In today’s highly competitive marketplace, advertising your products on the internet is one of the easiest and most efficient ways to reach a larger number of possible customers at the same time. As such just putting up your product catalogues online does not guarantee success. Online product catalogues need to be appealing to the right crowd on the right scale.
Here, we are going to talk about a few tips to keep in mind when you design your online catalogue.
1. Know your audience
Understanding the section of people that you intend to target and looking to convert into customers is very important. This varies according to the product or service that you intend to sell. For example, a company selling handheld electronic devices are more likely to have success with a young audience in the age bracket of 15 to 40-year-olds, while a company selling industrial equipment need to look at inventory managers of companies likely to use those tools.
The way you present your catalogue and the content that you put into it depends on your target audience. Products aimed at young audiences would be better shown in an artistic and colourful way while those aimed at an older or business-oriented crowd would be better presented in a more professional manner.
2. Understanding your Product
Depending on what your product is, you will have to adapt to either an informative or promotional style of presenting it. Informative catalogues would work better with company employees, senior buyers and well-established companies. Whereas promotional type catalogues are better suited for individual product sales geared at the average consumer.
You should also consider the industry norms of your particular product. Observe and analyse what your competitors are doing and research if the same can apply to your product. However, be careful not to blindly follow your more successful competitors and copy all of their ideas. Such a strategy rarely, if ever works out and can lead to your product losing its brand value.
3. Decide on your end goals
Once you have studied your product carefully and established your target audience, you need to need to figure what exactly you are hoping to achieve with this catalogue.
Decide whether you want your customers to buy your product immediately or if you are just aiming at spreading the word and informing your possible customers about the product for now. Then decide if you want to move away from more traditional plain PDFs to a more interactive type of catalogue that your audience can interact with and is subsequently more engaging. Once you have the answer to these questions, you can fix parameters on what success is and what a failure is. For example, if you are only looking to inform your customers and widen your reach, then a bunch of people having read your catalog and not necessarily having purchased anything can be considered a success, but at the same time if your goal is to sell more of your product, this can be considered a failure.
4. Writing the content
Once you are done with the above steps, the next one is to sit down and structure the content and decide what goes where. The most important thing to consider here is to emphasise on the core benefits for the consumer. Construct all of your content around this. The customer should be made aware of the benefits that your product will provide him or her immediately after reading the catalogue.
Gather all the required information together when you sit down to write the content. This will help with getting a proper flow within the catalogue. All the information provided to the customer must be presented in a logical and straightforward manner. You should aim to answer any doubts that might occur in the customers' mind as he or she reads it.
Keep your product descriptions concise and short. Focus on the main selling points of your product and keep your word limit to within 150 words. Do not use overly complicated technical jargon unless it is relevant to your particular product. Ensure that there is a proper flow between different sections of the catalogue.
5. Designing the Final Product
This step can be quite a challenge for anyone who isn't a professional level graphic designer. The key to making this step easy for you is keeping it simple. This helps you get it done within a short period of time and will also prevent your catalogue from looking like a half-baked, clumsy mess.
As discussed earlier, keep the emphasis of the design on the product itself. Make sure it is designed in such a way that it highlights the product and its benefits to the customer. Stick to the same design style throughout the catalogue. Consistency is important when it comes to the colours, fonts, templates and typography that you use throughout the catalogue. Use fonts which are clear and easily legible. Use Bold fonts to highlight any important features of your product. Also, try to find a good balance between the content and space around it. Be careful not to make it seem cluttered but at the same time do not leave a lot of empty spaces.
Conclusion
Constructing a good product catalogue takes a lot of effort and hard work coupled with careful consideration of your design choices. So, take your time and do enough research before you actually sit down to complete the product catalogue. Spend adequate time for each of the steps described above, and you should come out with a catalogue that fulfils everything you expect it to do.
