Five rooms a catalog study walks through

We sit with the catalog owner and one merchandiser. They mark categories in play, campaign dates, dual-language listing quirks, and the queries habitual shoppers type. We also ask who has the authority to unpublish a tile. If nobody does, the study will still name the tile; it will not pretend the catalog can move.

A sample is agreed: usually four to eight categories, one of them seasonal. We capture listing screens, filter states, and a set of product handoffs on a named date. Mid-window banner pushes are recorded as contamination, not silently absorbed. Hafiz Rahman’s electronics catalog taught us to say this out loud in the pack.

Tan Wei Ming walks each sampled category from navigation and, separately, from search. Face-out, sort, filter, first three scrolls, jump into a product, return. We use a staff or test account you provide. We do not complete live checkout. Add-to-cart on the test account is as far as purchase intent is allowed to go.

Priya Nair maps the small acts: variant picks, size-chart opens, wishlist, add-to-cart, comparison returns. Holds and leaks are written against screens from the freeze, not against a ratio. Dual-language cards are checked to see whether Bahasa Malaysia and English describe the same SKU.

The findings session is ninety minutes. Amira Hassan chairs. Merchandisers are expected to disagree. The pack is updated with the disagreement where it changes a recommendation. The engagement ends when you know which face-outs, filters, or product handoffs you will change before the next lock — not when a slide says “next steps.”