Scheduling a product catalog is no easy task, but it is necessary to build a strong business foundation. So what should you expect from your database for product catalog? How do you know if you are making the right choice for your business? In this post, we will explore some of the top features that should be included in your database.
Database For Product Catalog
Your online store database is the main backbone of your business.
It gathers together all the product information that will make all your internal and external communication processes, sales and distribution either a success… or a failure.
A catalog management software allows companies that operate through the online environment to manage, store, create and keep always updated their catalogues in any of the channels in which they are present. In addition, it offers the possibility of ranking them in a structure defined on the basis of their name, prices, suppliers or descriptions, among others.
How to create an optimized database is something every online business needs to learn, but we can help you in this phase by reviewing which software will make it easier for you to develop, maintain and enrich your product database.
Access
Less well known than Excel, Microsoft Access is another database management program offered by Microsoft Office.
It’s a very useful software for those companies that have a more complex structure, because it allows them to work with related databases and create business applications.
In short, while other spreadsheets seem oriented to mathematicians or to be multifunctional, Access is a tool designed for business and will allow you to organize your database in a 100% professional, organized and safe way. The only drawback is that you will need enough technical knowledge to be able to make the best use of it and not get bogged down among tutorials and tables.
Excel
Without a doubt this was the first top-ranking database. Excel spreadsheets made the lives of many companies easier by enabling them to move from paper to digital media.
Instead of accumulating thousands of sheets and cards in filing cabinets, with Excel you could create gigantic tables occupying hardly any space, with the freedom to organize columns, rows and fields, from the simplest tables to the most complex templates.
As in Microsoft Access, some expertise in Excel is required to make the database system efficient, so that you don’t end up losing track of data and tables that may be difficult to locate among your various servers and folders.
But times evolve, and so does the most effective method for creating databases for your online store.
Excel is already the past of product database software.
Let’s see what’s its future.
E commerce Product Catalog Database Design
Databases are vital tools for storing, managing, and retrieving information. They are also critical for building an e-commerce system. A well-structured database powers e-commerce and manages all the interactions within the system.
A good e-commerce database design includes:
Simple, functional database structure: The database table structure is simple but covers all the required functionality without compromising the user experience.
High performance: Database queries execute quickly to facilitate live customer interactions and support a frictionless shopping experience. Therefore, the selected database should have good indexing and performance optimization options.
High availability and scalability: A good database design is highly available with automatic snapshots and enables automatic scaling to support future platform growth as well as sudden traffic spikes.
Based on these characteristics, a good e-commerce database design involves three key parts:
Database scope: The scope refers to the planned functionality of the database. The underlying table structure of the database, its relationships, and indexes all depend on the functionality of the e-commerce platform.
Database type: The type can vary from a relational database to a NoSQL database or a hybrid approach depending on the requirements and the underlying data structure.
Database infrastructure: Your database can be either unmanaged or managed. The former means spinning up your own database service; the latter means using something like Amazon RDS or Amazon DynamoDB.
In this article, we will review examples of e-commerce databases as they relate to these three areas. We will also explore database design alternatives that simplifying data management for e-commerce, specifically a product information manager.
Database Scope
The main consideration when designing the database is identifying the functionalities offered by the e-commerce platform. These functionalities can be further divided into core functions and additional functions.
Core functions are the functions necessary for facilitating the day-to-day operations of the e-commerce platform, including user management, product and inventory management, shopping cart function, payment management, and shipping/logistics management.
Additional functions are the nice-to-have functions for the e-commerce platform that enhance the user experience for both end-users (customers) and administrators (the business). Additional functions include marketing functions, help desk and support, advanced analytics, and third-party integrations.
Core functions
In this section, let’s see how to structure the database to facilitate the core functions. The following table structure is an example of a database design that covers the core functionality of an e-commerce platform.
This example covers all the basics of an e-commerce platform. Here, the table fields and indexes depending on the design of the overall platform. It contains three separate sections for user management, product management, and shopping process. Let’s have a closer look at each section.
User management
We have created a user table that contains all the user details along with user_payment and user_address tables to store multiple addresses and payment details of users. This structure offers more granular control over data while eliminating duplicate records.
Another way to manage users is by creating two separate user tables for end-users and administrators and assigning relationships according to their requirements, as shown below.
Product management
Managing products is not simply about maintaining a list of products. You also have to manage the inventory, discounts, categories, and other attributes of the products. So always focus on simplifying the data structure while reducing duplicates. In the following table structure, the main product table contains information about the products.