The instinct on getting a catalog is to upload the entire product range. That is almost always the wrong move: a catalog is browsed on a phone, inside a conversation, by someone who came with a question — not a storefront to be explored.
What a catalog is for
Three jobs, and it is good at all of them: letting a customer see what you sell without leaving the chat, letting an agent send a specific product instead of describing it, and letting someone assemble an order you can then take.
It is not a substitute for a website. Discovery, comparison and detailed research all work better on a real product page. Treat the catalog as the shortlist rather than the shelf.
Curate hard
Include your best sellers, not your full range
A catalog of 30 well-chosen items outperforms one with 400. Scrolling a long list on a phone inside a chat window is genuinely unpleasant, and the marginal item you add makes every other item slightly harder to find.
Good candidates: your top sellers, current-season items, anything customers ask about repeatedly, and bundles that are hard to explain in words. Poor candidates: slow movers, items with complex variant matrices, and anything frequently out of stock.
Product entries that work
- Name it the way customers say it, not the way your ERP does. "Blue cotton kurta, medium" beats "KRT-BLU-M-2024".
- One clear image on a plain background, correctly oriented, and legible as a thumbnail.
- Price that matches your website. A mismatch is the fastest way to lose trust mid-conversation.
- A description that answers the obvious question — size, material, what is included. Two lines.
- A link to the full product page for anyone who wants more.
Variants are the hard part
Catalogs handle simple products well and variant-heavy products poorly. A shirt in five colours and six sizes is thirty entries, which buries everything else you sell.
The practical approach is one entry per product showing the default variant, with the specifics settled in conversation or on the linked page. Slightly less automated, considerably more usable.
Keep stock honest
A catalog showing something you cannot supply generates a conversation that ends in disappointment, and it is worse than not listing the item. If your catalog is not synced to real inventory, review it weekly and remove anything unavailable. Treat this as a standing task, not a one-off.
Use it as an agent tool
The highest-value use is often not customer browsing at all — it is an agent sending exactly the right product card mid-conversation. That removes ambiguity about what is being discussed, and it converts noticeably better than a link or a description. Make sure your team knows how, because this is where most of the return sits.
Measure what matters
- Which items get viewed, and which never do — delete the latter.
- How many catalog views turn into a conversation about buying.
- Whether agent-sent product cards convert better than customer browsing. Usually they do, and it tells you where to invest.