How Do I Create a Product Catalog in Excel?

According to Gartner, a product catalog “contains all commercial product information that enables product marketing managers to define and map new product offerings. This encompasses certain sets of tools that allow configuration of new products and service bundles, pricing and discounts.” 

A simple way to define it is,  a product catalog is a document that contains a list of products and relevant product information. This can include product descriptions, features/benefits, photos, pricing, related products, etc. 

What Is an Example of a Product Catalog?

You might be familiar with a product catalog as that giant catalog that comes in the mail. Product catalogs can be a physical document, a PDF or, in today's world, a digital version that is accessed online. 

Product catalogs can also be used by staff to look up private information that is only available internally. Other common terms for product catalog are a product guide or a product catalogue. 

How Do I Create a Product Catalog in Excel?

It is very common for manufacturers to store all of their product information in a spreadsheet. This is a common solution for manufacturers that do not have a product information management (PIM) system. While this checks a box for storing your product data, it does not make using your product data easy. Teams using Excel spreadsheets to store product data find it difficult to use this information to create a product catalog. This is because it requires teams to manually pull data from the spreadsheet to enter into the program used to design the product catalog, such as Adobe InDesign. 

If you are receiving regular updates to your product data, then you will likely have to repeat this process over and over by updating your Excel file, then updating your product catalog. This can quickly become a cumbersome process. 

There are numerous challenges when using Excel as your product catalog, including:

• It is not easily updated by multiple people within your organization.
• It cannot be easily accessed by consumers, dealers, or partners needing the latest information.
• It does not allow for updates made in the Excel file to be automatically updated in the product catalog.

With these challenges in mind, there is an alternative solution to creating a product catalog.  Let’s discuss this further in the next section.

How Do I Create a Product Catalog?

Before you are ready to create a product catalog, there are five steps you need to complete first. 

1. Determine and define the structure of your product catalog and what information you want to include. This can include the product name, photos, product descriptions, pricing, etc.
2. Gather all of the product information and related assets for these products. Depending on how this information is stored, this step can take a considerable amount of time and effort.
3. Add all the product information and related assets to a Product Information Management (PIM) solution.
4. Create a digital experience that is tied to your PIM solution. This will give your customers, partners, and dealers access to update-to-date product information.
5. Update your product information and related assets using your selected PIM solution and have these updates instantaneously available in your product guide/catalog.

Lumavate offers a variety of best-in-class digital experience Templates, including a product catalog example. Lumavate is a no-code digital experience platform that includes a PIM as part of its suite of functionality. Using a solution like Lumavate makes it easier for you to manage your product data and digital assets by using our PIM functionality. This solution will allow you to quickly create and build digital experiences tied to your product data in less than 30 minutes. This means you can create a simple product catalog that displays all of the products your company offers in no time! 

What Is the Best Way to Make a Product Catalog?

The best way to make a good product catalog is to make it easy on your team to update and easy on your users to access. By making your product catalog online you will give your partners, customers, and dealers access to the real-time data they desire.

Lumavate offers an easy-to-implement product catalog template that pulls data stored in the Lumavate PIM into a digital experience.

One of the best catalog design software options available is Lumavate. Lumavate is a no-code solution, making it a great choice for managing your product data and related digital assets. By using Lumavate you can quickly and easily create a digital experience that can showcase all of your products in a product catalog online. This allows marketers at manufacturing companies to easily create digital product catalogs. 

Ready to learn more? Take a tour of the Lumavate PIM solution.