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.