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Good catalogue design is not simply a question of aesthetics but one of knowing the best positions to suit each product. Having completed your sales analysis and decided on space allocations for each range, consider the main pagination elements to help improve sales performance. Close teamwork between merchandisers and designers at this stage will pay dividends in the long term.
Hot Pages
These are the pages, which have the highest sales potential within the catalogue. They should be used to sell ‘Best Selling’, ‘High Turnover’, and ‘High Margin’ products. As these pages are usually viewed first or most frequently, it is also important that they portray your brand strongly and give a clear indication of the range or type of products you sell. One of their key purposes is to entice the customer into browsing through the rest of the catalogue.
The larger your catalogue, the more ‘Hot Pages’ you will have. Typically, the front and back covers are crucial along with the centre spread if the catalogue is not ‘Perfect Bound’. In a 64-page catalogue the outer 16 pages are key and for a 32 page catalogue pages 2 to 5 and 28 to 31 have most impact.
Smaller catalogues that are ‘Saddle Stitched’, naturally fall open to the centre spread, making it one of your most powerful tools for sales. It’s a great place to put your best selling lines or section.
Page Layout
Putting the catalogue together in themes makes the customer’s life much easier and encourages sales. They suffer less frustration when trying to locate products and can easily compare similar items before making their purchasing decision.
‘Perfect Bound’. In a 64-page catalogue the outer
16 pages are key and for a 32 page catalogue
pages 2 to 5 and 28 to 31 have most impact.
Keeping page layouts as straightforward as possible; for example, symmetrical columns can be good for fashion and furnishings as well as B2B. But don’t overdo it as they can become repetitive and discourage customers from reading on.
Customers need to be able to relate the product image and copy quickly and easily. If the information required to make the sale cannot be located with minimum effort, then the sale may be lost. The customer will expect to find product copy either directly beneath or to the right of an image; wherever possible place copy in these positions.
Always ensure that any copy which does fall into these areas directly relates to the image, as placing copy for a different product directly underneath or to the right of an image will result in incorrect orders, which will inevitably lead to costly returns for yourself and dissatisfaction for your customer.
Front and Back Covers
Always sell off the front cover. Products placed here have up to three times the sales potential of those placed inside the catalogue alone. Remember to give a clear reference to the pages within the catalogue on which the products can be found.
The front and back covers should also give a clear indication of your product range. If you are sending a catalogue to existing customers, use this space to feature new products. If it’s for prospects, put your best sellers on the back cover, they have a proven track record of sales and are most likely to lead to conversions of new customers.
Hot Spots’ fall down the right-hand edge of the right-hand page,
the top right-hand corner of the spread being the most powerful
Hot Spots
These are the positions on each spread with the greatest sales potential and where you should place your best selling or top concept products. You will lift sales and ensure you get the maximum number of readers to look at the page.
Following extensive research on eye tracking, it has been shown that when a customer views a spread, their eye generally enters in the top right-hand corner, moves down and left to just inside the left-hand page about vertical centre and then moves down and back across the right-hand page and out of the bottom right-hand corner of the spread.
‘Hot Spots’ fall down the right-hand edge of the right-hand page, the top right-hand corner of the spread being the most powerful.
Never be tempted to use these positions to boost sales of weak products. You will only increase the sales of a poor product by a small percentage, whilst the percentage sales increase of a ‘Best Selling’ product placed here will be higher, giving you more sales overall.
Strengthening the Impact of Pages and Spreads
Because of eye tracking within a spread, the left hand page is often weaker than the right. However, effective use of design can help to encourage the customer’s eye to the left-hand page of the spread without detracting from the overall sales opportunity.
While applications will vary depending on the types of products being sold, there are a number of general guidelines that can help to improve performance of a page.
images containing people on the left-hand side,
as people like to look at people first
Try to place images containing people on the left-hand side, as people like to look at people first. Larger images draw the eye better than small images and using images of people with their eyes showing encourages the customer to engage more. While portraits can work better than whole body shots, always think about whether this is suitable for a specific product.
The use of warm colours and strong vertical shapes will also pull the eye across the spread.
Copy
Brevity beats verbosity! Keep paragraphs short and to the point, ensuring that each page features the website address and order line. Overall, remember the purpose of copy is to be read and encourage sales. Getting comprehension levels right is vitally important. Always set your copy to the left in standard form which makes it easier to read and gives the eye a static vertical point to return to.
Use reversed out copy sparingly as it can be difficult to read and evidence suggests it can drive down sales by as much as 33%. Keep the colour of your copy as strong as possible. Dark colours aid comprehension, while the use of multiple colours can detract and break down the flow of the eye as it crosses the page. For similar reasons try to use Roman Serif or Sans Serif fonts rather than ‘fancy’ fonts that look interesting, but can be very difficult to read.
A well-designed page should be aesthetically pleasing, but backed by ‘science’ will help to lift sales.
