An accurate, up-to-date, and visible product catalog helps your brand maximize sales, build strong partnerships, and avoid costly errors like duplicates or outdated data that could lead to lost opportunities. To support this, your goal should be to create and maintain an excellent product catalog. This article covers the key do’s and don’ts to keep your catalog accurate, current, and visible to partners, helping you prevent mistakes that could impact your business.
Below is a list of best practices you should follow to create high-quality product catalogs, with guidance tailored to key fields and functional areas. These recommendations will help ensure your catalog data is accurate, complete, and optimized for visibility and performance on the Product Marketplace.
To appear and perform well on the Product Marketplace, your catalog must include accurate and complete data in these key fields:
Field | Requirement | Best Practice | Benefit |
|---|---|---|---|
Product Name | Mandatory | Use clear, specific names so your products can easily be found when searching (e.g., “Men’s Running Shoes – Blue, Size 10”). | Helps customers find exactly what they want quickly, improving search accuracy and increasing sales. |
Product URL | Mandatory | This must be valid and lead to a live product page. | Ensures customers land on the correct page, reducing bounce rates and improving user experience. |
Image URL | Mandatory | Use high-resolution images hosted on reliable servers. | High-quality images increase trust and appeal, boosting click-through and conversion rates. |
Price (Original/Current) | Mandatory | Include both if applicable, especially for discounted items. | Clearly shows value and discounts, encouraging purchases and transparency. |
GTIN / MPN / EAN / ASIN | Strongly recommended | Provide valid, unique identifiers for deduplication and compatibility. | Improves product matching across platforms and prevents listing duplicates, enhancing data quality. |
Manufacturer | Strongly recommended | Include the full brand/manufacturer name for better search and filtering. | Helps customers find branded products easily and supports brand-specific marketing and filtering. |
Category | Strongly recommended | Use consistent and clear product categorization, so your products can be shown in the correct category. | Ensures products appear in relevant searches and categories, increasing visibility and relevance. |
Description | Recommended | Provide meaningful, concise product descriptions. | Gives customers essential info to make informed decisions, reducing returns and increasing satisfaction. |
Address all reported errors, warnings, and duplicate entries promptly to ensure your catalogs remain accurate and fully functional. Learn more about File Formats for Product Catalogs.
Below is a list of common mistakes to avoid when creating product catalogs, highlighting key fields and functional areas where errors frequently occur. Ignoring these guidelines can lead to inaccurate, incomplete, and poorly optimized catalog data, negatively impacting visibility and performance on the Product Marketplace.
Below are additional resources to help you with specific aspects of managing your product catalog. Each article complements different parts of this best practices guide to resolve issues, optimize your catalog, and maintain data quality.
File Formats for Product Catalogs - Understand acceptable file formats and preparing your catalog files correctly. Useful before starting catalog submission.
Add Product Catalogs as a Brand - Step-by-step instructions for new users to submit catalogs under their brand. Helps get started on the right foot.
Troubleshoot Product Catalog Errors & Warnings - Diagnosing and fixing common errors, warnings, and duplicates. Essential for keeping your catalog healthy and visible.
Manage Uploaded Product Catalogs - How to update, maintain, and organize your catalogs after upload. Related to keeping data fresh and accurate.
Create & Manage Product Catalog Rules - Customizing catalog processing rules to handle variants, avoid duplicates, and optimize data display.
Configure Product Catalog Search & Filters - Enhancing product discoverability by setting up effective search and filtering options based on catalog data.