Evaluating the product catalog

What constitutes a "good" product catalog?

The objective of an e-commerce site is clear: to sell products or, more rarely, services online. What primarily distinguishes an e-commerce site from a showcase site, for example, is the existence of a product catalog, which allows customers and Internet users to access all the site's products with just a few clicks and to order them.

A successful e-commerce site is first and foremost a site that manages to present visitors with a quality product catalog. Before discussing customer knowledge and explaining why it is essential for improving the quality of the catalogue, a fundamental question arises: what constitutes a quality product catalogue?

The most obvious answer is that a good catalogue is one that offers quality products that are of interest to internet users. This is the most accurate response. The most important aspect is indeed that the products appeal to visitors/internet users/customers.

However, in the context of an online store, the quality of a catalogue is not solely determined by the quality of the products themselves. Other factors must be taken into consideration:

• The product catalog must be clear and well-organized: the internet user must be able to quickly access the product they are looking for. The relevance of the navigation system within your site's catalog is one of the determining keys to the quality of the user experience in e-commerce.
• The products must be correctly described and presented. By definition, an internet user visiting an e-commerce site cannot touch or see the products in the store in person. He does not actually have them in front of him. It is therefore essential to optimize your product sheets to the maximum in order to provide the maximum amount of information to Internet users/customers. This involves writing a precise description and using presentation images.
• Some products must be available in different versions, depending on criteria such as color or size (for clothing, for example). The richness of a catalog partly stems from the richness of the possible versions for each product.

If you wish to improve your catalogue, you must work on all these aspects. But how to prioritize the improvement work? You probably already know that working on your catalogue is a particularly time-consuming activity.

That is why we integrate two tools into your shop that will allow you to check that you have not forgotten this or that element in your catalogue. These two tools are Catalogue monitoring and Catalogue evaluation.