Hi everyone — I’m building a free Catalog Readiness Checker for merchants who want a quick second look at their product CSV before using it in shopping feeds or AI-assisted shopping experiences.
It checks for missing identifiers and attributes, duplicate IDs, variant and grouping issues, availability, price and currency conflicts, shipping and return fields, weak descriptions, and items that need human review. The file is processed in your browser and isn’t uploaded to us.
This is a free beta, not a certification or ranking tool. I’m looking for feedback from merchants using real Shopify product exports—especially false positives, confusing recommendations, or fields the checker fails to recognize.
Try it: https://catalog.vermilionridge.com
If you test it, please reply here with general feedback rather than sharing catalog files or customer data.
Disclosure: I built this product through Vermilion Ridge.
Hi @VermilionRidge
This sounds really useful, especially for catching issues before a product feed is submitted. From a QA perspective, I’d be particularly interested in how the checker handles edge cases around variants, duplicate IDs, and products with incomplete or inconsistent data.
The browser-only processing is also a nice touch from a privacy perspective. I’ll definitely take a look and see if I can spot any false positives or cases where the recommendations could be clearer.
Thanks, I appreciate you taking a look. Those are exactly the areas I’m hoping to get real-world feedback on.
The current version checks duplicate IDs, variant grouping, and several inconsistencies involving pricing, currency, availability, and product identity. It will not catch every Shopify-specific edge case yet, so if you find a warning that seems wrong or unclear, even a general description of the issue would be very helpful. There is no need to share the actual catalog.
Keeping the processing inside the browser was important to me too. I would be interested to hear what you think if you get a chance to try it.
Great questions.
The current beta processes the catalog inside the browser and has a 10 MB file limit. It does not upload or process the file in server-side chunks, so performance with thousands of products will depend somewhat on the device. If the browser struggles, the safe fallback is to test a smaller portion of the catalog.
For variants, it groups related rows and checks IDs, grouping structure, and certain pricing, currency, and availability conflicts. It does not yet compare every possible field between variants. For example, deciding whether different weights are intentional or incorrect would require more context than the file may provide.
The weak-description check is intentionally simple and consistent. It mainly flags missing or unusually thin descriptions for human review. It is not based on keyword density or an AI opinion, and a short description is not automatically treated as bad.
Meta titles and meta descriptions are not part of the current feed-focused version, but an optional Shopify-specific check for those fields is a good suggestion.
This is exactly the kind of feedback I was hoping for. Thank you.
Quick update based on the questions here: the checker now recognizes Shopify CSV exports, evaluates product-level fields across rows that share a Handle, and matches variant values by their actual option names instead of assuming Option 1 is color or Option 2 is size. It also separates expected Shopify-to-feed conversion gaps—public product URLs, final availability, and store currency—from ordinary missing-field warnings. Results now show the three issue types to fix first and explain which source columns were recognized. Files still stay entirely in the browser and are not uploaded. I’d especially value one real Shopify export test to see whether the Handle inheritance and feed-gap explanations feel accurate. Resources and fictional practice CSV: Free Product Catalog and Feed Guides