Want 6 Easy Tips To Get Your Website And Catalog Producing Higher Dollars?

While there are some “home grown” product merchandising experts in the age of laptops and scanners, most successful catalog and web designers accept these "rules" as basic to increasing dollars per page. You might want to apply these to your latest creation as a final litmus test:

*Copy is more than critical; Key words need to be relevant and emotional tag lines supportive of moving the buyer to action.

*Consistent ordering SKU/identifying numbers, and pricing at the bottom of the product's descriptive copy.  This makes it easy for the patron to identify and buy in 3 seconds:

Chocolate Covered Cherries.

Creamy milk chocolate with

liquid centers and a cherry. 

D347  |  6 OZ  |  Boxed  |  $6.49

Flexible Plastic Storage Bowls.

Set of three  (10 | 8 | 6 | inches).

D483  |  Shrink Wrapped  |  $9.99

*Covers count!  Front/Back pages (outside and inside) plus the center spread are the critical “sweet spots”.  Their job is to grab attention, put the best foot forward i.e. products, price points and get the reader to pick up the catalog and go inside!  Sometimes this gets lost in translation when designers get distracted looking to create a pretty picture instead of a great performing catalog.  These pages are paramount to “selling product” and demand a lot of attention.

*"Touch points” and “eye movements” (for readers) start with the attention going to the top right of the page and moving in a “C” across both catalog pages.  Web site viewing always starts at the top and moves downward i.e.  gravity pulling the reader to the bottom. Strategically place your best selling products for maximum effect.

*Relevant offers (call to action promotions) should be on both your website and catalog. Catalog front and home pages of the website are very important "silent salespeople".

*Be a consistent steward of your brand, on both your catalog and website.  Fonts, color ways, best sellers, low price points, should all be similar in the initial customer experience. 

As always, do with this what you will, I keep these “basics” close and have found them to hold true even in the face of an ever changing 21^st century marketing world.

Will “Just In Time Inventory” Habits Crush Consumer Spending Come Fall 2010?

Red alert! Sorry for this negative trend forecast but:

More and More CPG importers, manufacturers, retailers, retail distributors, and catalog/internet resellers I’m talking to are playing a dangerous game of "just in time"chicken this fall with product inventory orders. Many are telling me they are placing product inventory orders only on firm buyer purchase orders. The risky strategy includes  squeezing their overseas suppler/manufacturers for delayed payment terms or loans and then stretching invoices 60-90 days for payments to all domestic suppliers (i.e. printers, raw materials, fuel, utilities, credit card/travel reimbursements to employees etc). 

Some disturbing inventory trends to watch that will keep consumer spending down this 4^th quarter even if there is an uptick in demand for goods:

·         USA distributor companies don’t have the strong borrowing  lines of credit from their banks like they used to (No inventory to borrow against to satisfy Asset Based Loans) and are trying to use their suppliers as the new credit source to a larger degree.

·         Distributors don’t have orders yet and the catalog/internet site business model requires accurate forecasting and projections of goods from Asia that take 45-90 day to get into their warehouse. Orders are light trying to wait to the last minute before pulling the trigger, Good luck.

·         Supplier manufacturers will be playing “Gatekeeper” and ship the better/bigger customers first, leaving the marginal risky resellers to a sea of back orders or non deliveries.

·         Back-orders and substitutions will rise and discourage consumer enthusiasm to up selling, reorders, add on accessories,  and higher average orders.

Here we sit in early July and most warehouses are empty of products for fall 2010 deliveries, the scramble for inbound products to ship to end consumers will be a major issue this fall. This full court scramble has already started, consider today's blog  your "canary in the mine" warning.

This situation might even make it on the Jim Cramer Mad Money Recap (albeit in September, after the fact, as he always does!).