How BigCommerce Catalog Enrichment Can Help You Sell More on BFCM and Beyond

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Key highlights

• Holiday shoppers need useful answers fast. Complete product content can help them decide whether something is right for them, whether they arrive from search, an AI assistant, or a promotion.

Holiday shoppers need useful answers fast. Complete product content can help them decide whether something is right for them, whether they arrive from search, an AI assistant, or a promotion.

• BigCommerce Catalog Enrichment helps your team generate product copy, review it, and apply it from inside your BigCommerce catalog, with a human making the final call.

BigCommerce Catalog Enrichment helps your team generate product copy, review it, and apply it from inside your BigCommerce catalog, with a human making the final call.

• The work you do before Black Friday and Cyber Monday can help shoppers find and understand your products throughout the year.

The work you do before Black Friday and Cyber Monday can help shoppers find and understand your products throughout the year.

A holiday shopper has a question. Is your catalog ready to answer it?

Imagine Maya, who runs an online home goods store. Her team is preparing for Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM).

Maya's team has promotions planned, emails ready, and a collection of gift-worthy products they expect shoppers to love.

One of those products is a rechargeable reading light. Maya's team knows it has three brightness settings, charges with USB-C, and has a flexible neck. But its product page simply lists it as a ‘Book Light’ with no additional details.

Now picture a shopper looking for a gift for someone who reads in bed without disturbing their partner. She might type that question into an AI assistant. She might search online and open a few product pages. Or she might click Maya's holiday email. Wherever she starts, she needs enough information to know whether this light fits the bill.

The details are already in Maya's business. They just aren't doing much work in her catalog. And with hundreds of products to prepare, rewriting every listing by hand is a big addition to an already full holiday calendar.

This is exactly the problem BigCommerce Catalog Enrichment is meant to solve.

What does Catalog Enrichment do?

Catalog Enrichment helps turn the product information a merchant already has into more complete, useful content. From inside BigCommerce, Maya can select a group of products and generate content for product names, descriptions, SEO page titles and meta descriptions, plus AEO- and GEO-ready snippets and question-and-answer fields. She can give the tool guidance on her brand's voice, review the results, and decide what to apply.

For the reading light, a fuller description could explain the verified features and the situation they serve: adjustable brightness for late-night reading, USB-C charging, and a flexible neck that directs light onto the page. That's more useful than “Book Light” to a shopper deciding on a gift.

The AI-focused fields add context that search and AI tools can use to interpret what the product is and when it might be relevant:

• AI-focused snippet: a short, plain-language summary written to be easily understood by AI tools. For the reading light, it might read: “This rechargeable reading light has three brightness settings, USB-C charging, and a flexible neck, so you can read in bed without disturbing a sleeping partner.”

AI-focused snippet: a short, plain-language summary written to be easily understood by AI tools. For the reading light, it might read: “This rechargeable reading light has three brightness settings, USB-C charging, and a flexible neck, so you can read in bed without disturbing a sleeping partner.”

• Q&A field: an answer to a question shoppers are likely to ask. For example: “Q: Can I use this light next to someone who's sleeping? A: Yes. It has three adjustable brightness settings, and the flexible neck lets you aim the light at the page.”

Q&A field: an answer to a question shoppers are likely to ask. For example: “Q: Can I use this light next to someone who's sleeping? A: Yes. It has three adjustable brightness settings, and the flexible neck lets you aim the light at the page.”

Catalog Enrichment keeps a person in the loop. It works from existing product information, and built-in quality checks to generate an AI visibility completeness score. It flags potential issues so Maya can see where to look and make changes before anything goes live.

The point isn't to fill a page with more words. It's to answer the questions a real person has before they buy. As Michael Scholz explains, AI is changing the shopping journey:

“The typical funnel of awareness, consideration, making a decision, and then making a purchase is going to compress from intent to transaction. As you're having a dialogue with AI answer engines, they're going to get to know you and know exactly what you're doing.”— Michael Scholz, Vice President of Product Marketing, Commerce

“The typical funnel of awareness, consideration, making a decision, and then making a purchase is going to compress from intent to transaction. As you're having a dialogue with AI answer engines, they're going to get to know you and know exactly what you're doing.”

— Michael Scholz, Vice President of Product Marketing, Commerce

That shorter path from a question to a purchase puts pressure on every shopper to decide quickly, and quick decisions depend on having all the information up front. Whether someone is chatting with an AI assistant, comparing search results, or clicking through an email, they want the details they need without having to guess. If Maya’s catalog doesn’t spell out what the reading light can do, shoppers have less to go on, and so does an AI assistant trying to match the product to their needs.

Catalog Enrichment helps turn those details into clear, complete product content, so shoppers can decide quickly and with confidence when that moment of interest arrives.

How better product content can support BFCM sales

During a holiday promotion, a shopper might move quickly from an email or search result to a product page. If the page leaves basic questions unanswered, a discount may not be enough to persuade them. Catalog Enrichment can help Maya make more of those visits count in three practical ways.

Help shoppers find a relevant product. A name like “Book Light” doesn't say much. A clear description and search title can tell shoppers what the product does and give search engines more specific information about the page. AI-focused snippets and Q&A add context for questions a shopper might ask in conversation. Where a product appears still depends on the channel and other factors, but clearer information gives it a better foundation.

Give people reasons to feel confident buying. A shopper choosing a gift needs to picture the recipient using it. Maya can bring the answers she already has into the product content so the shopper can decide without guessing. The same principle applies whether a merchant sells apparel, replacement parts, or home goods: explain the details that matter to the person on the other side of the screen.

Get more of the catalog ready in less time. Maya's team can work through a selection of products in batches, review the generated copy, and apply the fields they want to keep, instead of rewriting listings one by one. That frees up time for the rest of the holiday to-do list. The quality checks help focus review where it matters most, such as sparse product records or claims that need a closer look, and Maya makes the final call.

The value doesn't end on Cyber Monday

BFCM gives Maya a deadline, but the product questions don't disappear when the sale ends. In January, a shopper might be replacing a worn-out reading light. In spring, someone might buy one for a trip. Later in the year, a shopper could be looking for a back-to-school gift. The same accurate details can help each person understand the product.

That makes catalog improvement an ongoing habit, not a once-a-year project. As Maya adds products or updates existing ones, she can look for thin descriptions, missing context, and answers her customers keep asking for. She can start with a category that matters for the holidays, see how shoppers respond, and keep improving the catalog from there.

Catalog Enrichment is rolling out to BigCommerce merchants ahead of general availability for all customers before the holiday selling season. It handles content for the BigCommerce catalog and doesn't create channel-specific marketplace or advertising fields. Merchants who also sell on marketplaces or run ads, and need to tailor product information for those destinations, can explore Feedonomics Enrichment as a complementary next step.

The final word

The most useful holiday prep turns out to be a little less glamorous than another festive promotion. It starts with a fresh look at the products you're already asking customers to buy. Can someone tell what each item does, who it's for, and why it fits their needs? Could an AI shopping assistant answer those questions from the information you've provided?

For Maya, improving one reading light listing is a start. Bringing that same clarity to the rest of her catalog gives more holiday shoppers a fair chance to find the right gift, and gives future shoppers a better experience whenever they arrive at her storefront.

Explore how BigCommerce is preparing merchants for AI-driven shopping →