Product Catalog

Tips to Make your Product Catalog Relevant

A product catalog provides clarity to customers regarding the products and services offered by a particular business. When it is an eCommerce business which deals with its customers over an online platform, having an effective product catalog becomes more of a necessity rather than a privilege.

An online product catalog not only enhances the sales for an eCommerce business but also saves time and efforts of the customers. Customers can easily navigate through the website and locate their desired product. This fastens their purchase decision and compels them to revisit the website for further shopping needs.

A rightly done product catalog can analyze customer behavior and is capable of reaching wider audiences and new markets. Before starting to create a product catalog, the business must have clarity related to the purpose. For instance, whether the purpose of building a product catalog is for improving brand recognition or for enhancing sales?

Once the purpose is clear then the business must understand its target audience. Example, which age group and demographics will the business target, and so on. Thereafter comes some specific technical requirements, such as, finding the right Content Management System (CMS) or Product Information Management (PIM) tools. By finding the right tools one can create a product catalog easily and in less time. Finally, a product datasheet must be prepared which has all the details of the products, including the hierarchy and the attributes of the same. This datasheet helps the catalog developers to get a clear picture of your expectations.

As you carry out functions under each step, you tend to get more clarity about the expectations from the final product catalog. Here are some tips that you can use in order to create a relevant product catalog for your business.

  • Your product catalog must be attractive, must have high resolution quality images or videos, and a smart layout. The catalog design must match with your offerings.
  • Customize your catalog as per your customer requirements. Catalog might be required to be altered from time to time in order to stay updated.
  • Ensure that your product catalog has a suitable format and size which allows you to showcase your entire product list along with product attributes and relevant photos and videos.
  • Ensure that the photos and videos used in the product catalog are of high quality. This gives a polished look to the catalog and makes it more appealing.
  • Once your product catalog is ready, take feedback from your customers and modify the catalog if necessary. This enhances trust between customers and the business.

Product catalog making process initially requires all your time, commitment and patience. However, once done right, it can offer you an increased customer footfall and a long-term upliftment in the business sales.

Benefits of PDF Extraction

Benefits of PDF Extraction

It is a common perception that copying text from PDF is an easy task, since the information is right in front of you. However, it is not that easy as you think. Working with PDF becomes difficult because of the flexibility provided by the PDF format. Not many people know that PDF was never an input format but only an output format. PDF was meant to offer a polished output to the documents.

PDF extraction is the process of reusing selected pages of one PDF in a different format. It is not uncommon for PDFs to contain a lot of textual information, and in order to acquire the entire text one must be able to extract the PDF in a proper manner. Extracting useful information from PDFs can be a challenge when there is a large number of PDF files. However, there are specific tools that enable better PDF extraction and right information recovery.

Companies that deal with a large number of repurposing activities, have started using automated PDF extraction software which makes the task easier to handle. The software is time efficient and easy to use. The extracted information from PDFs can be stored in word, excel, or various Graphics formats. The acquired information can be easily and quickly distributed with the teams. The output has all the relevant information and no information is lost.  

Here are some of the benefits of PDF extraction:

·  Lesser time is spent on recreating data, which results in increased productivity

·  Errors are significantly reduced

·  PDF extraction software make data repurposing tasks easy-to-handle

·  PDF extraction software have user friendly interface, which is easier to understand and saves time and efforts

Automated PDF extraction is an easy and time-saving process which is meant to enhance work productivity. PDF extraction works best for the organizations that need to repurpose information in various ways. It proves to be the precise way to acquire accurate information.

Product Taxonomy

Increasing Productivity through Product Taxonomy

Product taxonomy is defined as creating a structure to organize all available products in a way that customers can find. In product taxonomy, all available products are put into several categories to which specific attributes are applied. A good taxonomy is a perfect combination of user behavior, trends, and cultural differences. The end result being it becomes easy for the customers to find their desired product amidst the long list.

Having a proper product taxonomy is very important as it leads to faster purchase decision-making and incremental business sales. Improper taxonomy can cause loss of sales. Product taxonomy cannot and must not be avoided. In this blog, we will look at how product taxonomy increases productivity.

Research has found that a poorly structured website causes 50% less sales as compared to a properly organized website. Visitors tend to visit a particular website while they browse over the internet. If your products are not properly placed within the website, either the website will miss out on potential searches, or the visitor will visit your website but will be unable to find the product. In both the situations, your product sales will be affected.

A well-built taxonomy will allow your website to display relevant products at all times, directly impacting the decision-making process of the buyer. Clear distinct categories and correct labelling directly improves business sales.

Here are some best practices to develop the right product taxonomy for your eCommerce business:

  • Get an energetic team onboard and explain them the importance of good product categorization. Try to get a qualified team who have degrees in information science or linguistics. They will be capable of understanding the right terminology and hierarchy.
  • Understand your users’ psychology and shopping behavior. Study the way customers navigate through different websites and choose their product. Find out their search behavior and factors that influence their buying decision. You can also talk to them or conduct a survey to understand their likes and dislikes distinctly.
  • Have a deep understanding of your entire data. Focus on information that really matters to your buyers. Maintain the accuracy of the product information.
  • To categorize, start visualizing your products with various attributes. A complicated taxonomy is of no use to anyone. Prepare a proper hierarchy to all the categories. Stay consistent with names at all levels. Users tend to spare lesser time searching for products; hence, the taxonomy needs to be as simple and clear as possible.
  • Allow your users to navigate and test your taxonomy in all possible ways. Take reviews and modify your taxonomy accordingly to make it better. Taxonomy must be updated regularly. Add new categories and improve the hierarchy whenever necessary.
  • The taxonomy must be the same across all the business units within the company. There must not be any discrepancies internally.

Product taxonomy is an important foundation for the success of any eCommerce business. A good product taxonomy is always built keeping the users in mind. It can start with simply writing on a few cards and creating divisions, to developing them into a brilliant architecture that customers would love to visit again and again in order to shop. Product taxonomy made right will increase productivity and enhance business sales. In the longer run, an efficient taxonomy minimizes the work of both the buyer as well as the seller.

Product Catalog Management

Best Practices: eCommerce Product Catalog Management

Customers are well-versed with the online technology now. From online shopping to online ticket reservation; several usual activities have transformed from offline to online. Customers navigate through various websites before making their decision. Hence, an eCommerce business must be able to provide the right product information to customers at all times.

A product catalog is essential for every eCommerce business and it ensures that the products are conveniently available online. An efficient product catalog directly impacts the sales of the organization. However, creating and managing a product catalog effectively can be challenging at times.

Challenges in Product Catalog Management

  • Different information coming in from multiple stakeholders from inside and outside the organization. For example, if measurement units differ then it can create a major problem in product catalog management

  • If the internal data is not converted properly for users, then incorrect product categorization can create issues.

  • Choosing a catalog management tool can be a challenge in itself. Before selecting a tool, one must understand the working of the tool in detail.

  • Product catalog growth is directly proportional to business growth. The need of the organization must align with the need of catalog.

Let us look at some of the best practices of product catalog management:

1. Offer Quality Product Information

The importance of providing valuable and correct product information to the customer can never be emphasized. The first objective is to ensure that your customers feel comfortable while they navigate through the eCommerce website. This also means that the website must not only be user friendly, but also customers must be able to easily locate their desired product.

By offering accurate product information customers will start trusting your brand and this will help them make faster purchase decisions. High quality product information includes technical attributes, attractive high-resolution images, videos, inventory information, units of measurement, and product usage combinations and recommendations. All the information must be updated to optimize the overall shopping experience of the customer.

2. Categorizing product catalog

Customers look for easy navigation options and clear categories like filter, refine, colors, etc. However, one must categorize their product catalog by considering the customer’s point of view. For example:

  • Using ‘M’ to denote “Medium” to represent a product size

  • Keeping consistency in all measurement units

  • Adding various product attributes to different products based on customer needs and not have limited attributes to all products

3. Measuring the catalog management process

To effectively manage a product catalog the business must understand three pointers and analyze them from time to time:

1. Which parts of the product catalog are managed by the stakeholders?

2. Who is affected by the catalog changes?

3. When during the process does the changes affect the most?

Once you are able to understand these factors, you can quickly seek for the right person who can help you during the mapping process. Catalog management mapping processes helps you understand the different steps to be taken and in which order.

4. Offer recommendations and suggest alternatives

A product catalog must not only offer the right product information, but also suggest alternatives and recommendations for different products. This will give ideas to the customers and also provide alternatives in case a desired product is out of stock.

5. Managing your Product Catalog Database

Catalog management is similar to information management and must be maintained well. Hence, one must create a product catalog database to ensure that the right information is given to the customer. This also prevents information errors and enables expansion of products.

The above-mentioned best practices will help an eCommerce business to manage their product catalog efficiently. The eCommerce businesses are developing online as well as offline product catalogs in order to provide maximum shopping experience to their customers. While online catalogs help in faster navigation through the website, offline catalogs help in easy-to-read experience for the customers. Both are equally important to enhance business sales.