The old rule in e-commerce business competition used to be a pretty window and trendy products will sell. Behind a successful e-commerce business lies a product catalog of organization, accuracy, and up-to-date information. Meanwhile, many online retailers, especially those within the apparel and drop shipping stores, fall prey to manual management of their product catalog or using very little professional help. DIY for a catalog may seem like the cheapest way of working; however, because they become inefficient and inaccurate, opportunities are missed.
This article will examine the hidden price that goes into DIY product catalog management and how backing up your e-commerce solutions with professional catalog management and back-office support services can give you a new lease of life.
E-commerce offers a broad understanding of buying and selling goods or services online. So, whether you run a B2C e-commerce website for consumers or it is rather meant to be a B2B e-commerce solution for wholesale arrangements, the components that build e-commerce are an online platform, along the lines of a payment system, and an efficient product management strategy.
An older saying describes that one of the factor's constituting e-commerce is the representation and management of product data. Clean, consistent, and enriched product information can affect consumer behavior and conversion rates in a direct way.
Product catalog management refers to managing the organization, storage, updating, and enrichment of product information across your sales channels. From titles, descriptions, and specifications to images, pricing, stock availability data, and SKUs (stock keeping units: a unique identifier for each product variation).
For apparel and fashion retailers, in which product attributes like size, color, and style mostly vary, catalog management becomes highly complicated. Incorrect or out-of-date information can result in inventory problems, dissatisfied customers, and lost sales.
Entrepreneurs often adopt a DIY approach during the early stages of learning how to start an e-commerce business. Excel sheets, free plugins, and manual data entry seem sufficient at first. After all, when you bootstrapped, every dollar counts.
However, as product lines grow and platforms scale, especially in models like multi-vendor marketplaces or subscription-based business models, the risks of catalog mismanagement grow in tandem.
1. Time Consumption and Operational Bottlenecks
Manual catalog management is incredibly time-consuming. Product uploads, edits, and deletions require constant monitoring. This diverts focus away from strategic activities, such as marketing, customer experience, or sourcing new inventory. Even if you hire remote team members for data-entry jobs, without a structured system in place, inefficiencies will abound.
2. Inconsistent Product Data
An inconsistent data set is a nightmare for e-commerce. Imagine a case where salespeople from a multi-vendor marketplace label one product as "Women's Jacket," while others label a similar product as "Ladies' Coat."
3. Increased Return Rates and Customer Complaints
When product information is inaccurate or ambiguous, customer expectations align badly. This can lead to increased rates of return, bad reviews, and higher customer service costs. In a subscription-based model, bad product data may lead to canceled subscriptions or customer churn.
4. Limitation to Scale
DIY approaches have no scale. The catalog continues to grow, and it has become more complex as your e-commerce business grows. Adding additional vendors, adding additional products to your catalog, or creating additional channels (e.g., If you go from a Shopify store to a multi-vendor marketplace pro) will become overwhelmingly complicated without automated systems, experts, and support.
Product information enrichment relates to improving your product listings by adding more detail and structured content and content that is easy for customers to understand. This includes optimized product titles, detailed feature bullets, comparison tables, and high-res images.
Product data that has been enriched:
• Builds trust and engages customers
• Increases conversion rates
• Decreases return rates if
• Helps to maintain a consistent customer experience through channels
Without enrichment, great products may get lost in the clutter. For apparel and fashion, detailed specifications, size charts, and imagery are incredibly important to buyers.
Robotic process automation is a technology that automates otherwise repetitive tasks like bulk uploads, product pricing, and inventory syncs. All this, along with back office support to eliminate hours of manual load, into faster processes without errors!
RPA is a true game-changer for:
• High-volume SKUs
• Managing multi-channel inventory
• Updating pricing in real time
• Marketplace compliance
For brands with high growth potential, including robotic process automation to catalog workflows can greatly reduce operational costs and improve accuracy (without over-scaling resources!).
If you question the time and costs to manage product data yourself or be a burden to your in-house team, the perfect solution is to outsource to a remote team that can provide you with the right skillset and minimize data stress.
A team with the right experience in data entry, product enrichment, and back-office support services deals with these types of problems each and every day. They are well equipped to efficiently manage single or bulk loads of information across large catalogs.
Here are some of advantages of hiring a remote team:
• Low costs than in house teams
• Access to expert skills
• 24/7 operations
• Fast time to market
Outsourcing provides your model with time to innovate and scale, whether you run a subscription model, drop shipping business, or a multi-purpose marketplace.
A mid-sized online apparel company with a catalog of over 5,000 SKUs was managing its catalog changes manually at first. Every day, there were issues of the wrong sizes, old images, and duplicates of certain products. After choosing to work with a professional catalog management company and automating their e-commerce systems with robotic process automation (RPA) technology, they were able to reduce their catalog errors by 90% and improve conversion rates by 25% within three months.
It is not only a risk to revenue but also to the growth of their business that is displayed in this story. This is the true cost of "do it yourself," and it doesn't just mean dollars spent; it can also mean delayed growth.
It is very simple and easy for early-stage businesses to cut-corners, especially when it comes to managing product catalogs. The truth is that do-it-yourself product catalog management is not a sustainable business model, regardless of stage, and the hidden costs may only be revealed down the road. The loss of time, lost revenue, and frustrated customers may slowly reduce your overall potential profit margin and hinder scalability.
Whether you are a new business with your first store or a mature B2B e-commerce platform, spending money on professionalized back office/service support, including product information and SaaS automation, including RPA, is not a luxury; it's a necessity!
In a digital world and marketplace, where customers make purchase decisions in seconds, your product catalog is like the employee who never talks. Make sure it is promoting you, not damaging you.
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