5 Important Challenges of E-commerce Catalog Management
Managing your Ecommerce catalog is not an easy task. With several SKUs to be published in a plethora of channels your product data can get lost in the commerce jungle out there. Content management plays a very important role in ecommerce catalog management, and keeping information updated at all times is indeed an uphill task that takes up most of your precious time.
The smart thing to do would be to have product catalogs that are managed well. Here are a few tips to handle the day-to-day challenges that you’ll face in Ecommerce catalog management.
- Product Updates
Whatever the range of products you sell online, you need to update your SKUs on a regular basis. The products need to be listed uniformly, and although it is a very time consuming affair, it is important that your product catalog is updated constantly lest it be bypassed without even a glance by users who tend to get bored by repetitions. Apart from the time spent on marketing, operations and other online activities, it is important to devote sufficient time to keep the products updated at all times.
- Challenges in Selling across various channels
In order to reach more users, merchants tend to sell their products on many channels simultaneously. However, the rules that apply on one channel need not apply on another, and so on and so forth. With each channel specifying their own requirements for listing products, customizing your product catalog to suit each channel by using clever content management techniques will help. Unless you have the right tools, it is going to be a difficult task to achieve.
- Handling Supplier Data
The product data provided by most suppliers are scanty with hardly any information that matters. Most of the product attributes and other vital information will be missing, and what’s worse is the format would be all wrong. Even using different abbreviations for often-used terms can fail to catch the attention of users. As suppliers do not sell to users directly they need to understand the importance of standardizing product information and follow the format you are using. All these product catalog issues need to be resolved before you can go public with your product listings.
- Broadening the Range
How can you possibly think of increasing the range of your product catalog (which is already haywire) and add more SKUs? You have to clean up your act first and make sure that there is no longer any inconsistency in the product data quality. Such being the case, most merchants will find it a tough challenge to expand their product catalog. This will tell directly upon the business and take up most of the precious time of the business owner.
- Maintaining Consistency in Data Quality
While you’re expanding your catalog (which is a must for the business) it is difficult to simultaneously maintain high quality. What’s worse is that you need to work in tandem with your suppliers and continue publishing on the various channels that you operate on. There is the grave risk of not focusing on content management, which will lead to errors like misspelled words, missing data, or even totally unconnected product descriptions, which are all bad for the business. Customers expect accurate information that is presented consistently, and product descriptions that are matching and correct. Hence the focus should be on producing and presenting quality data.
Infognana partners with global online retail enterprises to deliver exceptional catalog management to help businesses stay up in the online marketplace.
