With growing digital competition, Amazon sellers and merchants are constantly worried about driving traffic and retaining existing customers. As customer demands and expectations are rising, it is the responsibility of sellers to meet their requirements without compromising the quality.
Delivering a great customer experience is the key to growing your business and it is possible only through effective Amazon catalog management services. A well-structured catalog makes sure your products are easily found, accessed, and purchased. The catalog contains all the features, attributes, major and minor details about the product. Customers rely on product descriptions before making a purchase, so make sure to deliver clear, precise, and quality data.
In this blog, we will elaborate on the concept of Amazon catalog management and its importance. Further, we will address the major challenges faced by sellers and how to solve them.
Why Amazon Catalog Management is Crucial For Your Store?
In a nutshell, Amazon catalog management is organizing product information in a specific way to drive sales across different channels. Further, the information should be accurate, consistent, and of high quality as every granular detail directly affects consumer purchasing decisions. The key components of catalog management are organizing, standardizing, and publishing. Here’s how a structured catalog can benefit retailers in the long run.
- Assured business growth
- Enriched customer experience
- Delivers an omnichannel experience
- Collection of a reliable product database
- Builds customer trust
- Higher conversions leading to more profit
- Global brand recognition
Common Amazon Catalog Management Challenges
Ever since the beginning of online marketplaces, catalog management has been a huge concern for Amazon sellers. Updating the information regularly, creating a structured format, and including every small detail turns out to be very challenging. This consumes time but also creates room for manual errors. So, here are some of the major challenges faced by retailers on the Amazon marketplace:
Challenge 1: Updated product list
You are very well aware that the eCommerce domain experiences frequent changes- be it in terms of product pricing, product stock, availability, promotions, offers, discounts, new launches, and much more. In order to drive traffic at the Amazon store, sellers need to update their product catalogs at a regular interval.
Accurate product listing and synchronizing every detail with the item can be a daunting task. All of these tasks leave you with a time crunch that could have been utilized to focus on marketing or operations.
Challenge 2: Selling across multiple channels
Many marketers tend to sell on different platforms and they often face issues while managing a product catalog. This is because every eCommerce platform has its own set of structures related to product listing. For example, Amazon product listing policies are different from eBay. Also, the entire procedure of catalog management differs from one marketplace to another.
Creating unique listings for each online sales channel can consume hours. Moreover, sellers might end up complicating the product data that may lead to incorrect item details, missing information, mismatched category, etc.
Challenge 3: Dealing with supplier data
When you sell your products through a third-party vendor, the probability of displaying wrong or minimum information increases. Spelling errors, missing product features, attributes, and more are some of the common issues that arise while dealing with supplier data.
Challenge 4: Expanding existing product catalog
Often merchants and sellers find it difficult to add more products to their existing catalog. This is because of a poorly organized and inaccurately structured catalog. Now, either they have to create a catalog from scratch or continue with the existing structure. This creates further problems like complications in user navigation and poor browsing experience which leads to customer repulsion.
Hiring an Amazon virtual assistant can eradicate these issues from the root level. They thoroughly analyze your catalog and streamline it effectively by implementing powerful strategies for traffic conversion.
Challenge 5: Maintaining data quality
Any product information that is inaccurate, misleading, non-valuable, or incomplete can turn away your potential customers to other platforms. The product details should be listed in a way that matches the product functions and features in real. Any faulty information can put a huge negative mark on your store with negative customer feedback or review.
Buyers only read through the product descriptions to make an informed choice and purchase it. Moreover, it is essential to keep in mind that the accuracy of product details is as important as the quality of the content. Analyze what customers want. They want precise and crisp product details which are easily understandable. Poor content can affect user experience, promotional activities, and product recommendations.
However, outsourcing Amazon catalog and content management can be an ideal option to manage content as well as catalog listing on a large scale.
Challenge 6: Delayed customizations
Customization is the key to great customer service and it highly applies to the eCommerce market. The entire product catalog needs to be refreshed as customers from different countries persuade products distinctly. For instance, if you create universal content for all the audience and do not customize it regularly, it will be an alarming signal for your business.
In order to boost your business and take care of every customer, you need to redesign your catalog and update it over regular intervals. However, it’s a challenging task to revise the whole catalog as manual errors are unavoidable. Outsource catalog management services to let cataloging experts take away all the hassle and simplify the workflow.
Challenge 7: Inaccurate tags impact product discovery
To increase your sales and enhance your product reach, the foremost thing is easy discoverability. You need to ensure that your products are correctly tagged so that customers can find your products at ease. If customers are unable to find the relevant product they are searching for, it can often lead to higher bounce rates. Hire Amazon Virtual Assistants to optimize your catalog to gain a better ranking.
Strategies To Streamline Your Amazon Catalog Management
1. Gain consumer trust
With thousands of sellers on Amazon, consumers always choose to buy from brands that deliver exactly what they promise. So, it is important to gain your customer’s trust by displaying exact information about the product without compromising on the content quality. This will help you earn positive reviews and put a good brand image out there.
2. Choose a suitable catalog management tool
There are various product information management (PIM) tools available online that help in uploading, standardizing, and publishing the information. Although, it’s an expensive option so give it a thought before investing.
3. Outsource Amazon Catalog Management To Experts
Running an Amazon store is not as easy as it sounds. There goes a lot of in-depth research, technical knowledge, domain experience, and more. Merchants cannot stick to just one segment of selling and turn their back to other operational activities. Thus, outsourcing Amazon Catalog Management can be beneficial in terms of creating and maintaining an organized, up-to-date, and informative product catalog.
4. Hire an Amazon Virtual Assistant
Whether you are a new or established seller on Amazon, hiring Amazon VA can completely change your online selling game. They are highly experienced in updating and managing Amazon store by following Amazon guidelines and policies.
Wrapping Up
Amazon is a huge competitive marketplace and catalog management challenges often arise whether you are new or an avid seller. As a retailer, you are occupied with various tasks like email marketing, stock availability, promotions, and much more. Catalog management is often ignored but is an essential factor for boosting your revenue. Hiring Amazon Virtual Assistants can simplify your job by listing all the products, uploading, monitoring and optimizing your catalog.
