Product catalog showcases your products to your customers and so connects you with your target audience. A catalog could become a new breath of fresh air to your business in increased sales, advanced branding, and better customer relations. So, all you want to achieve with the marketing efforts. However, not every catalog could bring the expected result. This is why we are offering you to rely on the professionals and let us create a catalog for you.
In this article, you will find more information on how the catalog designer could make a difference for you and some tips you want to keep in mind if you’re going to build a catalog by yourself.
Why do you need a catalog designer?
1. To make your catalog look attractive
There are thousands of catalogs out there, and one of your main goals is to stand out. An excellent and professional-looking design is one of the first steps on your way towards the selling catalog.
This point is tightly connected to the idea of branding. Using simple words, your brand is the emotion that would associate with your products among the customers. An experienced designer knows how color and font could provoke the ‘right’ feeling. If you still have not decided on the main branding components – logo, color scheme, font, design of icons, the Catalog Machine team could help you do it. Vice versa, if you already have established branding attributes, we will make sure that they are used in your online or PDF catalog.
Tip: Use similar branding attributes among all your marketing materials and your landing pages. By doing this you are creating brand recognition among your target audience.
2. To decide on the most relevant content
The main difference between the general designer and the one specializing in the catalogs, line sheets, lookbooks, and price lists is understanding the most relevant content for your clients. Of course, you know your business from the bottom, so before designing marketing material, an experienced catalog designer will discuss the most crucial information with you. For example, the target audience’s understanding and the action that should be taken after reviewing a catalog will affect the result.
The main reason for that is the limited amount of space for the information. A designer presents it on the page the way, so the most important pieces will be evident from the first glance. For example, if your goal is sales, the information on how the client should do it must be formulated as a call-to-action sentence and include supportive materials – ‘Call us to make an order, +1XXXXXXXXX’
Tip: You may want to include the call-to-action sentence and supportive materials on each page of your catalog, footer, or header, especially if your catalog is a 100-page-long.
3. To stay unique
The is always an option to use a pre-designed template for your catalog. On the one hand, all the templates are general, and they won’t consider your specific business needs. It means that you will need to update product fields and/or branding colors manually.
On the other hand, you want to avoid the situation when you and your competitor are using the same template. As we have already discussed, the design of your line sheet, lookbook, etc., is strongly associated with your brand. You don’t want to confuse the client to confuse you with the other brand just because you are using the same template.
What we are doing to avoid this situation is the competitor analysis. Firstly, you can tell us what part of the design you like. There is nothing wrong with taking advantage of the publicly available materials. Secondly, we will make sure that there is no one like you out there.
4. A catalog designer will save your time and money
A time part is pretty obvious. Transferring the responsibilities to the professionals makes you available for other urgent business needs. Creating a professional-looking design requires specific skills, which is another time-consuming action you will need to take if you want to create a good-looking catalog by yourself.
The distinctive characteristic of the Catalog Machine platform is automation. What does it mean in practice? Once our designer has a ready catalog for you, you don’t need to order another one next season or once you update your product database. You can connect the catalog to your website or Shopify page with the help of Zapier. So, it will include only up-to-date products. No need to pay the designer twice!
Now you know why you would ever hire a catalog designer and why Catalog Machine is the right choice. To order your catalog, log in to catalogmachine.com, upload your products to the system, and message us about the type of your catalog (line sheet, datasheet, lookbook, price list, etc.) and share your design ideas. It usually takes us 3 to 7 days to finish your order.
You have full flexibility to decide with Catalog Machine – when you need our professional help with creating a catalog or when you are ready to do everything yourself. Both options are open!