If you were to ask, ‘What is that one thing online retailers constantly worry about?’, it would be gaining and retaining customers. In a world where customers are well-educated, tech-savvy, experienced shoppers, meeting their high expectations is a daunting task. They won’t compromise on either quality or price. Not to mention the problem of choice aplenty; there are alternatives for everything. How can online sellers get customers’ attention, then? Through quality products? Affordable prices? Discounts? Each plays its part, but nothing is as critical as customer experience.
When talking about customer experience, the way in which e-retailers list products on their websites becomes crucial. The process of systematically listing product information online is called e-commerce catalog management. If done poorly, it can dent business growth and result in the loss of customers.
What Is So Crucial About E-Commerce Catalog Management?
Customers searching for a product online want accurate and detailed information such as name, description, brand, supplier, availability, price, etc. They assess the product based on the quality of data provided. If these customers don’t find the details they are looking for, or worse, find inaccurate information, such as misspelled words, the credibility of that online seller goes down instantly. Efficient e-commerce catalog management is required to display elaborate, consistent and accurate product information across the website, to make sure that customers don’t leave disappointed.
There is another important purpose that e-commerce catalog management serves. If products are incorrectly tagged or categorized, it may impact their discoverability. According to a 2018 study1 by Shopify, when customers searched for a product and were shown the right results, they were 1.8 times more likely to convert. If they were given inaccurate results, it would be a lost revenue opportunity. A good product catalog includes a lot of information that is required to categorize items correctly.
Challenges in E-Commerce Catalog Management
Building an effective e-commerce catalog is easier said than done. It entails a complex process which presents multiple challenges at every step. Let’s take a look at the top four challenges in catalog management:
Keeping Data Consistent and Accurate
For an online merchant, keeping product information in a standardized format that includes all the required details is a difficult but necessary task. Doing this for a large number of items manually, for example, using Excel sheets, may lead to inaccurate information, grammatical mistakes, missing attributes, etc. Suppliers often send imprecise and inconsistent product data to online sellers, which may not align with the format used by the sellers. Compiling that data along with other product content in order to make it consistent and accurate is one of the biggest challenges that e-retailers face today.
Selling Across Multiple Channels
Most merchants sell their products on multiple platforms such as Amazon, eBay and Alibaba. All e-commerce websites specify their own formats in which they require sellers to upload product information; a format that works for Amazon may not work for Alibaba. Merchants, thus, must adhere to multiple formats for every item while keeping the product information consistent across platforms. Doing so at-scale is difficult and time intensive, potentially leading to incoherent product content.
Updating Product Information and Expanding the Catalog
In a dynamic environment2 where attributes like price and availability keep changing, a messy product catalog makes it difficult to update product information. If sellers do not have the right tools, making mass changes manually is likely to result in errors. When online sellers are required to add more products or SKUs (stock keeping units) to an existing unorganized online catalog, they must either clean up the inconsistencies or live with the incoherent data. This makes catalog expansion quite a challenge and could ultimately be detrimental to growth.
Maintaining Data Quality for Merchandising
While trying to maintain consistency and accuracy in product content across multiple platforms, it is also important to provide high-quality data which meets the customers’ ever-increasing expectations. Customers not only want precise and detailed information about items but also expect it to be user-friendly and easy to understand. Poor product content negatively affects the effectiveness of promotional activities and merchandising initiatives like personalization and product recommendations. However, keeping up with customer expectations and consistently providing high-quality product data at scale can be challenging.
Boost Your Sales with Smart E-Commerce Catalog Management
To tackle these challenges, e-retailers should consider adopting Product Information Management (PIM) or e-commerce catalog management systems. Solutions like Plytix, Akeneo, and Edgenet are highly rated in this space. These online applications centralize, manage, and list product information across all sales channels. While this article provides a brief overview, we will delve deeper into overcoming catalog management challenges in an upcoming article.
In the meantime, remember that investing in organized and high-quality product content is invaluable, as every happy customer represents a significant sales opportunity. If you're looking to streamline your processes and boost customer satisfaction, that's where MarketStar comes in. We offer comprehensive solutions to drive growth and achieve your business goals, ensuring you stay ahead in the competitive market. Let us help you transform your business into a powerhouse of efficiency and success.
References:
https://www.shopify.com/enterprise/lessons-ecommerce-site-search
