In eCommerce, your product catalog is everything. A customer should be able to quickly find and purchase whatever products they want, regardless of platform or marketplace. This has always been true of online retail.
The ongoing Coronavirus pandemic, however, has changed the game. Now more than ever, consumers demand that their buying experience be as seamless, intuitive, and convenient as possible. Increasingly, retailers are attempting to meet this demand by selling on multiple sales channels, and keeping up with this trend is no easy task, either.
Between new products, selling on multiple marketplaces, and the need to optimize for the customer experience, it’s becoming clearer by the day that product catalog management is one of the only ways to create a scalable and data-rich experience.
So, how can you leverage data-rich insights and product catalog management to accelerate eCommerce growth for your business? Let’s start by looking at the foundational pillars every marketplace needs to know.
The Four Pillars of Product Catalog Management Success
Product catalog management isn’t a new concept by any means. But today, effective product catalog management is more important than ever.
Why? It’s easy: Amazon. The average consumer today expects an Amazon-like experience wherever they shop online. That’s because building a marketplace that can scale requires an effective product catalog management strategy.
So, how can you achieve that? It starts with understanding the four pillars of product catalog management:
- Detailed Catalog: Your catalog must be optimized for the modern user experience and include accurate data so it can adjust to consumer demand and changing search trends.
- Organized Catalog: Your catalog must be organized and easy for customers to find the right products.
- Demand Focused: Your catalog must display products based on what is most relevant to the initial search.
- Price Guidance: Your catalog must have the ability to adapt prices at scale if you want to stay competitive.
We see these four pillars as the foundational starting point for any marketplace. Of course, achieving these means you will need access to the right data, the tools required to leverage that data, and the ability to apply the insights you gain into your overall strategy.
Tip #1: Ensure Your Product Catalog Is Accurate
We already know that consumers are less likely to purchase a product if vital information is missing.
Whether a product listing is missing images, dimensions, or a proper description—an incomplete listing is often seen as a red flag. Customers want to know they are purchasing the right product, and if that information isn’t available, they will look for it elsewhere.
Now, you may be wondering what options you have to fix this. In most cases, it’s likely not possible to manually fix each listing one by one. Instead, you need to leverage powerful eCommerce insight tools to verify the integrity of your product catalog and its listings.
These types of tools are designed to identify what information gaps exist in your product listings. They can confirm whether your product has the right product identifier, dimensions, description, and other key details.
The takeaway? It’s easy to provide a great customer experience when your listings show the right product information across all channels. In most cases, you just need the right data to show you where improvements can be made.
Tip #2: Offer the Best Customer Experience Possible
We get it, you already know that the customer experience is everything today. And yet, so many companies continue to offer subpar customer experiences online.
When running a marketplace, you need to consider how both sellers and buyers interact with your platform.
For buyers, if two products are equal, but one features accurate data and a simple checkout process, and the other an unoptimized listing, most customers will pick the first option. Other times customers may encounter duplicate items with different data. Once again, this leads to a poor customer experience.
For sellers, you need to strike a balance between simplicity and data-richness. What do we mean by this? You have to make it as easy as possible for sellers to list products without compromising the quality of the listings, product data, and other factors that will affect buyers.
So, what’s the solution? As we mentioned above, it’s all about ensuring the accuracy of the data you have. If you have access to accurate data for popular products, you can simplify the listing process for sellers by automating the most time-consuming step: data validation.
By simplifying the product listing process, you can quickly verify that listings use the best data available to provide buyers with the best experience possible.
Tip #3: Leverage the Right Product Catalog Enhancement Solutions
Validating all of the product information in your catalog requires access to the right tools and technology. For most, this means leveraging the right APIs and machine learning.
One of the biggest advantages of Algopix is the robust APIs we offer. Our Product Analysis API provides full visibility into a product’s data, while our Product Identification API shows which products are likely to match a specific search term.
Together, they provide a holistic view into the data marketplaces need to ensure their listings are accurate and optimized for the customer experience.
Take Your Product Catalog Management to the Next Level
Growing a marketplace in today’s competitive eCommerce landscape requires access to the right data and insights.
With Algopix, you get access to the powerful insights you need to drive your product catalog management strategy forward.
Are you looking for a solution that can provide you with the data-driven insights you need to accelerate your marketplace growth? Get in touch with an Algopix eCommerce specialist today to get started.
