A few tips to have a great digital catalog for business owners

by Linda S Johnson Blogger

Digital catalog is the latest trend in the world of catalog marketing. It offers a wide range of benefits to businesses and customers alike.

Digital catalogs can be easily accessed by anyone with an internet connection and they do not take up much space in your home or office. On the other hand, print catalogs need to be stored in a place where everyone can get access to them easily and quickly.

A few tips to have a great digital catalog:

Cross-Selling and Upselling

Cross-selling and upselling tactics are important for boosting revenue from your online product catalog. Here are some best practices:

Recommended / Related Products

Display recommended or related products on each product page to encourage shoppers to purchase additional items. These should be based on similarities like product type, brand, usage occasions, etc.
Product recommendations can be generated automatically by analyzing customer behavior data and purchase history. This allows you to surface products that are commonly purchased together.
Allow customers to easily add recommended products to their carts with “Add Both to Cart” buttons. Reducing friction increases conversion rates.

Bundled Deals

Create bundled offers like “Buy X and get Y at a discount” to incentivize larger basket sizes. These deals can feature complementary products that customers would want to use together.
Bundles should be displayed prominently on product pages and during the checkout process. Time-limited bundles can create urgency and increase purchases.

Post-Purchase Upsell Offers

After a customer completes a purchase, suggest relevant upsells on the order confirmation/thank you page. For example, accessories like cases or cables for the purchased product.
Email and retargeting campaigns can also showcase personalized product recommendations using the customer’s order history and behavior data. This catches buyers when they are most receptive to upsell offers.
To increase average order value, offer tiered upsells with options like expedited shipping, gift wrapping, extended warranties, etc.

Catalog Management Tools

Catalog management software enables businesses to easily build, organize, and manage online catalogs. With robust tools to automate catalog creation, centralize product data, and track changes, you can efficiently maintain a product catalog that delights customers.

Automated Catalog Creation

Catalog management platforms use data feeds to automatically import product information from suppliers and distributors. This eliminates the need to manually add and update every product listing, saving massive amounts of time and effort. Data is pulled from source files, formatted, and published to the live catalog. Products are automatically added once and then continually updated, ensuring your catalog always reflects the latest pricing, inventory levels, product options, images, and descriptions.

Centralized Product Data

A digital catalog acts as a centralized database to store all product information and assets in one place. Details like title, description, price, images, variants, shipping specs, and more are housed within the catalog software. This gives you a single source of truth for product data, avoiding inconsistencies across channels. All teams access the same up-to-date product records to help coordinate sales, marketing, fulfillment, and customer service.

Change Tracking

Robust catalog platforms track all changes made over time, recording edits to product records down to the field level. You can review change logs to see what edits were made, who made them, and when they occurred. This audit trail helps maintain data integrity, provides transparency, and enables rollback to previous versions if needed. Change tracking gives you greater control and visibility as your catalog evolves.

With automated data flows, centralized information, and change logs, catalog management software empowers you to efficiently maintain a unified, up-to-date product catalog as the core of your e-commerce operations. The right tools help you continuously delight customers with a searchable, organized catalog that makes shopping a pleasure.

Personalization

Personalization helps make your online catalog feel tailored to each customer. There are several ways to implement personalization:

Custom Product Recommendations

Recommendation engines analyze customer behavior like browsing history, purchases, and reviews to suggest relevant products. For example, if a customer views leggings, recommend similar yoga pants and tops. Recommendations make it easy for customers to discover new products.

Segmented Promotions

Send targeted promotions to customer segments based on their interests and behaviors. For instance, email customers who abandoned carts with items still in stock a coupon to complete their purchase. Or display exclusive sales to loyal reward program members. Personalized promotions increase conversion rates.

Saved Carts and Wishlists

Let customers save products to wishlists or abandoned carts they can revisit later. Send reminders to complete purchases from saved carts. Wishlists allow customers to easily find and buy preferred items again. These features encourage customers to return and buy more.

Checkout and Payments

A seamless checkout process is critical for an online product catalog. The easier it is for customers to checkout, the more likely they are to complete their purchase.

One-Page Checkout

Implement a one-page checkout that allows customers to enter their information and complete the purchase on a single page. This greatly reduces checkout abandonment compared to a multi-page checkout. All required fields should be on one page, with optional account creation below.

Multiple Payment Options

Offer customers several payment options to cater to different preferences. At a minimum, allow checkouts with credit cards and PayPal. Consider adding additional processors like Amazon Pay or Apple Pay for a truly omnichannel experience.

Provide clear markings for secured checkouts and SSL encryption to build trust. Payment logos, like Visa and Mastercard, should be prominently displayed.

Saved Payment Methods

Allow customers to save payment information for faster repeat checkouts. Many will abandon their cart if they have to re-enter details. Store payment methods securely using tokenization to avoid saving sensitive card data.

Saved payments reduce friction and increase conversion rates. Allow shoppers to designate a default payment method for one-click checkouts.