Product catalogs are a great resource for your customers to learn about all of the products your company offers. Creating a catalog is a big task and can feel overwhelming at first. Take small steps and enlist the help of some tools to make it easier.
How Do I Make My Own Catalog?
Embarking on the effort to create and launch a digital product catalog may seem overwhelming at first. There is a lot of information to collect. Product details, specs, pricing, and images all need to be compiled. Then you need to decide how to organize the product catalog and how to deliver it to your audience. You need to work with product managers to gather the required product data and digital assets. Cross-department work can pose many challenges.
How do I Create a Product Catalog?
To get started ask yourself and your team some important questions. Will all products be highlighted in this catalog including related products? How will you organize your products? By product type, horsepower, cost, another category? Asking these questions from the beginning will help determine the structure of your product catalog. Now that you have these answers you have direction.The next task is a big one, collecting the content. Every bit of information that needs to be included in your catalog must be found. Product images and any other details that will help build a comprehensive listing. This often means working with product marketers to ensure what you have is correct. Next, add this content to a Product Information Management (PIM) solution. Loading product information into a PIM creates a single source of truth for anyone working on this project. Your team knows the product information in the PIM is correct and can be trusted. Other teams will thank you for compiling this data in an easy-to-manage place. Now that you have your framework and content it is time to start building. Create your digital product catalog as a digital experience. Connect your digital experience to the PIM to ensure your data is correct and to make building much easier. You no longer need to manually type in product details. With solutions like Lumavate, simply connect the digital experience and the PIM and product information will appear. If a product is updated, make the change in the PIM and see the updated information in your digital experience in seconds. The last step is to keep everything up to date. If your products change regularly, your product catalog is never truly done. Keep product information up to date in the PIM so the right information is in the hands of your customers. Never stop improving for your customers, make updates to enhance their experience.
What Can I Use to Create a Catalog?
There are many options when it comes to using software as a catalog maker. Options like Microsoft Word and Canva might appear to be free catalog maker options, but don’t forget to note how much time it is taking for your team to create these catalogs. Oftentimes these solutions take your team more time because data must be entered manually. Microsoft Word, Canva, and Adobe InDesign are often used to create product catalog PDFs that are shared on the company’s website. Every time a product is updated the PDF on your website is now out of date. Your team now needs to manually update the PDF, possibly create a new one, and reshare it. This leaves you open to sharing outdated information and human error. Lumavate is a digital experience platform (DXP) that offers a PIM. These two coupled together give you the ability to maintain information and quickly update it. Connect the digital experience product catalog to the PIM so the information flows. When there is an update to the information in the PIM it is reflected across your digital experiences automatically. Your team has to make the change once and the effect is seen everywhere. Take it one step further and create a product catalog template. With Lumavate you can create a template showcasing how you want all product catalogs to look. Now when it’s time to spin up a new version, your team simply copies the template, makes a few edits, and they are ready to go. Half of the work is done for them.
What Program Can I Use to Make a Catalog?
There are many options when it comes to catalog design software. It is important to review all of the functionality for each solution to make sure it is the best catalog design softwarefor you and your team. Also consider the hidden costs like your team’s time and resources. The product catalog maker expense might be your team’s time, not software.Solutions like Lumavate are much more than a product catalog maker. With Lumavate’s PIM you’re empowering your team to manage product data and digital assets in a better way. You are giving them the tools to efficiently manage data and helping them work smarter not harder. With the PIM coupled with Lumavate’s what you see is what you get Studio, your team can build product catalogs with ease. With connecting digital experiences to the data in the PIM, your team can build an engaging and interactive product catalog in 30 minutes. Your team will feel empowered to become great digital catalog makers and feel confident making updates. Updating the product catalog will go from a big daunting task to one that can be knocked out quickly. Then your team and return to the rest of the revenue-generating to-do list. Learn how to create better product catalogs today, book a demo!
Meet with one of our experts to see how easy it is to centralize your product data, manage digital assets, and create digital product experiences. Trust us…you’re going to be wowed.
