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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!

Catalog marketing is worth all the investment when you can excite and engage your audience. Today we are going to tell you in detail how to make your catalog looks unique, which information should be included and how to present your products most attractively.

1. Your Story is Your Advantage

Thousands of catalogs are circling the online and offline spaces. Your main goal is to stand out. Good news, it’s not that complicated as you might imagine. Most of the existing catalogs look similar and are nothing but the compilation of the products’ information.

The first thing you should do is to start thinking about your catalog as a way to tell your story. All people love stories because a good story involves an emotional connection. Use it to create brand loyalty among the customers. A catalog should be an extension of your brand and should support whatever messages you stand for.

What part of the catalog is mostly responsible for that? Every single one! Every photo and every product description is a chance to transform your values and ideas to the target audience.

Looking through hundreds of catalogs of our clients, we also want to admit the usefulness of the introduction page. This is exactly the place where you can mention what you stand for or shortly describe the history of your company. It works well, especially if you are presenting a family business. Use this as a chance to invite a customer to your world!

2. Keep Your Customers in Mind

Talking about your business, don’t forget who is going to read it. No matter how great your values are, if they contradict your customers’ values, no one will be your client. For example, you are selling wooden furniture, and you don’t want to mention deforestation even briefly. However, a point about eco-products in your life will work out well.

Your customers want to read only what they really care about. How will your product impact their lives? Which problems will they solve with their help? The answer should be included in your product description. Remember, people are buying fridges not to keep their meals cold, but prolonging the time before expiration.

3. The Power of the First Impression

It’s a matter of a few seconds, whether your customers are going to like your catalog or not. That is why you should think carefully about your cover page. It’s the first thing your customers will see.

Cover Page

How to make a good cover page?

The cover must be aesthetically appealing. Think about everything, colors, fonts, images. Here are a couple of tips from the Catalog Machine designer.

Use Adobe Color to find great color matches. All you need to do is to type in the name of the color you are interested in, look through the proposed colors combination, and select the one that suits you the best. After that, click on the selected palette and copy HEX (ex. #010D00)number of the color. Paste the number into the Catalog Machine color selector.

You have multiple font options at Catalog Machine with different styles. All of them look good, so we would recommend selecting from the offered base to stay safe. If you want to be creative, you can find more fonts at Google Fonts, create an image from the text and insert the image to your cover page.

Be sure you include your logo on the cover page. If you are in B2B (business-to-business) and prepare the catalog for one or a couple of specific clients, insert their logos into the cover page as well. This will make your catalog more personalized, and your customer will appreciate such an individualistic approach.

The content you include to the cover page also matters. Depending on the category, an offer or hook can pique interest, or create a sense of urgency.

Structure your content

Other than the cover page, your catalog should be structured well. Remember that larger catalogs should have a table of contents, folios, or tabs.

We would also strongly recommend you to leave enough white space. Even if you have hundreds of products, don’t put 16 of them on 1 page. It looks a little bit messy and hard to concentrate. The optimate number of products per page for the companies with a huge product base is 9 (3×3 grid).

If you have a lower number of products, the best option for you is to have 1 or 2 items stand out on the page, whereas all other elements as the lending support.

Be consistent with the fonts and colors. Select 2 main and 3 supporting colors. The shades also count as different colors. Whereas #0C19CC and #0D18B2 are both dark blue, they look slightly different, so we count them as 2 separate colors.

Same with the font. Use Bold or Italic style to stand out a piece of information, but don’t mix different fonts. Check the fonts of your footer and header. People usually forget about them and leave them with predefined settings.

4. Photos

It’s probably one of the most important parts of each catalog. Why? Images are helpful in two main aspects. They contribute to building brand identity and make navigation through the catalog easier. That is why the best catalogs are highly visual.

Here is some advice on how to make your product images look nice.

Make sure about the lighting and resolution for printing. Most printers recommend 300 dpi for the resolution (the higher, the better). Make photos at studios, because it’s easy to regulate the lightning there.

It might be a good idea to hire a professional photographer, so you will be sure about the images’ quality. Although it might be a little expensive, you will have material not only for the catalog but for future marketing campaigns.

The perfect photography is where the person is interacting with your product!

Don’t put too many products in one photo. It looks unclear to the viewer. The best option is to group images of separate products by category.

Focus on top sellers and position them with products that compliment them rather than items that could replace them.

5. Increase Chances of Sale

How?

Clear Ordering System

It should be obvious at first glance how to order the product. Since it’s the main purpose you’ve created a catalog. It should be a bright visual sign or a clear statement that’s easy to find what customers should do to order the desired product.

Good for you, if you are using the Catalog Machine all you should do is to enable your customers to order right from the catalog.

Highlight promotions and sales. It’s always nice to hear about free shipping or a discount.

Insert Contact Info

Insert your company’s contact info on every single page. Include both phone numbers and email to connect the customer with your salesperson. It’s always a good idea to post your website url.

Summing up

Follow these 5 simple steps to provide your customers with a memorable experience and boost your sales. Your catalog is similar to the logo or a business card, as all of them are creating a business identity, which makes you unique.

Next time before publishing your catalog, make sure it is both functional (easy to read and intuitively designed) and appealing (looks clean and professional).

The Catalog Machine team is happy to offer you a new service. From now you can order your catalog from us, so all you will need to do is to provide us your product information.

Category: Service

Top 4 reasons why do you need a catalog designer