Role Overview
Clients don’t hire Catalog and Store Optimization Experts just to “upload products” — they hire you to make product catalogs *convert* and storefronts *scale*. In a wholesale or reselling business, the catalog is the core asset. If it’s incomplete, cluttered, inconsistent, or misaligned with buying behavior, the business bleeds revenue in silence. Your job is to make sure the product data, structure, and offer logic work together to drive sales, not just populate a store. That means being fluent in what makes a catalog not just presentable, but profitable.
This role is not about mindless bulk listing, safe guesswork, or keeping a store “organized.” That kind of surface-level execution creates operational friction, customer confusion, or worse — liability for distributors handling brand-sensitive listings. When you get it right, product discovery improves, buyer trust increases, and repeat orders stabilize. Get it wrong, and clients face cart abandonment, compliance risks, and unscalable chaos. The difference between a functioning Shopify site and a commercially viable catalog is the difference between staying busy and staying in business.
Standards You Must Meet
• Every product must be listed with complete, accurate, and standardized data — missing specs, vague titles, or inconsistent variants are not acceptable.
• You’re expected to structure catalogs for buying logic, not just backend neatness; categories, filters, and tags must align with how resellers search and shop.
• Importing products? You must clean, validate, and normalize first — dumping messy supplier data into the store will cost sales and damage trust.
• Product pages should be optimized for wholesale conversion: correct pricing tiers, clear minimums, and strong differentiation from retail listings.
• Updates should reflect real inventory and brand-approved info — clients cannot afford reselling errors, compliance flags, or mispriced SKUs.
• Storefronts must remain buyer-friendly: no broken collections, filter dead-ends, or duplicate listings that dilute catalog credibility.
• Data uploads aren’t deliverables by themselves — clients care whether their catalog now performs better, loads faster, or sells more effectively.
• If your catalog work results in buyer confusion, support tickets, or fulfillment mistakes, it doesn’t matter how “organized” your backend looks.
What You’ll Be Doing
• Clean, validate, and restructure supplier product data to ensure every listing meets Shopify formatting, wholesale specs, and brand requirements.
• Organize product catalogs using logic that reflects how resellers search — categories, filters, and tags must guide decisions, not just display options.
• Configure listings with correct wholesale pricing, quantity minimums, and resale conditions that follow client strategy and compliance rules.
• Identify broken collections, duplicate listings, or miscategorized items that disrupt buyer navigation — and fix them with zero guesswork.
• Regularly update live catalog listings to reflect real inventory status and supplier-approved details — outdated data isn’t optional.
• Preview listings before publishing and verify that each product page is built to convert — not just look complete.
• Monitor catalog performance for friction points like failed searches, high reorder questions, or cart abandonment linked to listing logic.
• Spot repetitive product updates or store processes and recommend automations to eliminate manual workload and reduce human error.
What You’ll Hand Over
• A fully optimized Shopify catalog with verified product data, accurate variants, and wholesale pricing tiers in place.
• A clean import summary showing which supplier files were normalized, corrected, and excluded to protect catalog quality.
• A published site structure map detailing categories, tags, and filters based on buyer logic, not backend labels.
• A QA-reviewed batch of live product pages with screenshots confirming pricing logic, minimums, and brand compliance.
• A performance report highlighting resolved catalog issues that impacted search visibility, conversions, or cart flow.
Tools You’ll Need to Use
• Shopify Admin – Central platform for managing products, collections, pricing, and store structure.
• Google Sheets – Essential for product data management, bulk edits, and catalog accuracy checks.
• Microsoft Excel – Used for VLOOKUPs, pivot tables, and advanced catalog data manipulation.
• Canva or Figma – Supports basic image resizing and store asset readiness in line with product display standards.
• Google Merchant Center – Required for syncing product feeds with Google Shopping and handling feed diagnostics.
• Dropbox or Google Drive – Shared access and organization of vendor files, images, and product documentation.
• Inventory Source or Syncee – Relevant for syncing supplier catalogs and managing product updates from distributors.
Why Work Smarter
As a Catalog and Store Optimization Expert, you’re expected to know what can be automated, and either recommend it or set it up. This doesn’t mean mastering code. It means speaking the language of modern ecommerce workflows and applying logic. At minimum, you should be able to identify repetitive Shopify or wholesale tasks that can be eliminated with automation platforms.
This is not yet a strict qualification, but it is becoming the unspoken baseline. OES sets AI and automation awareness as standard precisely because high-functioning clients already demand it — and they won’t wait for VAs to catch up.
Why Your Work Matters
In wholesale and reselling businesses, a single catalog error can mean thousands in lost revenue, stalled fulfillment, or broken trust with resellers. The buying process starts — and too often ends — with how products are listed, priced, and structured. When that’s misaligned, even the best products don’t move. This is not admin work. It’s growth-critical execution that directly affects conversion, reorders, and customer retention.
Clients running multi-supplier catalogs don’t have time to double-check messy product data or clean up operational damage. They rely on you to build buyer-ready catalogs that work at scale — fast, accurate, and compliant. If your work results in fewer abandoned carts, smoother order flows, and more informed buyers, you’ve added value. If it creates confusion, friction, or manual cleanup, you’ve cost the client. That’s why this role isn’t optional — it’s the backbone of every store that sells.
What We Expect From You
As a Specialist Catalog and Store Optimization Expert at OES, you own the intersection of catalog integrity, pricing accuracy, and Shopify store performance inside wholesale resale models. That means you’ve moved past simple data uploads or cosmetic edits—you understand how to structure collections, product hierarchies, tags, compare-at pricing, and rule-based automations that drive commercial outcomes. You don’t just maintain a store; you optimize it for buyer psychology, operational efficiency, and wholesale-to-retail transitions. You’re expected to catch upstream issues before they cost the client money—and know how to correct them without adding risk.
You’re someone who executes with discipline and can think through the downstream impact of every change you make. You can identify supplier-side discrepancies and resolve them within compliance and pricing policy boundaries. You have strong product judgment: knowing what to push, what to pause, and what to flag for strategy—without needing to be told. You’re also accountable for hitting store readiness timelines, catalog profitability targets, and key conversion metrics directly tied to OES performance. This is a commercial-tier role with real risk and real reward—own your catalog, own the outcome.
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$530 – $1,500
OES salary standards reflect real market benchmarks, tier and experience level, ensuring fair pay for VAs and realistic expectations for clients.
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