Online product catalogue
What is an online product catalogue?
An online product catalogue is a site that shows the whole range — photographs, descriptions, stock — without taking payment: the order comes by email, by phone or through a sales rep. It suits wholesale, manufacturers and importers, where prices depend on a contract and quantities depend on the warehouse. The data comes from the stock system, so nothing is promised that has already been sold.
Example
An importer holds 2,400 items and publishes them in a PDF catalogue refreshed once a quarter. Customers ring to ask whether something is in stock — 20 to 30 calls a day, two minutes each, plus a walk to the warehouse.
The same range as an online catalogue is one page per item: code, photograph, specification and a stock state that comes from the warehouse system. Calls about availability drop, and the ones that remain are about price and lead time — which is to say, about an order.
We build catalogues like this for any range, with an admin panel and a link to the stock system: for Elektrokomers 68 we built one that way. At Radans the warehouse syncs twice a day, so what the site shows is not days behind what the shelves hold.
A catalogue takes no payment, but it does take enquiries — which is what makes it right when the price is negotiated rather than published. We connect it to the stock system as warehouse sync and ERP integration.
Why it matters for a business
A catalogue is the cheapest way to put a whole range at one address that can be searched, indexed and sent as a link. For wholesale that is often enough: the buyer does not want a basket, they want a code, a specification, a quantity and a date.
The second gain is internal. Once product data lives in one place and travels from there to the site, to quotations and to the price list, the copying between spreadsheets stops.
A catalogue can become a shop without changing any addresses: the same product pages gain a price, a basket and a payment step. Starting with a catalogue is therefore not a dead end, and the pages keep whatever search visibility they have earned in the meantime. We build catalogues of this kind, admin panel included, on our own platform.
What to ask
- Where does the product data come from, and how often is it refreshed?
- Is stock shown as a number, or as a state — in stock, low, sold out?
- What happens to the page of an item you stop selling — does the address survive?
- Who sees prices: everyone, signed-in customers, or only the quotation?
- Can the catalogue become a shop later without new addresses and new photographs?