What Is a Product Catalog Website?
by Angela Shaffield | Last Updated: Apr 25, 2023
What Is the Benefit of a Product Catalog?
The purpose of a product catalog is to provide customers with a comprehensive list of a brand's full product line. When you provide a product catalogue, you provide your customers with all of the information they need to make an informed purchase decision
Providing a product catalog can shorten the sales cycle and increase sales, because customers can find answers to their questions. You can also use a product catalog to promote related parts and accessories, which can increase sales for aftermarket parts.
Using product catalogs to answer customer questions allows you to control the narrative about your brand. When customers are provided the information that answers their product-related questions, they are less likely to search for third-party opinions on your products. Stopping your customers from reading inaccurate information about your brand and products will improve your brand’s reputation.
What Are the Types of Product Catalogs?
There are two primary types of catalog:
- A product catalog PDF, which is commonly printed and posted online; and
- An online catalog, which is a digital experience that can appear as a mobile app, website, microsite, or secure portal.
The fundamental difference between the two is how your customers interact with them.
Customers can access a product catalog PDF that’s posted on a company’s website. The sophistication of a product catalog PDF can vary from an easy-to-read flip book to a long-form document. Many brands gravitate towards PDFs because they are relatively easy to create and distribute. However, most product guides are out of date shortly after they are completed as product data is constantly updated. This renders printed product guides unreliable and requires teams to manually update any online PDF guides.
An online product catalog, or digital product catalog, can be kept up-to-date and provide customers with reliable product information. Lumavate’s digital experience platform (DXP) offers a product information management (PIM) solution within its suite of functionality. This combination allows brands to store all of their product information - data and product assets - in one place and pull from that data source to create a digital product guide. When product data is updated in the PIM, the information is immediately updated in any digital experience using that information.
What Is a Product Catalog Website?
A product catalog website, often referred to as an online product catalog, is a website or digital experience that provides detailed product information across an entire product line and/or brand. This version of a product catalog is ideal for most brands because it offers the most up-to-date information when tied to a PIM solution.
A PIM solution is a software that allows brands to store, edit, and manage all of their product information in a centralized location. When you tie a digital experience to a PIM solution, the digital experience automatically updates when the product information is updated within the PIM solution.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Online Catalog
The one disadvantage of online catalogs is that, like a website, if it's designed poorly, it can be ineffective. When creating an online catalog, think about your customers and how you can give them a great experience when reading your product catalog. You want your product catalog to be easy to navigate for your customers so they can find the product that best fits their needs.
When online product catalogs are designed well, they are easier to navigate and more accessible than PDFs or printed product catalogs. Online product catalogs can also be easily tracked and analyzed. Just like a traditional website, you can see how many people visited your online product catalog and how long they looked at specific pages.
What Software Is Best for Making Catalog?
The best software to use to create a catalog is Lumavate. Lumavate is a digital experience platform (DXP) so you can create an online catalog as well as other digital experiences for different use cases. When you create a product catalog using Lumavate, you have the option of using a template to help you get started. You can use this functionality to store, edit, and manage your product information in a centralized location, as well as tie it to your product catalog for automatic product information updates.
Want to learn more about Lumavate’s PIM solution? Book a demo and talk with one of our experts today!