Amazon has experienced rapid expansion in recent years, much of which has been driven by its core commerce sector. They accounted for an estimated 44% of eCommerce sales in 2017 and approximately 4% of total retail sales in the United States.
While this growth provides terrific opportunities for those of us in the eCommerce industry, it also poses issues for Amazon merchants.
So, you have an Amazon store with a growing catalog, but you need help managing it. You are not the only one in this situation. eCommerce catalog management is a challenging task. It might have been simple to keep up with your products when you only had a handful, but a growing business will have too many for a person to track and manage effectively.
Customers today are attentive and careful when purchasing at a store. Before buying anything, they want to examine the prices and features of several brands and models. As a result, the accuracy of product data is critical throughout the buyer's journey. That's why you need to be on point with your product catalog.
Amazon Product Catalog Management - What Is It?
A digital product catalog is comparable to a traditional print catalog. Amazon uses this format to define a product or collection of commodities and their attributes. A digital record may contain multiple items that share particular characteristics.
eCommerce organizations like Amazon use strategic product catalog management to facilitate upselling and cross-selling by organizing product data in their eCommerce catalogs.
Even if your product data is stored internally or by a third party, you must implement catalog management solutions for your eCommerce website.
Understanding eCommerce Product Data
Product data quality is a critical determinant of your Amazon store performance. Accurate and up-to-date information improves your product's Google ranking, increases consumer purchasing choices, and allows you to manage your inventory and operations better.
Product data must be optimized for SEO, ease of site search and navigation, tailored product suggestions, warehousing and inventory management, and delivery operations for B2C and B2B eCommerce to prosper.
Here are a few examples of the types of product catalog changes you need to be mindful of:
- For a product: no duplication, updated pricing, proper product type, color, HTML tags, product description information that matches product photos, and so on.
- For SEO: Keywords used in page titles, page URLs, picture titles, image alt tags, headers, navigation, internal links, meta title, and meta description
What is the Importance of Product Catalog Management in Amazon?
Your product catalog drives your Amazon store's sales strategies, marketing activities, and more.
If your product catalog is accurate and up to date, it can positively affect your customers' online shopping experience and, as a result, your sales. A catalog that will cut ice is accurate, up-to-date, and supported by seamless product catalog administration.
Product catalog management serves diverse functions for different industries. Still, the fundamental message stays the same - giving precise information about your items to boost sales and improve the entire client experience.
It's not about a single product, brand, or sector; instead, it's about building a vibrant ecosystem where everyone can readily access what they need. Product catalogs deliver consistent user experiences across a heterogeneous eCommerce ecosystem.
It is critical to have well-designed digital catalogs to connect with customers while increasing brand stickiness. Catalogs can be delivered through a reliable eCommerce platform like Amazon that can adapt to shifting contexts and geographies. The one that can provide real-time visibility into inventories detect the pulse of your consumers, and provide you with relevant data.
We feel that eCommerce firms must now use product catalogs for:
- Making the purchasing experience more personal
- They are seeking ways to increase consumer loyalty.
- Obtaining greater access to client data
- Going omnichannel and investigating upsell and cross-sell opportunities
- Using a competitive eCommerce platform, you may save money.
With the right eCommerce platform and a solid catalog management approach, you can quickly improve your game in the eCommerce market.
What Are the Challenges of Product Catalog Management (and their Solutions)
Product catalog administration is error-prone and time-consuming.
Here are the top five issues in product catalog management that eCommerce organizations confront and solutions to solve them.
1. Product Pricing
Problem: Setting up Prices That Fit the Market Can Be Challenging
You can provide discounts on specific items or recognize and reward your most valuable clients. Furthermore, you must consider rival pricing to ensure that all your items are suitably priced.
Customers have more time to compare your items to those of your competitors when they purchase online, allowing them to choose who has the best offer. Customers are more inclined to choose the company with the lowest pricing. You must make a good decision here.
Solution: Set up Dynamic Pricing
Modern eCommerce systems have pricing automation capabilities that allow you to change prices or adjust them based on market conditions to gain a competitive advantage.
2. Launching a Product
Problem: Setting up the Launch of a Product
Product catalog management takes time, and you must prepare for the launch. This might be due to several factors.
You may have too many goods to offer, insufficient time to update every catalog, or your supplier may have provided you with incomplete or misleading information.
You may also have consumers worldwide and be pressed for time to attend to precise product specifics.
There might be differences in the styles and layouts for your digital catalogs across your site, which could harm your brand identification.
Things might start coming apart quickly after the launch if you need the necessary tools or a strong staff.
Problem: Setting up the Launch of a Product
You may only sometimes require outside assistance. But, when you have a big task, you must do what you must! For example, having an external partner split the job during a sale season or festival is beneficial.
An eCommerce catalog management services provider can manually or automatically update your product catalog data using catalog management software.
Some SaaS solution providers provide catalog management and automation services to decrease overhead and turnaround time. In addition, you will have a completely personalized, ready-to-sell internet store in 30 days.
It's usually a good idea to verify with your platform provider before looking into individual or third-party service providers since they might not be as safe and dependable as you assume.
3. Tracking your Inventory
Problem: Manual Tracking Is Too Time-Consuming
Keeping track of inventory becomes difficult when you have many SKUs sold across numerous channels - digital, offline, eCommerce marketplaces, and so on. It is also impossible to follow it in real time.
When there is no process to track your inventory regularly, there is typically a gap between demand and availability. This causes many problems, including inefficiencies in the supply chain, bad client purchasing experiences, etc. This is not a good indication.
Solution: Integrate Your Platform with an ERP
The seamless integration of your eCommerce platform and ERP will assist you in keeping track of inventory across numerous locations. This data interchange will occur in real time, and you will always have the most up-to-date inventory information.
4. Not Using Metadata Properly
Problem: Improper Use of Metadata Leads to Poor SEO
Digitization may be complex, and with the assistance of a knowledgeable digital firm, tasks such as metadata development, tagging, and so on may be possible.
Metadata improves search engine rankings, giving buyers a higher chance of finding your items online.
Metadata is keyword-rich and provides search engines with information about your site. The ideal eCommerce platform will use metadata to get you noticed and improve your campaign behind the scenes.
Solution: Using the Right Tool for the Job
SEO is more than simply using keywords. It also needs knowledge and a strategy. So, if you need the correct person to manage this, it's always a good idea to employ an outside digital agency/consultant.
5. Labeling and Tagging your Products
Problem: Mislabeling Products Leads to Issues
What good are superb, top-of-the-line items if your buyers can't locate them? It may be an LED light bulb, an antique brass door knob lock, or a white flower pendant chandelier. How will they discover what they're looking for unless it's appropriately marked to be found?
Solution: Using a Tool to Automate the Labeling Process
Automation solutions for product tagging are available on the finest B2B eCommerce services. Some of these systems employ AI to automate the entire product tagging process using deep learning technology.
These AI-powered systems may propose appropriate product feature tags, titles, and descriptions based on your product photos, allowing for rapid product discovery. An AI-powered product discovery suite may bridge the gap between you and your consumers by recognizing the visual features of the goods.
Conclusion
Properly updating, organizing, and managing your Amazon catalog will set you apart from your competitors. Thus, the best way to compose an ever-growing roster is to use catalog updates and maintenance services like ours. Vserve's Amazon Listing Service will regularly update the information on your products, keep track of competitor prices, and create SEO-friendly product descriptions. Contact us today and let’s get started!