Thomas Navigator — Online Product Catalog Platform For Manufacturers

Streamline your digital product information strategy with a dynamic product catalog to offer engineers and buyers instant access to what they need.

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Effective Online Product Catalogs to Better Serve Your Customers

In today’s industrial marketplace, engineers and sourcing professionals rely on comprehensive, digitized product data in order to do their jobs. Deliver the rich, detailed product data that a new generation of engineers and sourcing professionals require on your website or on B2B eCommerce portals across the web using the power of the Thomas Navigator Platform.

Providing a best-in-class experience for your customer, the Thomas Navigator Platform offers advanced search and configuration capabilities, helping professionals find products by keyword, individual part numbers, performance characteristics, and detailed dimensions.

Most importantly, users are able to download specs, drawings and CAD models in over 25 industry-standard formats, generated instantly from the most up to date data in the Thomas Navigator Platform database.

Users today are heavily influenced by digital B2C experiences they have in their everyday lives and expect the same ease and convenience when it comes to searching and purchasing parts and components for current work projects. With an organized and optimized product management platform, you and your customers' frustrations will be eased.



Thomas Navigator - Online Product Catalog

Built For Manufacturers

  • Allows business owners, marketers, and product managers to easily make updates to their catalog as needed
  • Reduce customer service and engineering hours, and increase customer satisfaction
  • Be in control through backend tools for self-maintenance
Timken CAD - Online product catalog

Built For Your Customers

  • Utilize a self-serve interface to configure and select the exact products that meet their project requirements
  • See the most up-to-date information for their projects
  • Easily search and compare products to quickly make purchases or requests for quote

FAQs

  • Will I be spending more expensive engineering hours helping customers fulfill their exact requirements using an online product catalog?

    No, you'll actually be experiencing the opposite! When the configuring process is automated, the prices for engineered products can be instantly validated and confirmed against the buyer's requirements, saving valuable customer support time.

  • I want to reach the top of Google search results. How does an online product catalog help me do that?

    Product names and SKUs are indexed by Google so adding this information to your online product catalog contributes to your SEO traffic. And by integrating your online catalog with your company’s order database, this creates an additional sales channel and enables it to be a search engine-friendly system.

  • What does the process look like for upgrading my online product catalog?

    Every manufacturing company is different, so when companies partner with Thomas, their digital transformation process will be custom to their needs. You will be paired with our team of engineers and marketing strategists who will work with you to analyze what you have, cleanse, consolidate, and digitize your product information. Depending on your needs, your platform will have e-commerce functionality to provide a smooth, efficient digital presence designed to compete with the experiences consumers are used to, like Amazon and other online retailers.

  • Does my website impact my manufacturing business?

    Buyers do their own research before they even begin creating shortlists or sending out RFIs — which means you could have lost their business without even talking to them. Your website is your potential customer’s first impression of your business.

    Manufacturers are putting serious effort toward growing awareness of their brands and creating a smooth, efficient digital presence designed to compete with the experiences consumers are used to, like Amazon and other online retailers.

    Your website should be updated with company and product information, easy to navigate, and aesthetically pleasing. In the same sense that you would dress and act professionally in a sales meeting, your website should look and act the same too — or risk losing those potential customers to your competitors. Check out eCommerce website examples for industrial companies here.

How To Guide

The Manufacturer’s Guide To Building Effective Online Product Catalogs

The Manufacturer's Guide to Building Effective Online Product Catalogs

Engineers, sourcing professionals, and purchasing managers are demanding richer product data like CAD models, drawings, and spec sheets. How can you meet their needs and deliver rich data while creating more revenue for you?

This guide discusses how a dynamic eCatalog improves your customers’ ability to search and find your products on your website and your distributors’ sites.

 

Design engineers and sourcing professionals regularly look for 3D CAD and BIM files that offer product specs and performance data to make sure that what they're sourcing will be compatible with their application.

Bring your data to life and enhance your customers' experience on your site with our Interactive View that allows users to spin, zoom, rotate and download CAD and BIM files directly from your site.

The Thomas Navigator platform easily incorporates these file types for download to your website, offering users a greater range of product data in the formats your customers require.


3D CAD file - Online product catalog

Have existing CAD files?

We'll help you optimize and distribute them 27 million+ design engineers and sourcing professionals in the Thomas TraceParts Network to create some of the most valuable leads in the market.

Get The Leads

 

Industrial engineer - Online product catalog

Have product data specs?

If you have product data specs but haven't created 3D CAD files, no worries. Our team of content and production engineers can assist in getting you on the right track today.

Help With CAD Files 

Product configurator - Online product catalogWith Product Configurator technology, you and your customers can easily configure complex products that often have thousands of potential combinations — within seconds.

  • Flexibility to specify your configurable products without engaging a technical salesperson or engineer, saving time and money for everyone
  • Generate 3D CAD/BIM models, sales drawings and submittal documents of the exact configured products
  • Increase information availability for a cleaner sales process
  • Track the most common configured items for inventory control and planning
  • Better communication between actual manufacturing capabilities and clients' needs
  • Decrease your sales cycle dramatically
  • Provide superior online engineering support

 

Manage And Syndicate Your Data In One Platform

Thomas Navigator - Online product catalog

Thomas Navigator doesn’t just help you manage your product information — our platform allows up-to-date and accurate product data to be delivered, in the appropriate file formats, to a myriad of sales channels. With Thomas Connect, you’ll be able to improve your search ranking on your distributors’ websites and deliver more detailed product characteristics to ensure your customers receive a top-notch digital experience, wherever they find your products.

Leverage Thomas Connect today to create a cross-channel marketing strategy that ensures your product data is accurate across your website, on Thomasnet.com, and across all of your distributor partner's sites.

Learn More About Data Syndication

Our expert team works closely with you to assess your target audiences, and cleanse and consolidate your product data to help you deliver the formats to the web destinations you participate in.

We will create a better user experience to optimize the way that your customers search on your website.

Consulting with Thomas engineer experts will teach you how influencing design and sourcing professionals with high quality, digitized product information will improve sales performances, increase revenue, and outperform competitors.

Monthly Thomas Navigator platform investment
Catalog setup and production of 500 SKUs of product data
- Billed over 12 months
- Additional $25/mo per 100 SKUs
Creation of product category structure
Creation of individual SKU pages
Product attributes
Search, sort, compare functionality
Downloadable product assets
Cross promotion functionality
Branded catalog interface to match your website
Product configuration
Free SSL certificate
Mobile ready design
RFQ form functionality
Databasing of all leads
Catalog hosting
Staff accounts
Content management, editing, and creation tools
Catalog Analytics
Includes e-commerce
Special pricing by customer
Real time third-party calculated shipping rates
Online credit card rates/processing
Transaction fees
PCI compliant
Product data syndication to distributor websites
Product Data Syndication Analytics
Publish existing CAD STEP files to Thomas TraceParts Network of 46 industrial platforms
Custom CAD/BIM file creation
Product content on Thomasnet.com
Product Data Select
$75/mo
$425/month
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Unlimited
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Unlimited
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up to 3 for free
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up to 1000 files, $1000/mo
Quoted
as low as $225/month
Product Data Advanced
$100/mo
$550/month
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Unlimited
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Unlimited
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Up to 10
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$0
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up to 3 for free
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up to 1000 files, $1000/mo
Quoted
as low as $225/month
Product Data Premium
Quote
Unlimited
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Unlimited
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Unlimited
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$0
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up to 3 for free
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up to 1000 files, $1000/mo
Quoted
as low as $225/month

  • Colonial TelTek logo-1

    "It’s a win-win working with Thomas to optimize our online product catalog. Our vendors love that they can now add more product lines — when we sell more products, they sell more products."

    Michael Lynch, VP of Colonial TelTek

Deliver Better Product Data. Get More Leads.

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