A catalogue that is wrong is worse than no catalogue
The catalogue problem is not setting one up, it is keeping it true. A price that is three months out of date converts an easy sale into an apology, and the customer screenshot of the old price is the argument you now have to have.
Two ways to keep it honest
| Approach | Works when | Fails when |
|---|---|---|
| Small and hand-maintained | Under about thirty items, prices stable | Somebody forgets, once, and nobody notices for weeks |
| Driven from your shop's data | You already have a system of record | The sync breaks quietly and nobody is watching it |
Both fail silently, which is the thing to design against. Whichever you pick, put a date on it: "prices as at 1 September" in the catalogue description costs nothing and makes staleness visible to you as well as to the customer.
What belongs in it
- The things people ask the price of most. Count them in your own inbox; the answer is usually a dozen items.
- Things that photograph well and are understood from a picture.
- Stable prices. Anything that moves with an exchange rate does not belong in a catalogue that is updated by hand.
What does not
- The full range. Nobody scrolls a phone catalogue past a few dozen items.
- Variants that matter. Size, colour and fitment turn a catalogue entry into a wrong order.
- Anything you are nearly out of. A catalogue entry is a promise of availability, whether you meant it that way or not.
When something does sell out, take it out the same day and offer the customers who ask a back-in-stock alert instead. That converts the disappointment into a list of people who want the next delivery.
The honest test
Open the catalogue as a customer would, once a week, and check three prices against the till. If that is too much work, the catalogue is too big - and a smaller, true one outsells a large, stale one every time.
Questions people actually ask
How often should a WhatsApp catalogue be updated?
Whenever prices or availability change, which for most businesses means it needs to be driven from the same source as the shop rather than maintained by hand.
What should not go in a chat catalogue?
Anything that changes weekly, anything with variants that matter, and the long tail. A catalogue is a shop window, not an inventory listing.
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