Shopping catalogues are where the real functionality of online trading exists. Catalogues replicate the offline shopping experience by offering customers departments in which to browse hundreds if not thousands of products and even sales promotions, discounts and cross-selling opportunities to maximise sales.
MANAGEMENT
The catalogue has the added benefit of acting as your store manager. With forms and carts you would have to recode a web page to modify a product or add a new one and this can quickly become a time consuming and laborious task.
A catalogue has an administration area where you enter all the product information, images and pricing and then the catalogue automatically handles presenting these on your website.
FUNCTIONALITY
Catalogues can normally be configured to replicate your company branding and present departments and products in a way that reflects the offerings you have. Add to this the fact that catalogues have search facilities, store customer information, record order information and monitor stock levels and you start to realise how powerful they can be.
SERVICE
If you think about when you shop online you will probably realise that you have come to expect a minimum level of service from the online stores you use. They will look good, offer products in a logical and attractive manner and make it easy for you to ‘check out and pay’ for the goods you are buying.
This level of service can only be achieved by using a catalogue and if you do not use one you will probably lose a lot of potential sales. We have already stated that catalogues can be very inexpensive and are surprisingly easy to use, so it is a big gamble to not use one if you are serious about trading online.
Catalogues are just as good at selling services as products. Put some thought into how you can standardise your services or bundle them in to packages that can be sold for fixed prices. Magazine subscriptions (3 month, 6 month, 1 year) and memberships can all be offered and managed through a catalogue.
Don’t get stuck in a box – almost anything can be sold online using a catalogue solution.
