Start with the way customers think
Group items the way a customer would look for them, not the way your stockroom is arranged. A café might use Coffee, Cold drinks, Sandwiches and Sweets. A home-services company might use Plumbing, Electrical, Air conditioning and Cleaning. Aim for categories a person can scan in two seconds.
Too many categories is a common mistake. If a category holds two items, fold it into a neighbour. If one holds sixty, split it.
Names and descriptions
The name should be what customers call the thing. “Classic cotton T-shirt” beats “Item 214”. The description is for the one fact people always ask: the size range, the material, what is included, how long a service takes. One or two lines is plenty.
Avoid copying manufacturer text. Customers can tell, and it tends to answer questions nobody asked.
Photos do most of the selling
You do not need a studio. You need good daylight, a plain background and the item filling most of the frame. Take every photo the same way, so the catalog looks like one shop and not twenty. If colour matters (it nearly always does for clothes, flowers and paint), check that the photo on your phone looks like the real item.
For services, a photo of the finished result or of your team at work is more reassuring than a stock image.
Options without the back-and-forth
Sizes, colours, extra toppings, spice levels, add-ons: if you find yourself asking the same clarifying question on most orders, it should be an option the customer picks up front. An option can usually carry its own price, which saves you from explaining that the large costs a little more.
The test is simple. Look at your last twenty orders. Any question you asked more than a few times belongs in the catalog.
Prices and stock
Show prices up front. Hiding them makes customers message to ask, and a customer who has to ask is a customer who sometimes does not. If a price depends on something (distance, size of the job), say “from” and explain what changes it.
The other half is stock. Selling something you have run out of is worse than not listing it, because you then have to write the apology. Make it a habit to mark items unavailable as soon as the last one goes.
A small before and after
Imagine a home bakery. Before: thirty photos in one list, items called “chocolate”, “choc 2” and “the big one”, the price mentioned in the caption of some and not others, and a question on nearly every order about how many people a cake serves.
After: three categories (Cakes, Cupcakes, Gift boxes). Each cake has one clean photo, a name a stranger would understand, and a line saying how many it serves and how many days’ notice it needs. Size is an option with its own price. The gift boxes show what is inside. Nothing about the baking changed, but the questions in the chat dropped to the odd special request, which is where the owner’s time is best spent.
Keep it alive
A catalog is not a one-off job. Once a week, spend ten minutes removing what you no longer sell, fixing what has changed and pushing your bestsellers to the top. Customers notice an old menu faster than you think.
General advice from the 2sra3 team, written from how online ordering usually works. It is not legal, tax or financial advice, and your own rules and local regulations come first.