What software should you use to create a product catalogue?
18 August 2022
It is an essential tool for e-commerce businesses, whether B2B or B2C, and whether in print or online. The product catalogue is one of the most important points of contact for your customers, as it gives them a taster and an overview of your brand and your products. By making your product or products appealing, the product catalogue is the ideal tool to help you boost your sales. By detailing their features, components, materials, uses and applications – and perhaps prices – catalogues present all the key data and information relating to your products that is important to your future customers.
How can you streamline and optimise the creation of this catalogue? Which tool and/or software should you use?
A wide range of software programmes… but which ones suit your needs?
There are many tools and software programmes available to help you create your product catalogue, but the days of Word-based brochures are long gone. In reality, the tool you choose for creating your catalogue must meet your most specific needs.
Extremely powerful and professional software programmes such as Adobe InDesign or Flipsnack allow you to edit catalogues and other content, often using a basic template, which can then be converted into digital catalogues. These are high-performance, specialist programmes that allow you to showcase your product details, generate PDFs of your catalogues and often provide technical support if required.
Microsoft Publisher is another design tool that also allows you to create catalogues with polished layouts, and is already included if you have a Microsoft 365 subscription.
Even Canva, which is accessible to everyone and ideal for beginners when it comes to creating brochures, leaflets or even catalogues – all of which can be produced in digital format – can be an excellent tool if your business is just starting out. Its extensive range of free stock images is a major strength of this software, which is available in both a free and a professional (i.e. paid) version.
Other free solutions are also available, such as FlipHTML5, DiskCatalogMaker and Peperi, which can be suitable tools if you’re just starting out and/or are a small business.
Interactive catalogues are also highly popular with e-retailers, and are now increasingly so in the B2B sector: they align with how consumers use the internet today; they make it easier for them to find information by providing an interactive experience (keyword search within the content, seamless navigation via an interactive table of contents, product zoom, etc.) and can lead to significant cost savings.
PIM for its flexibility and reliability
To ensure a product catalogue of the highest standard in terms of data quality, one that remains flexible should any changes arise, and is quick and easy to create, export and distribute…, PIM stands out as the leading catalogue creation software.
It is a tool that enables any business to save a considerable amount of time and effort: by carefully following the creation steps and once the settings have been configured, the creation and distribution of your product catalogue are automated – you don’t have to do a thing!
Generally speaking, with PIM, you need to think in terms of an omnichannel approach, and this aspect must be reflected in your catalogue(s), whether they are in print or digital format. Whatever your industry, the pace and rhythm throughout the year are sustained, and your product catalogue must keep up and be published on time, with product information that is as accurate as possible.
Put simply, the PIM is designed as a comprehensive platform for creating your product catalogue: it enables stakeholders to contribute seamlessly and keeps them satisfied, allows product information to be modified quickly and easily, and ensures that data is consistently up to date with zero typos or errors…Creating your catalogue via the PIM allows you to easily manage the distribution of your product information across all your web channels, whilst ensuring multi-channel consistency and an optimal customer experience.
Many brands (such as PCB Création and NAOS) trust us to manage their print materials and create their product catalogues – so why not you?
Conclusion
There are numerous software programmes, tools and other platforms available for creating product catalogues that will deliver the best possible product experience to your users and future customers. The key considerations depend largely on your business: whether you operate in B2B or B2C, and how much experience your company has with creating product catalogues. Not only does this valuable tool showcase your products by providing as much information as possible to your prospects, but it also acts as a showcase for your brand as a whole. However, creating this material requires rigorous organisation and certain crucial skills – something that is made easier and simpler by using PIM software.