Managing a product catalog with tens of thousands—or even hundreds of thousands—of SKUs can be daunting. With so many products and potential data points, how do you determine which attributes to focus on first? Where do you begin when your goal is to optimize for search relevance, user engagement, and overall business impact?

The key lies in strategic attribute prioritization. By approaching your catalog with a clear framework, you can focus your data improvement efforts where they matter most—and generate meaningful ROI.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to prioritizing product attributes for large-scale ecommerce catalogs.

Step 1: Identify Foundational Attributes That Power Search Relevance

The first priority should be attributes that directly influence how well your products perform in search results and how easily customers can filter through them.

Core Attributes
Ensure that every SKU in your catalog includes the essential building blocks:

• Category
• Brand
• Product Name or Title

These core fields are critical for product indexing, navigation, and SEO performance. Incomplete or inconsistent entries here can significantly reduce visibility and discoverability.

Physical Attributes
Attributes like size, color, material, and dimensions play a central role in filter functionality. Standardizing and completing these fields improves the accuracy of layered navigation and on-site search filtering.

Tip: Use CatalogIQ to score attribute completeness and consistency at scale, so you can zero in on which products are missing core data.

Step 2: Optimize Descriptive Attributes to Increase Engagement

Once foundational data is in place, the next layer involves attributes that help describe and differentiate products more meaningfully. These are particularly important in categories like apparel, beauty, home decor, and food.

Step 3: Prioritize High-Value Attributes for Technical and Performance-Based Products

For categories like electronics, appliances, or tools, performance specs like battery life or compatibility are essential to confident buying decisions.

Step 4: Incorporate Customer-Centric Attributes That Reflect Brand Values

Attributes like "eco-friendly" or "made in USA" connect with values-driven consumers and increasingly show up in search and filter behavior.

Real-World Attribute Prioritization in Action

A home improvement retailer using CatalogIQ discovered that 60% of SKUs lacked compatibility tags, resulting in high returns and poor relevance. After enriching those fields, they saw a boost in conversions and customer satisfaction.

Tips for Managing Attribute Prioritization at Scale

• Audit Your Existing Attribute Coverage
• Analyze Customer Behavior
• Align with Business Goals
• Apply Category-Specific Strategies
• Automate and Enrich with AI

The Bottom Line: Better Attributes, Better Commerce

When you prioritize the right attributes, you unlock better performance across your ecommerce stack:

• Improved search relevance
• Smarter filtering and discovery
• Increased engagement and conversion
• Higher customer satisfaction and lower returns

Start with the essentials. Build from there. And let data, not guesswork, drive your decisions. And that's how you begin to optimize your product data Beyond The Catalog.

Want to know which product attributes will drive the most impact? Contact Kevin Jackson at kevin.jackson@magnetlabs.ai to schedule a demo of CatalogIQ, MagnetLABS’ innovative catalog quality scoring and enrichment platform.