Product Catalog management is the cornerstone of any e-commerce business. Quality product data plays a critical role in influencing buying decisions. Lack of product description or incomplete product information will drive consumers away from your site. Consumers today are knowledgeable about what they need and offering well-structured product data is important to succeed in e-commerce.
E-commerce product catalog management is a process where online product data is organized to ensure product information is consistent and easily available to shoppers across all sales channels. It involves defining, storing, retrieving and managing product data throughout the e-commerce process.

3 Reasons Why You Need Product Catalog Management for Your e-Commerce Business

1. Provide Accurate and Consistent Information

Consistency and accuracy in product data are the biggest requirements of e-commerce. Efficient product management lets you offer accurate, rich and customer-ready product information. You get well-defined and uniform set of product attributes like price, quantity, image and description, throughout your catalog. You also establish consistency in attribute naming conventions that include punctuation and letter case. For instance, ‘Color: Blue’ and ‘Color: blue’ can indicate two different attribute values and cause confusion.

2. Create an Omnichannel Shopping Experience

Consumers today have huge expectations from e-commerce brands. Buyers often switch between websites, mobile apps and marketplaces when shopping online, and they want a seamless experience across channels. Customers should be able to interact with your brand irrespective of the device or channel they use. Effective catalog management enables you to provide customers with an omnichannel experience. Consistent and accurate product data will ensure that consumers find the same product information whether they search on their mobiles, on a website or different social media channels.

3. Improve Customer Experience

In-depth product information will give your customers the confidence they need to make well-informed decisions about every purchase. Providing highly detailed product pages enhances their buying experience significantly, thereby improving the chances of repeat purchases.

The 8 Most Common Hurdles in e-Commerce Catalog Management

1. Who will Create and Load your Product Catalog Information?

There are a few options to create and load your product catalog information. You can handle it internally which can be a tedious task and will require a lot of human effort. You can outsource to an e-commerce catalog maintenance service. This can get expensive and increase your operational cost, especially in the beginning. Many e-commerce platforms allow you to install plug-ins for various vendors, this does automate the process considerably, but again is expensive.

2. Updating Catalog Content

For your catalog to be informative and profitable, it is necessary to update its content regularly. Customers expect brands to offer the latest product description on their online stores. Outdated product listings can eventually lead to customer dissatisfaction and loss of revenue. When you have an extensive product range on your e-commerce store, keeping the product data up to date can be very time-consuming. The frequent changes in product prices and availability make it difficult to maintain an updated e-commerce catalog. Many industries, especially IT, are spending a majority of their time in updating their catalogs, leaving hardly any time for other important activities that drive revenue and sales.

3. Multi-Channel Selling

A multichannel selling strategy is necessary to succeed in e-commerce. You have to tap audiences on marketplaces like Amazon, eBay etc. Social media channels like Facebook Store, Instagram Store etc. too, are huge markets.
Although selling across multiple channels increases sales, listing products on different marketplaces is challenging. Every channel has different requirements for listing products. They have a defined set of rules and categories that you must follow to sell on them. You have to tailor your product listing the way Amazon, eBay or Etsy demands. Creating and uploading products on Amazon, Etsy and eBay is often a long and arduous process.
Catalog export to these Marketplaces is your best bet to eliminate all the time-consuming work. VARStreet enables you to export your catalog to Marketplaces like Amazon, eBay etc., and offer not just a multichannel but an omnichannel experience to your customers.

4. Working with Supplier Data

The product catalog from suppliers is not always available in a standard format. At times it could be disorganised and not provide sufficient information. The taxonomy can be inconsistent or crucial product attributes could be missing. As a reseller, you cannot display such product listings on your online store. You need to fix these issues related to product information before you can use it for your e-commerce business.

5. Maintaining Consistency in Product Data

Maintaining data consistency is a challenge when selling on multiple platforms. The stock needs to be consistent on multiple channels. For example, a Dell laptop cannot display a quantity of 4 on your e-commerce store but 10 in stock on Amazon.
Inaccurate product data in the form of missing information, spelling mistakes and incorrect product descriptions is another possibility when you have a large number of SKUs in your catalog. This discrepancy in product data is damaging to your brand credibility and customer trust.

6. Expanding your Product Catalog

You will expand your product range as your business scales. Increasing product portfolio will be a challenge if your product catalog is not organized and riddled with inconsistencies and duplicate content.
Adding more SKUs will make it even more difficult to manage your e-commerce catalog. It is imperative to fix these catalog issues before you embark on a growth strategy.

7. Up sell or Cross sell Suggestions

Upselling and cross-selling are marketing strategies that increase order value and sales conversions. Implementing these marketing features in your catalog manually when you have a huge number of SKUs will be time-consuming and difficult. At the same time, you cannot ignore the impact that a lack of these features will have on your e-commerce business. You will need powerful software or a plug in to automate these features based on buyer behaviour.

8. Lack of Centralized Data Storage

Using multiple spreadsheets to manage the product catalog is an outdated method of working. Lack of centralized data management leads to discrepancies in the inventory information, making it difficult to search and update information on a specific product, leading to data inconsistency and loss of productivity.

Optimizing e-Commerce Product Catalog Management

To improve your catalog management process, it is critical you choose an e-commerce platform with a built-in catalog management software. A catalog management tool efficiently handles building, updating and managing the online catalog, ensuring accurate and up-to-date product information. This allows you to focus on activities that help grow your business.

Challenges from the Point of View of an IT Value Added Resellers

E-commerce is the need of the day, and every business needs to have an online presence and offer their customers an e-commerce store. In spite of this, the IT VAR industry is not quick to adapt to these changes, and the reason for this is a lack of an e-commerce platform that encompasses the unique business requirements of an IT VAR.
The IT value-added reseller (VAR) industry is continuously changing. Technology gets redundant, sometimes, weekly. Prices of products change regularly and hence it is of utmost importance to keep tabs on these changing prices and update them on your e-commerce store.
Another major issue for IT VARS is procuring rich content for their products. Taxonomy needs to be consistent, as does product description and technical specification.
Upselling and cross-selling features are intrinsic to the IT VAR business. The ability to bundle products, for example, a mouse and software with a laptop, is also an important feature. Offering services, like installation or training, with products, is another feature unique to the IT VAR industry and one that absolutely cannot be overlooked.
A VAR business is massively dependant on quoting, they often send quotes to their B2B or B2G customers. Efficient and seamless integration with the current software, ERP or CRM is integral to the VAR as well.
Many popular e-commerce platforms do not have the capacity to handle all these demands of the VAR industry and hence the VAR is limited in offering their current customers the convenience of an online store and also loses out on a huge audience that can be tapped.

VARStreet – Built for the IT and Office Supplies VAR

VARStreet is an e-commerce platform for IT and office supplies resellers. It eliminates your need to upload a product feed as it comes equipped with an aggregated catalog of 40+ IT and office supplies’ distributors. You do not require to spend on added plug-ins to power your site. All you need is an account with one or multiple distributors, and VARStreet pulls the entire product feed to your e-commerce store.
VARStreet’s aggregated catalog gives you real-time price and inventory updates. It is entirely automated, price updates reflect on your e-commerce store, and hence you do not have to worry about out-dated pricing and losing money in the bargain.
Our partnership with Etilize solves the problem of rich content. Top e-tailers spend over $150,000 a year to license rich product content to power their e-commerce websites. You get this free with a VARStreet subscription! VARStreet gives you rich product content for over 2 million IT and office supplies SKU’s. VARStreet uses Etilize’s categorization which makes your taxonomy standardized and universally accepted. Any update in Etilize for content is updated on VARStreet in real-time.
VARStreet also offers seamless integration with various ERPs, and in fact, has its own powerful quoting and CRM software.
Using VARStreet is the smart option if you are an IT or office supplies VAR. It is a one-stop-shop for all your e-commerce needs.
Click here if you’re an IT or office supplies reseller or want to become one and need more information on VARStreet.

Learn more about Product Catalog

• Planning an eCommerce Website – First Plan about Product Catalog
• 4 Common Challenges of E-Commerce Product Catalog Management

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