What Are Digital Product Catalogs?

Digital product catalogs are online catalogs that list all your products and their relevant details. They’re repositories of information that serve as a single source of truth for your offerings.

Digital product catalogs are frequently used as reference points for:

• Partners
• Retailers
• Distributors
• Internal stakeholders

They can also be powerful sales aids when introducing potential retailers and other customers to your business. 

Brands will also occasionally publish their digital catalogs as standalone websites that potential customers can browse.

Having a single source of truth is essential for any brand, regardless of where or to whom you sell. Digital product catalogs are a way to curate and extend that source of truth for easy stakeholder sharing.

While product information management (PIM) solutions also provide a critical source of truth, digital product catalogs provide easily accessible, curated, always up-to-date content to internal and external stakeholders. It can instantly publish information about new products or updates to existing products. 

You don’t have to instruct every external partner to reference a new catalog (or print and mail a physical catalog); the one they’re accustomed to using will simply reflect the new information. Some digital product catalogs sync with an organization’s PIM for even faster content updates.

1. Does your organization struggle to make trusted product data accessible to all relevant stakeholders?
2. Do your salespeople still carry printed product catalogs to customer meetings?
3. Do you still distribute a printed catalog to trading partners (retailers, distributors, industry groups, etc.)?
4. Does publishing updated product information and sharing it with all stakeholders take a long time?
5. Do you need to share custom and/or curated product assortments with specific stakeholders (internal or external)?
6. Do you need to password-protect product data so only certain users can view, access, or download it?
7. Do external stakeholders frequently email your organization asking for product clarifications?
8. Do your internal teams have fragmented, inconsistent knowledge about your products?
9. Would you benefit from an owned, interactive site that encourages potential customers to explore your products in more detail?
10. Do your support teams have the product info they need to answer customer questions and resolve issues?

Digital product catalogs can contribute to both time and cost savings, as well as overall better product experiences. Here are some of their benefits.

Improved Organization for Product Information

Having a single source of truth that matches your PIM and is more readily accessible allows the whole organization and every external stakeholder to effortlessly access the content they need. 

There’s no need to consult spreadsheets, get lost in an unfamiliar system, or go back and forth in lengthy email chains when someone has a question about a product.

Consistent Information Across All Platforms

When a single source of product content is available to all parties, it becomes less likely that inconsistencies or outdated information will be published or communicated.

Faster Updates to Product Information

A digital product catalog can be updated in just a few clicks — and if it integrates with your PIM, updates become even faster. 

There’s no need to wait weeks or even months to print and distribute an updated physical catalog. Additionally, faster, easier catalog entries contribute to a faster, easier go-to-market.

Better Communication With Retailers and Partners

When brands can easily share a thorough, accurate catalog with the other organizations they do business with, they cut down on extraneous, time-consuming communications. Whenever a question or concern arises, brand representatives can consult the catalog and help partners do the same.

A Nimbler Sales Team

With a digital catalog they can access from anywhere, your sales team can engage prospects at any time. They can illustrate the diversity and value of your products on a portable screen instead of having to lug heavy print catalogs everywhere they go. And they have peace of mind that the content is always accurate and updated.

A More Effective Support Team

Like with sales teams, support teams often need access to accurate, up-to-date product data to help answer customer questions. Arming them with a digital catalog can help them resolve issues faster and answer questions more confidently.

Self-Service Exploration for Potential Customers

Some brands have found success making an interactive version of their catalog available online to potential customers. They can browse products independently and use intuitive filtering systems to explore every item available to them. 

This helps customers feel empowered to do their own fact-finding when finalizing what they want to purchase from you.

More Streamlined Omnichannel Commerce

Digital catalogs can be used to share up-to-date product info with a variety of trading partners, helping you provide the long tail of your distribution network with accurate product data so they can accurately represent your products to their customers.

Structured Content Downloads

Some catalog tools allow you to set up pre-defined templates to automatically download content and digital assets in preset formats, helping ensure consistency and that your stakeholders get content in the format they need.

Tailored (and Secured) Product Assortments

Different stakeholders often need different sets of data. Digital catalogs enable you to curate different product assortments and share them with appropriate stakeholders. 

Digital catalogs sometimes contain sensitive information (e.g., unique SKUs, pricing details, etc.), so your digital catalog solution should allow you to secure or protect the catalog so only certain users can access the content.

The most efficient way to obtain a digital product catalog is to use purpose-built software to create it. Coding your own catalog is possible but requires an extensive amount of internal tech resources and effort.

Instead, you can use digital product catalog software to create a bespoke catalog with all the features you need without writing a line of code. 

When evaluating software to use for your catalog, look for options with these offerings. 

Ease of Use for End Users

You shouldn’t have to spend lots of time and effort to get your digital catalog built. It should have a clean, attractive user experience that’s simple to navigate. 

A good software solution has drag-and-drop options for effortless customizability. It should be intuitive to use and enable you to complete your catalog fast.

Automatic Content Validation

Your software tool should be able to assess your content and data accuracy to some degree, such as checking for completeness against a standardized schema or scanning for formatting issues. 

Any type of built-in content checker will diminish manual errors and cut down on inefficiencies.

Intuitive Filtering Capabilities

One of the strengths of a digital product catalog, as opposed to a print one, is that users can quickly search for the attributes they’re interested in with search and filtering capabilities. The easier a platform makes that search, the better. 

A good catalog solution should enable granular but intuitive filtering to help customers zero in on exactly what they want.

Integration With a PIM

If your catalog integrates with a PIM, you’ll only need to update information in one place. Look for catalog-building software that connects directly to a PIM to make life easier for your team and guarantee the immediate publication of the most accurate data.

Branding and Customization

Your digital product catalog should have the option to add aesthetic customization, such as brand images, colors, and fonts, to create on-brand product experiences.

A good catalog will also offer advanced customization options, such as the ability to create product groupings, variant displays, and interactive experiences.

Templated Exports

Sometimes your catalog viewers need to download content and/or imagery from the catalog to use elsewhere. Your digital product catalog tool should provide the option to allow users to download assets and content into custom, pre-set templates. 

This will make it easier for your partners to share your content with their teams, retailers, distributors, and/or customers in the best format for them. 

Catalog Security

Catalogs may contain sensitive or proprietary information and often need to be configured so that only certain users have access. Your digital product catalog should allow you to bulk configure access to specific users and/or grant access by domain name for easy catalog administration. 
Enabling one-time passwords (OTPs) is an easy way to ensure only approved visitors can view your catalog, without having to set up complex single sign-on (SSO) or security integrations.

Creating and publishing a digital product catalog involves curating accurate, up-to-date product content for your various stakeholders. 

Follow this process to stay on track during a digital product catalog implementation.

1. Make Sure Your PIM Data Is Accurate and Updated

If your primary repository of product information isn’t accurate, there’s no reason to expect your catalog will be. The creation of a new catalog is a good time to assess your PIM, validate the data, and clean it up where necessary. You’ll also want to make sure it’s in a format the catalog software will accept.

2. Evaluate Your Product Content Quality

Similarly, you need to assess the quality of the images and other content that will be associated with your products in the catalog. It’s good practice to do this periodically anyway, and doing it before launching a digital catalog helps the catalog creation process go more smoothly. 

Quality content shows the professionalism of your brand while providing viewers with an informative and positive browsing experience. 

3. Curate Data

When you’re certain your data and content are clean, you can select the products and attributes you want displayed in your catalog and begin inputting them. 

Of course, manually entering everything would be extremely time-consuming. It’s recommended that you automate the data transfer process as much as possible, which will be relatively simple if your catalog software is connected to your PIM.

4. Customize Your Catalog

Your software should allow for customization of the filters and categories used, as well as the look and feel of your catalog. At this stage, you can complete those customizations so your catalog perfectly represents your brand.

Add an optional step: Set up any necessary export templates. For example, if users need to download/export data from the catalog, configure pre-defined templates that will auto-populate content consistently and/or automatically transform assets into specified sizes or formats.

Add an optional step: If your catalog contains sensitive info or should only be viewed by certain people, you can set up security policies that will ensure only pre-defined users can access that catalog. This is typically done through a pre-defined password or one-time passcode (OTP) request.

5. Publish Your Catalog

Your catalog is now ready to go live. Publish it online, grant access to those you wish to share it with, and enjoy the convenience it provides.

6. Create an Update Process

The ease of editing a digital product catalog is one of its strengths, but that ease is only fully realized if you have a concrete process in place for managing it. 

Discuss with your team what a good updating process looks like for you, whether that means keeping your catalog synced with your PIM, making updates at a set time every quarter, or otherwise.

A digital product catalog is a deceptively simple tool that can have a great deal of influence on your organization’s sales. With access to a digital catalog, potential customers and other partners gain a comprehensive view of your offerings at a glance, removing much of the friction from the buying or distribution process.

Any digital product catalog can be a powerful tool for growth, but especially one that’s connected with your PIM. If that PIM-supported catalog can also be accessed online by anyone, it becomes even more convenient, giving your brand the flexibility to expand on the digital shelf.