Who hasn’t wanted to buy something by leafing through a paper catalog?
All those well-presented products, with attractive photos and salesy descriptions!
These catalogs enabled the companies that published them to turn prospects into customers.
Their aim was to arouse the desire to buy.
E-commerce sites have now largely replaced them.
However, e-commerce sites also have their own catalogs.
It may be presented differently, but the objective is the same: to convince the visitor to buy from the site.
Good management of your e-commerce catalog is therefore essential if you want to achieve a competitive conversion rate.
Why is e-commerce catalog management so important?
In e-commerce, as in other fields, the 80/20 law applies.
This means that 20% of your products alone will account for around 80% of your sales.
Good management of your product catalog must therefore be a priority.
The right products at the right time
Everything must be done to ensure that the catalog on offer offers maximum profitability for the top 20% of products sold.
And since everything moves very fast on the web, the most popular products today may not be the same the following week.
And that’s without even mentioning seasonal products.
So your catalog needs to reflect current trends.
You need to be particularly responsive, offering the right products at the right time.
A clothing store won’t showcase the new swimwear collection in autumn, or warm jackets in summer.
The same applies to an e-commerce site.
Rigorous inventory management
E-commerce catalog management is always accompanied by rigorous inventory management.
Flagship products must always be in stock, while there may be a short lead time for others.
Unless you work with one or more partners who take care of inventory management and shipping.
In this case, you’ll need to ensure that your catalog is synchronized with your partners’ inventories, so that you can communicate transparently about product lead times.
Perhaps you need to order or reserve your most popular products in larger quantities?
If you can be sure of selling them quickly, you’ll be able to negotiate prices and improve your margins.
Why optimize your e-commerce catalog?
Optimizing your e-commerce catalog means not only highlighting the products that generate the most profit, but also providing visitors with all the information they need to convince them to buy.
That’s why you need to pay special attention to your product sheets.
There’s no need to drown the visitor in details.
Nevertheless, the main features of the product must be highlighted.
Visuals are also important.
At least two or three photos from different angles can make all the difference.
Customers are always reassured to be able to see the product in detail, since they can’t touch it as they would in a physical store.
Well-structured, detailed and visually appealing product descriptions will be better referenced by search engines.
The description must be detailed and include appropriate semantics.
Your products will be more easily accessible via search engines, and you’ll be more likely to find new customers.
Optimized product descriptions also facilitate internal searches on the website.
By allowing users to search on product features, you increase the chances that a visit will turn into an order.
How to optimize your e-commerce catalog in 3 steps?
1- Create product categories
It’s important to segment your catalog to make it easier to find products.
The simplest way to achieve this segmentation is to create product categories and sub-categories.
Choose your category labels carefully to optimize SEO.
They must be truly representative of the products.
The categories defined will also be used to build the navigation menus in the catalog.
They must therefore be easy to read and understand.
While sub-categories can be used to refine product classification, they should not have too many levels.
Beyond three levels of sub-categories, you get the opposite of the expected result.
Navigation is no longer practical or efficient.
Finding a product can be tedious for the visitor, who will leave the site without ordering.
It is also possible to include certain items in several categories simultaneously.
This makes it possible to access the same item in different ways, and to offer similar products from different categories.
2- Use filters to facilitate access to products
Product categorization also makes it possible to set up filters to facilitate product searches.
Other filters can also be created on the basis of the various information contained in the product sheet.
Filters are often based on a product’s dimensions, price, model, color…
Here again, the right balance must be struck between the number of filters offered and the ergonomics of the search.
The user must have enough filters at his disposal to refine his search.
If there are too many, the user won’t necessarily know which ones to select, and may be disappointed by the results obtained.
3- Think “natural referencing
The effectiveness of your site’s natural referencing on the various search engines depends largely on the quality of the content of your product sheets.
- Cleverly place the most sought-after keywords related to your products in your catalog cards, and take care with semantics.
- Correctly name your files to obtain a readable url.
- Define alternative text (“alt” tag) for media used in the catalog (images, videos, etc.).
- Update the sitemap.
Personalized support to manage your e-commerce catalog
Would you like to build up or optimize your e-commerce catalog?
With several years’ experience in e-commerce, I’ll support you from start to finish.
Don’t hesitate to contact me so that we can discuss your needs and decide on the best way for me to help you.
