Adding, editing and removing productsMatrix pricingShipping options and calculationsImage managementFeatured productsCross selling
Your product catalogue is the very foundation of your online store, making it the primary focus of your back-office system. Depending on the level of features your catalogue administration supports, you will be able to:
The way you present your products to your website visitors undeniably makes a massive impact on your sales conversion rate. And much of this depends on the administration features that you have at your disposal to manage your online product catalogue.
A basic product details page, with only a simple product description, just one photograph, a price, just one delivery option and a button to add to basket, will struggle to differentiate you from your competitors.
By contrast, a product page that shows a variety of neatly organised elements, showing a range of purchasing and shipping options, several product images and other products the customer might like, will make for a richer and more interesting shopping experience and will encourage considerably more sales.
So you need to make sure that your choice of eCommerce system offers a good range of features, as a system with limited back-office functionality will hold you back by restricting what you can do with your product details pages.
But also beware of back-office catalogue systems that go too far by providing far more than you’re ever likely to need. Not only could you end up finding these systems difficult to use, but you could also end up overloading visitors with unnecessary information if you cannot disable certain features.
This is where an experienced provider of bespoke eCommerce web design can make a telling difference. With a one-size-fits-all approach you have to fit around the system, whereas a bespoke provider will be able to configure their software so that the system instead fits around you.
All of our systems equip you with the tools you need to create fully featured and comprehensive product details pages.
Many merchandising features come as standard, including featured items, promotional discounts, multiple image display and the option to suggest other products that the customer might like.
You also have the flexibility to create additional custom fields that are tailored specifically to your own product offering, which you can use to improve the depth and quality of your product information.
You can use custom fields either to store information for your own use or to enhance your product pages by displaying a product summary, technical specifications or other useful background content separately from your main product description. For instance, if you sell clothing and accessories, you could make your products details pages more useful by showing a separate set of care instructions.
The more specialised your product offering, the more specialised your eCommerce solution needs to be and the greater the risk you’ll run into trouble with an off-the shelf eCommerce package.