7 ingredients that make product catalogues awesome

Product catalogues are online flipbooks that display all that you have to offer. Choosing the right online magazine maker they can be included on your website and social media accounts, allowing anyone and everyone to read them. They are a great way of showing your customers and potential new clients what you are selling, and because of this they have been growing in popularity over the last few years. Visuals are one of the best ways to draw customers in, and according to Smart A Marketing they are the most effective form of advertising because:

  1. They get the point across fast.
  2. They allow people to see a product that they don’t know yet.
  3. It creates a quick awareness and interest.
  4. The colour from the images is eye catching and exciting.
  5. People don’t very often look at words long enough on the screen to read them properly.

But of course, as with everything, there are some great ways to do this… and some really terrible ways, so if you want to really attract people in the right way, you should consider including the five best ingredients to make your catalogue awesome:

Pictures 

You absolutely need to include visuals if you want people to know what you’re selling. Online, people lack attention, as shown by this study presented at The Guardian

“Studies have shown that 32% of consumers will start abandoning slow sites between one and five seconds. Bounce rate can be improved by up to 30% with the reduction of page size and resulting speed improvements. A one second delay in page load time can result in 11% fewer page views, 16% decreased customer satisfaction and 7% lost conversions.” 

This shows that generally people will not want to read through a lot of information if they have the chance to see it visually instead. Plus, it’s much easier to show and not tell – it saves you and your employees a lot of time and effort too. Having to find a way to explain everything in enough detail that people will understand it is very time consuming and unnecessary.

You just need to ensure that the images you include are taken by a professional so that they show your products in the best light possible. It is the photographer’s job to know how to flatter your products in a way that you might not even think of, so it’s much better – and will save you time and money in the future – to hire someone to do that for you. 

Hyperlinks 

Once people have seen what you have to offer, you want them to be able to access these products quickly and easily – turning your catalogue into sales. If you remember the short online attention span discussed before, you’ll know that people do not have the patience to click off the catalogue and find the product – at least, most people won’t, so you will be reducing your own sales massively.

This is one of the best things about using flipbooks on your website and social media accounts – it’s very easy to draw readers to your online store. The people reading your catalogue already have some interest in what you have to offer, and you want to snap up that attention while it’s there.

Captions 

When people find something that they are really interested in, they will want to learn more about it, so including captions that can be expanded at will is the perfect way to give your readers only the information that they want. For example, if you sell clothing, it might be a good idea to include an expandable segment that can tell customers about the price, the material, the sizes on offer, etc. This information could go on to encourage them to buy, so it is important, but it’s also best to hide it until it’s needed.

Sign Up Form 

Email marketing is one of the most successful ways to target an audience that is interested in what you have to say – especially now with everyone accessing everything via mobile devices. You can reach anyone at any time, and you really need to be taking advantage of that. According to Sales Force, when you consider that 44% of email recipients have made a purchase purely based on a marketing email they’ve received, you can see how important it is.  

To get email addresses you need a sign up form, and doing that through your product catalogue is a great way to do that. The readers have already expressed an interest in your products, and although they might not be ready to buy right now, this gives you access to those people in the future.

The Ability To Buy 

With apps such as PayPal, it is now easier than ever to actually take orders through your product catalogue, giving readers an even more instantaneous access to what you’re selling. You can even include this option instead of the links because it allows people to buy right there and then. 

So as you can see, product catalogues are a great way to draw in new customers, as long as you manage to keep their attention throughout their viewing. Before starting your own catalogue, it may be a good idea to have a look at what other people are doing – particularly your competitors – so that you can get some ideas, and even do it better. (Of course you want yours to be the best!)

Standing out from the crowd is very difficult in the digital age, but this is a very good way that you could, so why not take advantage – particularly with free sites such as Yumpu? You have nothing to lose, and possibly a whole lot to gain. You can even use Google Analytics to see how many people are viewing your flipbook, and to see how many clicks and reactions it’s getting, so the feedback you get is instant. This can help you make the right necessary changes to help you gain even more from your product catalogue.