will be able to optimise the catalog management process keeping in mind the stakeholder’s concerns.

Quality Product Information

Building the trust of your visitors is the first step. In order to make them comfortable buying from your store, you will need to provide comprehensive and accurate information about your products. You will succeed in building the trust of your customers if you provide accurate and complete information. While giving information, you need to focus on these things: 

• Comprehensive Information: You need to include every significant and minor detail about the product. Such information includes videos, images, technical attributes, product usage combinations and units of measurement. The information should be clear and easy to navigate.
• Update Information: Consumers care about every minor detail. If any of the information is outdated, they will quit visiting your store. You need to keep information about every product up-to-date. You can either hire a responsible person or introduce your website tools that automatically update the descriptions. 

Tags and Categorization

Assist your customers to browse through your product catalog by providing them options like refine, filter and sort product information. You can achieve it by tagging and categorising all of your products. Sort the categories from the customer’s perspective. You must not limit the search to colour and size only. Here are some effective tips you can apply:

• Product Tags: Product tags must be consistent throughout the catalog. 
• Measurement Units: Use either centimetres or inches. Do not use both of them to prevent mixup. 
• Specific Attributes: Each product must display particular attributes. For an easy and quick search, make sure that you include additional and relevant attributes.

Cross-Sell and Upsell

Another compelling strategy to boost up your sales is cross-selling and upselling. Suggest relevant products on the product page. For example, your product page must offer options like beef burgers on the product page of a chicken burger. It will be an appropriate cross-selling. 

Suggesting options like fries and drinks on the product page of the chicken burgers will fall under the upselling. You must have noticed suggestions like a gaming mouse and keyboard while buying a gaming laptop. These are very compelling strategies to uplift your sales. 

Handle Return Rates

Improper categorising is one of the issues in elevating the curve of return rates. The misinformation and poor information will lose your brand image. Your customers will lose trust in your brand. You must be very clear and accurate about the product information. 

Another reason is mistakenly cancelling out the order. Sometimes, customers cancel out the order rather than checking out by mistake. In this process, they lose out on all selected products. Due to the huge catalog, they find it tiresome to search the products again. Customers do not like such experiences. The market of eCommerce provides you plugins like restore cancelled orders in Magento 2 to counter such issues. 

Manage Database

eCommerce catalog management refers to information management. Maintaining the database plays a vital role in optimising the catalog. Here are some tips in order to manage the database effectively: 

• Single Database: Your store must not offer multiple databases. Multiple databases will only create a fuss, and it will rattle the head of the customer. Deal your products with a single product catalog database. 
• Scalability: The scalability of your product is related to the scalability of your product catalog database. Your database must be scalable enough to allow new entries and relevant changes. It will help you grow your business. 
• Role and Authorisation: By defining the roles and authorisation, stakeholders will know their responsibilities and the changes they are allowed to make. It will also help you maintain and safeguard data quality and redundancy. 

Avoid SEO Problems

Using the same content for multiple products or the description manufacturer is using on another website negatively affects the SEO of your website. Sometimes, the parent and its subcategory offer the same product resulting from two different paths. In order to prevent the penalty from Google, you must follow these instructions: 

• Do not steal content from other stores and websites. Create your original content to prevent the strikes of Google. Original content will improve your brand image. 
• Use canonical tags in the <head> section of the code to solve multiple pages issues. 

B2B Product Catalog

A B2B business offers an extra level of complexity. Your product pricing can differ per ordering situation and customer. You must see if your store can control the price of the products. Check if your catalog can hide, show or offer discounts to different users.

Such qualities of your B2B catalog will boost up your sales. You can enhance your website through plugins like WooCommerce tiered pricing and b2b wholesale module. Invest today, earn today. 

Final Words

Catalog management is vital in boosting up your sales. So, do not be lazy and apply these tips to your store. Keep improving the user experience for mutual success. 

Good Luck!