8 Design Tips to Spur Catalog Sales

5. Put your best-selling products in the best locations. (Click on the PDF under "Related Content" to the right to view the best selling positions on a page and in a catalog.) Resist the urge to try to help poorly performing products by putting them in the best positions. You can’t save bad products — a 10 percent lift for a product that's in the bottom 20 percent of sales, for instance, won't come close to matching the revenue generated from a 3 percent lift for a product that's in the top 10 percent.

6. Have copy for the top 20 products that starts with a benefit to the customer. Almost everyone knows that the three rules of advertising are benefit, benefit and benefit, but not everyone makes sure that the very first sentence in every copy block is the primary benefit for the customer.

7. Make sure copy follows a logical hierarchy. This keeps the selling process streamlined so the customer isn’t looking around copy blocks and callouts to find the information she needs to place an order. Follow this four-step process:

• start with the primary benefit;
• explain any additional benefits;
• list the necessary ordering information (color, size, weight, style); and
• then list SKU number and price.

8. Look at past catalogs to see if there are great ideas that devolved but still could be effective. Your marketing and creative departments will get bored with creative presentations long before your customers will. Look back at past presentations to see if there's an oldie-but-goody that'll perform better than a current presentation.

Sarah Fletcher is the creative director for Catalog Design Studios, a consulting firm that specializes in catalog design and creative. She can be reached at sfletcher@catalogdesignstudios.com.